How to Make Positive Changes to Your Marketing Process

If you’re in marketing, you’ll likely agree with me that your field is the toughest job in the world, and that being a good marketer is becoming harder than ever.

But it can be an incredibly rewarding and lucrative job too — if you know how to do it right. Unfortunately, most marketers focus on how to do more instead of how to be efficient and that’s why they keep making the same mistakes again and again.

As a marketer, you need to focus on the things that it matters to say and make as much impact saying those things as possible..] Below are a few such things that can make your marketing process super-effective this year:

1. Focus on nurturing.

No matter what you sell, if you’re not focusing on nurturing buyers, you won’t be able to get good returns from marketing. Why?

Because, according to a report from the Bright funnel, it takes 52 percent more marketing touches (than if you didn’t use those touches) to close a deal. But most marketers focus instead on bringing more people iton the funnel instead of moving them through the funnel.

If you’re a B2B marketer who is using the lead-based marketing strategy to fill the funnel for sales, you should change this approach immediately. The reason is that this approach is broken and sub-optimal: Forrester Research has stated, for example, that fewer than 1 percent of leads will ever become customers.

Want, instead, to nurture your leads? Take inspiration from Sprout Social, a social media management software business that promoted a new feature by reaching out to leads via email and nurturing them.

Everyone wants more leads from marketing every year. That has become the basic expectation and unit of comparison for marketing success. But it shouldn’t be.

2. Follow the “less is more” approach.

The biggest mistake most marketers make when marketing is believing more channels + more messages = more conversions. Even if ’til now this has proved right for your company, it doesn’t have to dictate your future marketing process anymore.

Why? Because in the world of information overload, capturing attention has become tougher. So, no matter what the channel where you’re using email marketing, push notifications or content marketing the focus should be on providing value and engaging audience members instead of just reaching out to them.

Remember, when it comes to marketing, the main metric to look at is engagement. Start quantifying that. You can even just rank it on a scale of zero to ten.

3. Add clarity to your messages.

Attention spans are becoming shorter; it’s tough to capture attention, but it’s even tougher to hold it. Without a clear message, it’s tough to keep the attention as people will be confused. When people are confused, they don’t act on your messages.

Clearly define your target audience so you can speak to them in a way that resonates with them. Once you do that, you can efficiently reach the right people and turn them into customers.

You need to be creative with your marketing messages to capture attention, but you need to be clear too to hold that attention.

4. Leverage the power of AI

I know what you’re thinking: Aren’t we already harnessing the power of AI? Though it has been around for years, everyone is talking about it now. Yet in reality, few marketers are actually leveraging artificial intelligence.

Why? Because there’re myths and misconceptions about AI in marketing. Now the question is how to use AI to enhance marketing?

Use AI to gain a deeper understanding of your customers which in turn will help you in sending targeted marketing messages and improve your customer experience. For example, Sky TV has implemented a machine-learning model that is designed to recommend content according to the viewer’s mood. 

It’s vital to use AI in your marketing to reach the next level of personalization, which in turn will separate you from marketers who are just contributing to the noise.

5. Apply Sturgeon’s Law to your marketing.

Are you familiar with Sturgeon’s law? And are you using it in your marketing? If you haven’t heard about it, let me tell you what it says and then explain how it can help your marketing. 

Simply put, the law says that 90 percent of everything is crap. You read that right.  In reference to marketing,90 percent of your messages are not delivering value.

Now, I know that’s tough to accept, but once you do, you can better refine your messaging and stand out from the clutter. The law can help you avoid sending generic marketing messages to your buyers and become a better marketer. So definitely add it to your marketing process in 2019. You want to reach out to your audience when you have something to say and when it adds value, not because you think you have to.

All marketers should ask themselves how they might be adding to the noise and what they can do to stop doing that and start improving the buying experience. 

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