Over the last several years I’ve both failed and succeeded as a marketer. What’s kept me going is the passion I have for what I do, and that I absolutely love it too.
As the world of marketing continues to evolve, my focus on helping businesses harness the power of it to grow revenue also continues to be a goal of mine. For this very reason, I’ve continued to blog and provide free tips-n-tricks along the way.
In my experience, there are 3 traits of a successful and effective marketer that separate the good ones from the great ones. These attributes include:
- Being data-driven
- Constantly testing
- Having the deathly combo of being strategic and tactical
Let’s explore each of these three a bit more…
1) Data-Driven
With 87% of marketers citing that data is their organization’s most under-utilized asset, it’s no wonder why I continue to meet business owners who don’t feel their marketing efforts are paying off.
Being data-driven goes beyond just the raw data but also includes implicit data points that provide a predictable path for success and a solid marketing strategy.
Here are a few more stats to check out around data-driven marketing:
- Today data-driven marketing is either embedded or strategic for 78% of marketers.
- Speed is the second most-cited benefit of data-driven marketing, after accuracy, cited by 67%.
- Sixty-three percent of marketers reported that their spending on data-driven marketing and advertising grew over the last year.
- Fifty-three percent of marketers said, “a demand to deliver more relevant communications/be more ‘customer-centric’” is among the most important factors driving their investment in data-driven marketing.
- Sixty-four percent of marketing executives “strongly agree” that data-driven marketing is crucial to success in a hypercompetitive global economy.
- Fifty-three percent of organizations have instituted an enterprisewide vision for data analytics.
- Eighty-seven percent of marketers consider data their organizations’ most underutilized asset.
- Almost half (49%) of brand executives feel “significant pressure” to increase data’s role in their current strategy.
- More than half (54%) of companies say their biggest challenge to data-driven marketing success is the lack of data quality and completeness.
- Marketers want recognition for their data-driven marketing performance. Therefore, increasing revenue that can be attributed to marketing is their top objective (44%) for the year ahead.
2) Test, Test, Test
No marketing strategy is perfect right out of the gate. While marketers can use data and insights to predict what strategy will work best, it’s important to test every aspect of a campaign to make improvements.
Testing can (and should) be implemented for every facet of a marketing campaign. Marketers can test both minor elements such as ad colors, headline copy to specific offers such as free trials vs. paid.
Here’s a list of items you can start testing today:
- Is there a specific time, day of the week or year that drives more leads and sales? This is a great element to test to see when your target market is most engaged with your brand.
- Segmenting your subscriber list is great, but diving in deeper by testing out different messaging and offers based on the lifecycle stage of each segment will help you determine ways to scale your efforts. Check out this example by LinkedIn. If you’re looking to upgrade your account to a premium profile, you can pay annually or monthly. Notice how those who choose to pay annually save a bit of money compared to those who choose the monthly subscription plan.
- Look at testing different tones within your messaging to see which one drives the most engagement. Different tone can range from casual, professional, corporate, technical, controversial to witty.
Next up, here are additional items you can look into testing:
- Category landing page, versus product landing page
- Intro length
- Use of (previously) bought product
- Removing the intro
- Retest the test you did more than 3 months ago
- Pre-sales mails
- Email exclusive content
- Adding click indicators to your CTAs
- Loss aversion (don’t miss) in subject line and email
- Different type of offers (free shipping versus discount)
- Using a contest or prize draw
3) Strategic and Tactical
Marketers who are both strategic and tactical can be difficult to find, but when you do, they are like unicorns, so keep them around.
The difference between strategy and tactics can be defined as the following:
- Strategy – The big picture goal of what you want to achieve. Your strategy is all about the vision and the long-term plan.
- Tactics – What you will need to do in order to achieve your big picture goal. Tactics are all about execution and flexible for making daily changes.
Here’s an example:
- Objective: Increase sales by 300% come June 2017
- Strategy:
- Improve user experience within purchase journey
- Segment automated workflows by lifecycle stage
- Create a community of raving fans to promote product/services
Included in the tactics to support the strategy of increasing sales by 300% could be any of the following:
- Running search ads – text and display
- Running retargeting ads
- Implementing SEO – off-page and on-page
- Email marketing
- Social media marketing
- Content development: blogging, white papers, guides, checklists, webinars, explainer videos
Note that a strategy has to be carefully thought about and needs to be realistic. Otherwise, aligning tactics to foster your strategy will be very challenging.
Final Thoughts
Being a successful marketer doesn’t just come down to delivering bottom line results – though that is the end goal – but also being consistent with your efforts. That consistency is what will drive results that can be turned into predictable revenue for your company.
Have more to add? Share them with me.
