Scott Lewis – marketing strategist
It’s that time of the year to stop thinking about how much weight you want to lose in 2014 and focus on what new marketing habits you want to add to your repertoire. I need quite a few but here’s my top three.
- Make data analytics a major part of my marketing job
The center of the marketing nucleus just became your Marketing Automation tool (i.e., Marketo, Eloqua, etc.) and after you push the “start” button on your first 3-4 nurturing programs, you’ll immediately be staring at tons of campaign data. Now what? Wondering how to process all that data into something meaningful? You’ll probably need some outside help to get started, like from Publitek (shameful plug), defining those top 10 metrics you’ll want to focus on and how you’ll track them in real-time. No more wading in, it’s time to dive in! I have to become as expert at this as my CEO is at looking at loads of data and quickly determining what’s happening, if it’s good or bad and what the data says to do next. We’ve all been in that meeting.
- Spend 2 days a month with Field Sales visiting Customers
The corporate marketing/communication function crosses multiple product and functional groups so we must inherently be great at collaboration. But the one area I continually seem to not quite have time for is something that may be the most critical – talking with the sales team. If you want a good data point on how best to prioritize your marketing programs, what sales tools really help sales design in products and what the REAL value propositions are that your customers care about, spend a day traveling with your local sales person. If a full day’s not possible, I’ll go to lunch and let them “unload” on me about why what marketing has done is good or why it’s missing the mark. What better data point to have when deciding marketing program priorities than from a group that talks directly to your customer on a daily basis?
- Meet with 2 new vendors every month
I am continually amazed at the new applications available to marketing folks like me. There are some really fantastic cloud-based applications that solve real problems and also improve productivity for us marketers. Besides the cloud marketing automation tools already mentioned, I love Basecamp (simple project management) and MarketingMO (product launch tracking). I love, love, love Haiku Deck for quickly building great powerpoint presentations and Analytiks (really nice web metrics for your phone/tablet) is also good. And for general news on all things marketing, download Flipboard and the content you pick is served up daily.
I hope everyone had a successful 2013 and has specific 2014 metrics they can track showing growth and ROI…………..using analytics of course. I will.
Enjoy the holidays!
