This is a great opportunity for all brands across any sector.
Some companies choose to use agencies, others keep things in-house. Either path chosen needs to provide you with the most expertise you need for the next stage of your business.
While digital is at the forefront as the primary way people are now engaging, it is time for marketers to think differently during this time. Some observations of ways to change the game come to mind.
Is your tech stack built in a way to really excel in a digital-first society? Adding QR codes to things because they are mainstream doesn’t count. If that is part of your tech stack, you probably need to redefine what tech stack means.
Are you still relying mostly on email? Do you have automation in place to remarket to those reaching your site, triggering off multiple messages based on behaviors? Our internet browsing is at an all-time high. It’s time to capture your share of attention beyond a first visit. Remember: Society as a whole is becoming a less committed society. Digital strategists have to work hard to overcome each consideration barrier once someone is aware of your product and/or service.
Paid Search is a must, but it cannot be everything. Email is a given. Display ads to your email list is a must. On-site treatments and landing pages matching promotions are non-negotiable elements.
They all must work together. Are you using Marketo or HubSpot or another platform as a central hub to capture what each user is doing on your site? Have you connected all the dots?
For smaller budgets, you can make some progress using AdRoll and Google Ads to target based on behaviors and based on email lists. For larger brands, might I recommend Epsilon, which has the most comprehensive approach to 1:1 targeting in the marketplace?
The most common platform out there is WordPress, which provides great flexibility and great base frameworks for your site. Drupal is another preferred platform I like to recommend, with its great UI and easy-to-build CMS. Note: I advise against building through Wix, GoDaddy and other more canned options.
My history with Marketo has me as a champion of that platform. I used it before it was cool! It brings powerful integrations and a straightforward UI for building emails. HubSpot is another platform that many use, and is a bit less than Marketo while also a solid engine for automation. Mailchimp is a great fallback for smaller budgets.
The most common analytics to have on your site is Google Analytics, which gives you a plethora of data around your website visitors and their interactions. For a next-level look, many use Adobe Analytics which dives deeper. Either way, I’d be remiss if I didn’t recommend this piece as the foundation of your entire tech stack.
If you are doing the ol’ “hit and hope” approach with marketing like some like to do in golf, it’s time to reconsider. Your foundation, your strategy and the step that is 4-5 steps down the road once you get to your next step must be in mind. You cannot execute well if the system is not fully in sync.
Need a large sum of “leads” to satisfy your volume goals? Oftentimes, this equates to renting a list. Boom! We have 1,000 leads now! Done! And the vendor “promises” that they’ll turn into quality opportunities! Sounds like magic! And then it often fails. It’s a bit like the time I was excited to eat my first fancy cheese from Wisconsin while on a flight home. They gave it to me and it looked amazing. I just didn’t know that wax was covering it and I needed to take that off. So it just tasted like gross wax. I threw it out at the airport only to then be told what I actually needed to do.
List rentals are totally fair game when done right. I’ve been presented hundreds of lists over the years. My question is always around what the projected conversion rate is and cost per opportunity. Along with internal people resource time. You cannot just email a list. You cannot just display ads to those people. And you cannot just send a mailer and expect gold to come. We’re a fragmented society. Repetition of touch points helps.
But now you can work with vendors on real-time, intent-based demand generation to understand which organizations and corporations are actively in-market for your products. It’s the equivalent concept of renting a list, except these are all people who are actively looking for your product and you are able to target specific people within that company and gain other background information.
You are able to not only export each week to see who is now trending in intent, but you can see it in real-time. 8 minutes ago, 3 organizations showed intent with something I have. I’ve added those individuals relevant to decisions to my display campaign targeting, collaborated with my SDRs on an outreach plan and we are off to the races with a comprehensive digital plus direct outreach strategy. We’re catching them while they are showing the most active intent, and we’re also capturing the intel behind who is visiting our site so that we target the right people within those organizations that day with our messaging across channels.
The more that join the digital party, the better the party will be.
Digital today should look unlike any other effort in history. Now is the time to step up to the plate, decipher the pitches coming, swing at the ones piped over the plate, and get the clutch hits for the team.