It’s hard to find advocates of the hard-sell these days. The rise of online research and the ease of getting peer feedback means marketers have to be smarter, finding ways to educate and advise rather than be pushy.
Modern marketing is about behaviours, not just tactics. Here are five behaviours of that can help marketers be successful.
1. Storytelling
Today’s marketing communications are all about story-telling; creating a powerful story to support your brand and what you stand for. The modern marketer needs to create content that opens with a snappy headline to attract attention and then engages readers through a well-written and engaging narrative that:
- builds awareness of an issue;
- shows the options for resolving it;
- delivers proof of how it was solved; then
- details the benefits to the customer
Statistics are a vital element of the story you tell; they help offer more than an opinion. In the B2Bworld, we all know that the stats that resonate most powerfully are those around time saving, cost efficiency, and revenue increases.
2. Relationship Building
Social media allows you to scale what you’ve always done at face–to–faceevents and over the phone. This art is more important than ever. Marketing needs to use personality to build communities around their brand, products and services. Avid fans will help you sell more than anyone else. Learn from your virtual relationships what your customers and peers want and expect from you.
3. Sharing the Mission
Involving key stakeholders as you build your marketing plans is imperative. Sales and marketing can’t function in silos. Visualising your campaigns and sharing their objectives can help improve collaboration, which not only improves transparency, but also reach and performance. Learn what customers need, then share how you plan to deliver it.
4. Driving Engagement
Once you have your customers, prospects and colleagues on board, it’s time to ensure their level of engagement grows. As we all know, it’s not just about how many Facebook friends you have – it’s about how they engage with you! Do this with informative, thought-provoking communications that strengthen your position of authority. Give real advice, both tactical and strategic. Look at the lifecycle of the customer and keep colleagues motivated with updates on results, incentivizing ongoing internal support for your campaigns.
5. Automating Processes
It isn’t just about cocktail napkins and branded pens anymore. Technology is playing a prominent role in the modern marketing mix. The field is changing so fast that marketers need to automate processes in order to keep up. This saves them time, removes the tedium of repetitive tasks, provides rich data about what’s working and what’s not, shows exactly how engaged a prospect is and prove marketing’s overall value
You can immerse yourself even deeper in the world of modern marketing by joining our 12 week “Mission of the Modern Marketer.” By taking part you will learn how to overcome everyday marketing challenges and discover a modern marketing world whilst exploring the MarketingCosmos.