Heading into 2022, marketers are again entering uncharted territory. As the world progresses past pandemic-driven disruptions, new challenges await. Hurdles ranging from supply-chain uncertainties to increased workloads and responsibilities are testing how marketers prioritize and predict what their audience will do next.
Looking to the past two years as guidance, successful marketers have learned the value of aligning their demand gen strategies with sales operations, in order to support the efforts and fuel meaningful business growth. However, with an increasing number of internal and external factors dictating the approach, achieving and maintaining this alignment requires intentional, tactical efforts in the year ahead. This starts with dodging and recovering from common pitfalls and distractions.
Not paying attention to the existing database
At the moment, most marketers are well aware that they need data to do everything, from imagination to creation to doing their campaigns. But it can be a wonderful thing.
Over the past few years, many brands have focused on marketing efforts in the first company data collection with strong demand and advanced production campaigns, but not enough brands have focused too much on keeping their data stored. In Nielson’s annual sales report, nearly 37% of respondents expressed difficulty in maintaining data quality and accuracy, with large and medium-sized companies struggling.
In order for the data to be of any use, it needs to be applicable, accurate and up to date. This requires brands to be committed to taking care of the database and to produce a lead model that measures active contacts, as well as unqualified markers in their CRM.
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Donating time and resources to this process can be difficult, especially as the marketing departments are busier than ever before. However, the cost of ignoring a website is very high – yet the potential benefits are huge.
Not understanding personas
Ensuring that the organization’s database is populated with clean, relevant data enables brands to truly understand audiences and their intent. Without first understanding who the audience is and what they want, it’s nearly impossible for brands to effectively serve them.
Identifying and assessing any knowledge gaps about your customer base is fundamental to the success of your marketing programs. This starts with the previously mentioned database maintenance. But for brands to truly understand and connect with the personas they’re engaging, it is important to pay attention to the audience.
Analyze the audience reporting to determine if you’re asking the right questions – not just the obvious ones like which landing pages are driving conversions.
It is important to regularly spend time backtracking the top deals to better understand the touchpoints that contributed to the sale. These insights are critical to understanding the audience, identifying seasonal trends or process breakdowns, benchmarking efforts and refining approach. Remember: the audience’s needs will change. It’s important to regularly assess how well you understand brand’s target audience to strategically adapt demand generation efforts.
By focusing primarily on the key components of the marketing program (including the health and performance of the martech stack, as well as the team’s database retention and earning points), advertisers are empowered to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their existing campaigns and future efforts.
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Focusing on too many things
Focusing on too many projects and improper priorities leads to wasting time, energy and resources. Building a solid foundation allows advertisers to better support their sales team with any future innovations while at the same time validating their efforts.
This foundation may not be as good as a new generation-leading campaign or community-oriented campaign, but if the organization enters another uncertain year, traders should remain focused and cohesive within their organization. By avoiding common pitfalls and distractions and maintaining a solid database, marketers will be better prepared to pivot when needed while simultaneously securing future success.
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