As a marketer, how can you step up your game while handling all that’s working its way into your ever-shrinking day? The most successful marketers call upon a mix of simple, tactical tricks and smart strategies to tame the chaos of being a modern-day marketer.
#1: Successful marketers really understand their audience
Before crafting any strategies, plans, or campaign and content calendars, you need to understand who you’re trying to engage and the best way to go about it. So go develop your ideal customer profiles or buyer personas.
I know: easier said than done.
You’ll need to conduct research (SurveyMonkey can help here) and talk to a variety of constituents (prospects, customers, customer-facing colleagues, partners). And you’ll need to document your buyer personas, share them company-wide, and update the findings over time.
But doing this work is the only way to deliver meaningful results for your organization. Put another way, it’s the first step on your way to being a marketing hero.
#2: Successful marketers start their day strategically
Many of us start the day by grabbing a cup of coffee and then chatting with colleagues as we lackadaisically wend our way through the office.
If you work from home, the equivalent is bouncing from email to a website and back again, getting distracted by a mix of interesting business articles and the latest pop-culture headlines.
If either of these describes your typical morning, you’re shortchanging yourself.
According to Dan Ariely, Duke University professor of psychology and behavioral economics, most people are most productive within the first two hours of fully waking.
So once you’re completely conscious and ready to tackle your day, concentrate your efforts on the items and issues that require the most brainpower and creative thinking.
#3: Successful marketers find a balance
You can’t do it all in a day – and you shouldn’t.
The most effective marketers map their strategic goals with the granular steps it will take to achieve them. Next they break down that tactical list into must-dos and nice-to-dos. And then they formalize all that into documented strategies, plans, and tasks.
Oh, and they’re pretty darn good at delegating, whether that means assigning a task to someone on the team or calling upon outside resources who bring needed skills (and time) to the table.
#4: Successful marketers demonstrate their value
Today’s marketers need to prove their worth. But you can’t do that unless you know what the executive team expects you to contribute to the greater good.
Become intimately familiar with your company’s strategic goals, figure out where marketing fits in the plan, and then define relevant KPIs and metrics.
Then identify the tools that will help you track marketing results and report on the impact in a way that gets the C-suite’s heads nodding in the affirmative.
Competitive benchmarking and ROI are two critical components for effective executive reporting.
#5: Successful marketers dig beneath the data
Data, data everywhere but not a single insight. Sound familiar?
I know – it can be overwhelming trying to make sense of all the data streaming in from seemingly every direction. Which is precisely the problem.
Don’t try to make sense of all of it. Instead, choose a slice or segment to analyze. Or come up with a set of simple questions to answer.
Use whatever tools you have at your disposal. If you are evaluating new analytics and attribution tools, check out our list of tools for reference.
Then put the important insights into a visual format (perhaps using Google Charts or Piktochart), share them, and make plans to act on them.
That last part is especially important. Make your plans clear and transparent to hold yourself and your marketing team accountable. Research shows that people who explicitly make goals are 10 times more likely to attain them than those who don’t.
These are just a few of the ways you can achieve marketing superstardom. But there are plenty more. What are your secrets to success?