On Thursday morning at MarketingProfs B2B Forum, TopRank Marketing CEO Lee Odden asked a room full of marketers, “Who here has tried starting a diet or exercise program before?” Pretty much every hand in the room shot up.
The percentage of those individuals who would rate their efforts as a satisfying success? Not quite so high.
Falling short of aspirations with fitness endeavors is an almost universally relatable experience. We embark on a diet plan, but we slip. We go all-in on a workout regimen, but we stop. Life gets in the way, and other priorities demand our attention. Alas, any temporary progress we make ultimately proves to be only that.
Many marketers are familiar with this pattern in their jobs: Campaigns yielding strong results, which quickly fade and leave us unfulfilled.
What are the keys to getting over the hump? In his MPB2B session on building a marketing beach body, Lee pinpointed some of the most prominent obstacles and offered advice on overcoming them.
Barriers and Breakthroughs for Healthy B2B Marketing
After confronting his own health issues and shedding 65 pounds in the course of a year, Lee had a revelation: “It’s not about the goal, it’s about the journey.” He says that once he stopped focusing so intently on the number he wanted to see on the scale, and instead started emphasizing daily discipline, the rest took care of itself.
This inspired the theme of his MPB2B presentation. Marketers can get so caught up in KPIs and the relentless pursuit of results that we lose sight of the incremental steps along the way.
In particular, there are a number of pervasive roadblocks he’s seen in the B2B marketing world. He shared his perspectives on overcoming them and staying on track for sustained success.
The Barrier: Campaigns Deliver Only Bursts of Short-Term Impact
Starts and stops: the enemy of any fitness initiative. We go hard at the gym for a month and then we fall out of the routine, only to see those lost pounds tack right back on. This same problem plagues campaign-based marketing strategies. We come up with a great idea and execute it, but the business impact is fleeting.
The Breakthrough: Sustained Growth with Always-On Marketing
There’s nothing wrong with campaigns, necessarily, just like there’s nothing wrong with a concentrated bunch of trips to the gym or a week of hardcore dieting. The key is to not completely take your foot off the pedal and erase momentum at the conclusion. For B2B 工作职能邮件数据库 brands, that means combining campaigns with an always-on marketing strategy. Campaigns should be sequential and build upon one another.
The Barrier: Scattered Tactics and Channels Yield Scattered Results
There are so many weight loss fads and trends out there it can be hard to keep up. As such, people are prone to sporadically trying out different ones with little cohesion – a two-day fast here, a juice cleanse there. Ohhh, look, a ketones supplement!
Shiny object syndrome can also distract marketers. Should we do an eBook, or webinar, or event? Which channel should we focus on – email, social, search? Blindly throwing darts won’t often result in a bullseye.
The Breakthrough: Connect Your Approach with an Integrated Strategy
Every tactic and channel should make sense within the big picture of your strategy, aligning with your audience’s preferences and your ultimate goals. In the scope of a data-driven always-on program, it becomes much easier to identify the right tactics and channels for the right initiatives.
The Barrier: Lack of Resonance and Traction with Buyers
The old SEO playbook called for a relatively simple formula: Chart out the keywords relevant to your product or service area, and then create content to rank for them. It’s as straightforward as an-apple-a-day. The problem is that it’s not very effective anymore in an evolving digital environment.
The Breakthrough: Empathetic Content Planning Driven by Customer Insights
“Last I checked, Google doesn’t pay my bills, but actual humans,” Lee quips. Don’t let keywords guide your marketing strategy; let your customers guide it. Instead of planning your content around words or phrases you expect buyers to search for, plan it around the questions (and derivatives of those questions) they ask throughout their research and purchase journeys. The more expansive your coverage of these curiosities, and the more definitive your answers, the more comprehensive your best-answer approach.