Marketers: Don't Forget the Basics
Marketing is…well…hard. Especially now. And the good news is that it won’t get easier anytime soon.
New channels are popping up all the time. New places where people are turning their attention to that our employers or clients are paying us to capture.
The marketing technology landscape is littered with thousands of options for how to reach people. We must know which tool helps us best measure success, get the right people and prove our value. We must quickly scale up, do more with less, and max out efficiencies.
There’s an abundance to consider when setting up marketing campaigns. How are we going to name UTM codes? Salesforce campaigns? What automation rules will we set up? How do we score each action a customer takes on our website? How do we serve up data to BD? What engagement actions do we want to drive on social?
It’s a lot.
Because it’s a lot, it’s easy to get wrapped up in the tasks themselves and not the why behind them.
Don’t forget the why. Take a step back and ask yourself, “what are we trying to achieve here?”
There are two questions we should always ask ourselves before setting up any campaign or broad marketing initiative:
Whom are we trying to reach?
What do we want them to do?
Channel strategy approach, martech decisions, and other in-the-weeds things (THAT ARE VERY IMPORTANT) will make much more sense once those questions are answered.
You’ll have a more successful campaign. You’ll be more efficient in what you’re doing and won’t waste effort on things that don’t matter.
Focusing on the “why” helps you continue to prioritize value over activity. It’s a more strategic way to market. It’s also a more sustainable way to remain a marketer for years to come.
I fall into this trap easily. My role takes me from talking about content strategy at 9 am and then about field mapping and data hygiene in a 10 am meeting to a web UX meeting 30 minutes later. Making and completing the to-do list is easy to get wrapped into. There’s a lot to do!
When I get hung up, it’s usually because I haven’t taken a step back and put thought into what we’re trying to achieve. Building efficiencies in marketing ops is essential but is nothing more than a useless treadmill if you don’t know where you’re going.
Slowing down up top to think may feel like a waste of time when you have many tasks ahead of you. But I promise that focusing on the marketing basics will save you time and money in the long run.
Remember: the fundamentals of marketing should drive strategy. Not your tech stack.