In the business world, cash flow is king. The best way to have cash flow is to have a return on everything you do as a business. But in marketing, content is king. It’s not an either/or, it’s both. If you want to make money, you have to do everything possible to yield a return on every investment, sacrifice, and activity the organization has received or executed. So let’s keep this simple. To gain the ROI (aka, return on investment) in simpler terms, work smarter, not harder with your time, team, and relationships. One of the best ways to work smarter is to use current marketing tactics.
Thanks to my neighbors next door, Gravitate’s Alan Hwang and Fred Love joined me to discuss the Next Level Marketing for the New Abnormal in the podcast aired on 12/13/2020. They breakdown a series of complex marketing strategies and tactics for the common decision-maker, especially around ad spend.
Here are the core elements they spoke about in the podcast and video:
- Content Marketing
- Marketing Automation
- Marketing Reports & Analysis
- Result Driven Ads
- Strategy: Lightning Strikes
- Customer References
- Marketing is an Investment
This is pretty important because marketing is quintessential to every great company’s success. Non-marketers look for tips and hacks to help get their business to the next level, but that doesn’t last long without a marketing strategy.
Why?
Everybody isn’t Your Customer
For those looking to serve the whole world, stop. Focus on one audience for now. Amazon started with selling books before they launched all their verticals. Even my own “I Challenge You” wasn’t to help everyone during this pandemic, but it did help those businesses. The best businesses solve problems one at a time. Not one company can solve the world’s problems. Therefore, choose one problem to solve and serve those who would pay for that solution, which means defining your audience and segmenting it. In the marketing world, this is called STP (aka, segment, target, position).
Segmenting – the different customer avatars you serve.
Targeting – a set of demographics to fine-tune the segments for maximum efficacy.
Position – placing your value proposition in the areas to have the best ROI on your ROAS.
As Fred and Alan mentioned, there’s a science to marketing. Their colleagues, Colten Tidwell and Steven Howsley covered how those marketing strategies blossom into a campaign that produces results in Ep 16 – Gravitate’s Spin on CRO and SEO. It’s not a microwaveable process. To learn more from Gravitate, check out their company: https://www.gravitatedesign.com/company/. As a teacher at heart, I love teaching this because everyone has a different approach. However, brainstorming around the table is a lot different than the implementation and execution.
Nathan A. Webster, MBA
