We at Star Marketing are modern marketers by definition. What does that signify, though? It's not about substituting digital for paper or more conventional strategies. However, it involves more than merely endorsing contemporary trends or embracing new technologies.
Modern Marketing Definition
Modern marketing use a comprehensive, flexible, data-driven process to link brands with their ideal consumers and get specific commercial outcomes. A modern marketing approach always combines creative thinking and execution with research, strategy, technology, and analysis to achieve corporate goals, even if the components can be put together in an unlimited number of ways.
But what are these objectives?
Almost every firm strives for growth in some form, for a variety of reasons. Raising the number of customers, market share, profitability, and staff, etc. The most successful modern marketing teams adhere to eight essential principles that achieve these objectives by creating brand awareness, influencing perceptions, nurturing key audiences, and igniting action.
The 8 Modern Marketing Principles
1. Enhance Every Brand Touchpoint to Improve the Client Experience
Both B2B and B2C consumers nowadays are well-educated individuals. They have high standards for the brand experience. (For that, we can thank Apple.) These higher standards apply to much more than just how well websites and applications function technically. Sure, customers expect to be able to navigate between different screens with ease when interacting with your website and brand, but each touchpoint also needs to convey the value of your brand, build trust, and convey a consistent message.
We truly mean all points of contact. Websites, social media posts, advertisements, emails, phone calls, and everything in between are included. Also, it entails several encounters with various persons spread out over protracted sales cycles for B2B brands.
Your clients want seamless transitions between all necessary touchpoints, regardless of how many there are. In fact, 60% of Millennial customers?the ones who will influence the marketing environment for the next 20 to 40 years?expect a consistent brand experience across all channels, and those expectations are only increasing as buyer journeys increasingly revolve around digital encounters.
2. Create Personalized Relationships with People
A consistent brand experience is only the beginning of the sophisticated demands of the modern consumer. They must also be catered to during that encounter. Not as a broad demographic category, but as unique people. Webpage material must address their particular difficulties. Emails must anticipate the details of their inquiries. Sales materials for B2B companies must be customised for each customer's position on a buying committee.
In order to reach that level of personalisation, modern marketers must gain a thorough grasp of their target audience. What are their goals, obstacles, aches, aspirations, and preferred colours? We can better influence their brand experience as we go deeper.
Additionally, we require marketing technology that effectively customises both content and experience. At this point, even the most basic email marketing platforms provide some level of personalization functionality, and website content management systems can be set up to offer an experience that is specific to users' individual characteristics and behaviours with some strategic web design and information architecture work.
Although putting personalisation tactics into practise requires work, 94 percent of marketers believe it is worthwhile. That shouldn't come as a surprise given that personalisation can increase marketing spend ROI by five to eight times.
3. Incorporate strategies and tactics for multichannel marketing
A solely digital strategy is not indicative of contemporary marketing. Although we frequently consider our strategy to be "digital-first" and incorporate digital marketing into almost everything we do, current marketing is more about choosing the appropriate channel.
The average person switches between numerous media outlets for more than 11 hours per day, which includes smartphone use, TV, radio, periodicals, and more. Establishing touchpoints through several channels is the best course of action if we want our marketing to reach clients where they are. It is a strategy that generates six times as many sales as single-channel marketing and it captures the non-linear, a little chaotic, aspect of the modern buyer's journey.
When it comes to our clients, we evaluate the chances presented by each channel and utilise those that are most advantageous to their businesses and their target audience.
Also, we plan how to link one touchpoint to the next. An online landing page is the result of a lead generation effort that starts with a direct mail promotion. A follow-up email sequence is sent to leads that came from in-person events. Users are sent to an event page that advertises a webinar through a pay-per-click campaign. The goal of achieving the best marketing results ties everything together.
4. Adjust to the Marketing Landscape's Evolution
Contemporary marketers are naturally nimble and quick to respond to shifting consumer preferences and technological trends. We take pride in our capacity to stay current with algorithm upgrades and trends and to act depending on how those modifications will affect the effectiveness of our ads.
Modern marketers are tasked with establishing connections between brands and their ideal consumers. To do this, we must comprehend the behaviours, expectations, and preferences of these consumers; we must also comprehend the channels and technologies that enable these connections; we must keep track of how all of these elements change over time; and, as the impact of COVID-19 amply demonstrates, we must all be ready for significant change.
While some marketing foundations have stayed consistent, the environment in which those fundamentals are applied is always changing. Simply put, contemporary marketing is quick. The marketers who push themselves to grow and adapt are the successful ones.
5. Increase Efficiency With automation and marketing technology
We don't just rely on technology to increase our audience reach. To improve our efficiency as marketers, we also use automation and new developments in marketing technology. These technologies increase the effectiveness of marketing resources and investments by removing monotonous manual chores, initiating communication workflows, managing social media, tracking performance, changing digital advertising campaigns, and doing a whole lot more. resulting in a potential increase in qualified leads of 451%.
Marketo data shows that within the first year after implementing marketing automation, 76% of businesses saw a return on their investment. On top of that, 44% of them anticipate a return in just six months.
No business, no matter how big or little, would stop at nothing to see this kind of improvement. The good news is that this technology is broadly accessible and developing and progressing at a lightning-fast rate. The number of marketing technology offerings increased from 1,876 in 2015 to 8,000 in 2020.
Brands only need to choose the solution that best fits their ultimate goal because all of these options are competing for a space in our martech stack. The hardest choice once they do is deciding which initiatives should be prioritised at what time.
When they do, the hardest choice will be deciding which projects should be given priority when reallocating the funds and resources that were previously dedicated to marketing.
6. Mix outbound marketing and inbound education
The information age is fully established, therefore prospective buyers are doing more research than ever before before making selections about what to buy. In fact, more than 70% of B2B buyers have thoroughly defined their demands prior to ever speaking with a sales professional, and 81 percent of consumers perform internet research before making a purchase.
It makes no difference if your customer is a business executive looking for an enterprise IT solution or a new homeowner researching mattress evaluations. Today's buyers will not act until they have done a substantial amount of research, and the vast bulk of this research takes place online.
While influencing views and fostering trust at each stage of the customer acquisition journey, inbound marketing enables brands to contribute to this study. Yet it's more than just a kind gesture. Outbound leads are 61% more expensive than inbound leads.
Modern marketers are aware that inbound can't completely take the place of outbound despite its cost-effective advantages. Building momentum for true inbound marketing takes time. Outbound supports these efforts by increasing brand recognition and frequently producing quicker results. Finding the right balance for your brand, your customers, and, of course, your budget is the key to successful modern marketing.
7. Evaluate and assess marketing results
The "big data" revolution has confirmed the reality that marketing is an investment, and investments are judged by their returns. Measuring ROI is the top priority for 98 percent of CMOs. But, no matter how sophisticated data analytics technologies get, some areas of marketing will always be difficult to assess.
It's true that the emergence of the Google Gods and the plethora of analytics tools has made it much simpler to comprehend marketing attribution. However, evaluating other marketing initiatives, such as brand strategy and development, can be more challenging, particularly in the short term. It's not an unusual predicament.
The modern marketer, however, persists. We put a lot of effort into developing frameworks and processes to measure the quantifiable, link KPIs to business outcomes, pinpoint what is (or is not) effective, and alter course in response to the insights.
There is no questioning the importance of data-driven insights in determining and maximising the return on marketing activities, even though the pursuit of complete attribution clarity is not always the best course of action.
8. Make use of optimization and iterative execution
Modern marketing approaches are seldom fully successful. We are always looking for new channels to explore, implementing cutting-edge tools and technologies, adjusting to market changes, surpassing the competition, and refining original ideas and solutions that could be just a little bit more perfect.
Numerous teams have adopted an agile marketing strategy as a result of this constant state of movement. Among the marketing departments that haven't yet gone agile, 91 percent say they plan to in the next 12 months. Agile marketing has been proved to boost project success, productivity, work satisfaction, and income, so there's strong justification for this.
Companies that follow an agile methodology that incorporates iterative execution and optimization are in a position to react swiftly to emerging challenges while seizing novel insights and opportunities. Based on data analysis, the agile strategy can enable quick adjustments to an ongoing campaign. Instead, it can enable a team to change course from a previously planned campaign to a fresh opportunity. Regardless of how important the execution, this cycle of iteration enables firms to maximise their marketing effectiveness.
Although there are many components that go into becoming a modern marketer, creating a brand experience that engages and motivates consumers to support organisational success is the prize we are all aiming for.