Do The Right Thing, Not All The Things: 3 Marketing Mantras To Follow

Gather a group of digital marketers and you’re sure to be privy to a creative conversation. 

Marketers are more than just the people behind a computer posting on social media and making aesthetically pleasing pieces of content. We’re thoughtful. We’re inquisitive. We’re a force to be reckoned with (just ask anyone on the receiving end of a creative snafu!). So what makes a marketer a creature of creativity, thoughtfulness, and curiosity? Options.

In a world where platforms and tactics for digital marketing are vast, marketers must know where to focus their attention. That’s why marketers must know how to handle the endless options for marketing initiatives.

In a session at HubSpot’s 2022 INBOUND conference, Ryan Burkett  (Stratagon, Sr. Partner) and Alex Moore (Stratagon, Sr. Partner, Marketing and Technology) shared their recommendations to marketers. We’ve boiled it down to three mantras all marketers need to know. So, repeat after us:

1. We are judicious and channel-focused in our approach.

Before we begin, you must identify your ideal customer profile (ICP). HubSpot recommends considering these factors in doing so:

1. Budget / Revenue / Company Size: What is the lowest cost threshold that a customer would have to pay for your product or service?
2. Industry: Are there specific verticals that you work within? Are there verticals that you don’t work with?
3. Geography: Do you not sell to a particular region?
4. Legality: Are there legal reasons that limit your potential customer base, maybe age, location, or government restrictions?
5. Product or Service Limitations: Do you have a service level agreement (SLA) with your customers to meet a certain response time? If someone needs a response quicker, can you guarantee you’ll be able to meet that demand?

After identifying your ICP, you must judge your strategies and tactics thoroughly. For each, ask yourself: “Does this campaign speak to our ideal client profile?” Whether you use a multi-channel marketing strategy or a cross-channel approach, you must be thoughtful in our tactics and make sure you’re speaking to not only your ICP but also the key decision-makers of that group that will ultimately bring the green light (and budget) to the conversation.

2. We foster relationships.

A marketer’s relationship with the sales team is crucial. After all, one of our most important jobs is to ensure the leads we help to curate are treated like the gems they are when they land in the hands of the sales team. By supporting the sales team with the proper tools, we can ensure they know what to do with the leads brought in through our channel-focused approach. One way we can support the sales team is by securing customer testimonials and compiling them for the sales team to use during conversations with key decision-makers. 

Outside of our internal relationships, it’s important to foster relationships with our clients and customers in a way that exceeds day-to-day conversations with the designated points of contact. We call this relationship marketing. For example, if you are a marketer who works with Jane, the VP of Marketing for Very Good Manufacturing Company, and she loves what you do, you may feel pretty confident that your talents (and your company’s services) are darn near irreplaceable. 

But, what happens when Jane lands her dream job at a new company and you’ve forgotten to foster relationships with anyone else? Jack, her replacement, doesn’t know you and decides he should sign a new contract with the team he used at his previous company. To avoid a scenario like this, Ryan and Alex recommend you “circle the wagons” to showcase your value to the whole team, or at least a few of them!

3. We remember that we all wake up as consumers.

A mantra from Alex himself is, “We all wake up as consumers when our boots hit the ground.” We contemplated this for a moment and realized it was a grounding thought. Every day we are hit with hundreds of messages: personal messages (texts), professional messages (emails), and advertising messages (hello, Instagram feed). It is our responsibility as marketers to focus on our flywheel when crafting copy. In doing so, we ensure that we are taking full advantage of the eyes that land on our messages.

If you feel like you’re doing all of the things, but online data isn’t giving you the results you hoped for, Alex offers a comforting thought—question whether people are not interested because they’re busy and possibly not online, or is it because they aren’t interested? Connect with your ICP in a meaningful way so that when they are ready to make a decision you are part of that consideration. 

A gentle reminder—if your ICP tends to use Facebook for viewing family photos, maybe a Facebook advertisement may not garner the results you immediately want. However, brand awareness is there, and down the road, they may look to your business for answers when it comes time to make a decision.

Looking For More Tips?

Our takeaways from Alex and Ryan’s session this week brought us three mantras we’ll be sure to remind ourselves of in the future.  As for you, we hope these quick tips encourage you to do the right things and not all of the things—be judicious, foster relationships, and remember that we all wake up as consumers.

Visit us online where you’ll find thoughtful tips and takeaways that you can implement into your business right now! And, if you weren’t able to join us at INBOUND, you can subscribe to our blog where we recap our favorite sessions from Boston and beyond.