Great marketers have very busy days. They are challenged throughout the day to keep a lot of balls in the area. They are creative, yet they must research. They are innovative, yet them must look inward at past results. They are motivators, yet they must keep people on task. They are constantly adjusting their goals, but must do so thru analyzing their past.
Marketing departments must stay on takes, and management must manage all the tasks.
This article speaks to the role of marketers and the tasks they do every day.
by Kelly Kranz
Being a marketer is pretty sweet, but this doesn’t mean it comes easy. We’ve got a lot on our plates, such as campaigns, goals, budgets and priorities. Not to mention our need to be constantly creative, hard working, agile and persistent.
But even with all the factors working against us, we still have the gusto to prevail by doing a handful of great things habitually. So what does that entail? Here are 10 things that great marketers do everyday.
1) Set goals
The wisest and greatest of marketers set goals. If you run a campaign without goals, who’s to say it was successful? Having goals in place for your marketing efforts will help you define success.
And we all define success differently. Maybe for you success is lead generation, customer acquisition, or a specific amount of revenue you want to generate. Whatever it is that you are striving for, assign a proper metric to it that you can aim to reach.
2) Study the Competition
Don’t market in the dark. Find out who your competition is and look at what they are doing. There is no shame in it. Marketers should want to know what their competition is up to and where their own marketing efforts fall in comparison.
This provides you with an idea of what you are up against and it can help you get ahead in the game. “They fall in the top 3 in a Google search”, you say? Well that means you need to focus on getting your business up there as well.
3) Address a Target Audience
This may seem obvious but you would be surprised how many companies out there don’t address their target audience properly. As a marketer you need to identify who your target audience is. You can do this by creating a marketing persona / buyer persona. This persona profile guides how, when and where to communicate with your audience.
The methods of communication that define your persona should be evident in all of your marketing. From the copy and design of your website to the tweet you just scheduled.
4) Create Content
I know you have heard it all before. You need to create blog posts, ebooks, pdfs, memes, infographics, webinars, slide decks… the list goes on and on. There is a ton of content types to dabble in and a great marketer dabbles often.
Great marketers create sharable content that their audience will have an interest in. With content, you can educate prospects about what is important in your industry and this builds trust between you and them.
5) Nurture
Building a relationship with prospects and leads is something that occurs daily. It starts from the moment they come across your brand on the Internet. From this point, a relationship has begun.
Marketers nurture relationships with automated emails. A series of emails can be sent to build on a lead’s interests by providing them with additional relevant content you think they may enjoy.
You can nurture on a more personal level with individual, manually sent emails. Following up on recent conversions and touches that have been made across your website.
Social media also provides a great space for nurturing. Marketers can find their audience on various social media platforms and engage with them directly.
6) Social Listening
Listening to what is being said about your brand and industry across social media is important. Lots of opportunities can be missed if you are not listening.
Perhaps someone has a problem with your brand and is ranting about it on Twitter. If you are listening you have the opportunity to jump in and help with their concerns.
A lot of people ask questions on social media networks. If you are listening you have the opportunity to respond and become a reputable source for them.
Nurturing one fan on social media may not seem important or worth the time to most. But it is a reflection of your brand, and people will notice when you are responsive. Which is better than the alternative of not being noticed at all.
7) Segment
Targeted communications in marketing campaigns are much more effective than the generic approach of one massive email blast. Everyone in your contact database is different. A great marketer will find out what makes them different by asking the right questions.
Depending on your business you will want to segment a certain way. Perhaps you segment by what ails your contacts. To find out, simply ask them to identify their pain points from a list you have created. You can place this on forms throughout your website.
From this point, you can segment contacts by pain point and market to each group differently. Each pain point has a different solution that needs to be communicated and marketing efforts will have a larger impact when a contact feels like their pain is being addressed specifically.
8) Test
In my opinion this is the best part of marketing. Testing different items across the campaigns you run will help you to understand what works and what doesn’t work.
You can do simple testing by changing the color of a CTA here and there. You can turn it up a notch and test two versions of a landing page. Or you can get really crazy and test your entire website. With smart website technology you can control what a visitor sees on your website versus a lead or a customer. It’s crazy and wild and I love it.
9) Measure & Analyze
Always be looking at the numbers and measure everything. A great marketer measures the performance of their campaigns. They look into how pages performed, emails that were read, CTAs/links that were clicked, content that was downloaded and social media engagement.
When you are done measuring, you analyze. “Why didn’t we meet our goals?” “Why did we meet our goals?” “Why did that one page perform so damn well?” Ask a lot of “Why” to get to the root of it so you can repeat it or trash it.
10) Innovate
Of course it is a marketer’s job to be creative but you should always be looking to separate yourself from the competition. Be innovative in your marketing by trying new things and putting new ideas into motion.
There are all sorts of trends and fads that pass through the marketing world, so don’t be afraid to start one!
The Bottom Line
As marketers, we all have habits that we do every day. It’s not an easy job, but by following some of the above habits, you’ll be a rockstar in no time! What other tactics do great marketers do on a daily basis?
TPG Social Media