INBOUND ACCELERATOR

When Pan Communications asked CMO and top marketing experts from around the country and globe what they see as the most important skillsets, challenges, and budget priorities for this year, some pointed to new advancements such as AI and martech, and how to manage all of the data that goes along with those developments, but many others circled back to the very basics: great writing skills, storytelling, and great content that connects with others.

The infographic below includes a ton of great information to think about, but I want to touch on a few of the key skillsets and challenges these top marketing experts are watching for 2020.

Building a successful inbound marketing program is much like building a house: If you don’t have a detailed blueprint and a solid foundation, no matter how every other detail of the structure is, the house will be a maintenance nightmare and fail to live up to expectations.

Very few things in life, despite their labeling are truly “one size fits all.” More often, attempts to make one thing fit all possible users, the end result is more of a “one size almost fits most, but isn’t really a good fit for anyone.”

When it comes to inbound marketing content and offers, that same rule of thumb applies. If you try to create just one piece of content or one offer, and expect it to appeal to all of your customer personas, regardless of what stage of the buying cycle the individual is in, chances are the content or offer will fall flat for just about everyone.

In most B2B marketing, the road from first contact to a sale is a long one. It takes time for a prospect to develop trust, and many B2B purchase decision makers begin researching options long before they will be choosing a solution. So why would you want to send every contact immediately to the sales department?

You wouldn’t. And hopefully you aren’t. Hopefully, you are implementing lead nurturing to deepen a connection with leads through automated emails and watching for triggers that indicate a lead is moving down the sales funnel.

It can be tempting to think of all B2C marketing as being the type of impulse decision to which you can appeal with an emotion-driven campaign showing happy, strong, cool people. Not everything is as simple as a refreshing soft drink on a hot day or a pair of shoes that totally make the outfit.

At JONES, we have experienced the side of B2C marketing that requires engaging consumers with useable and useful information, understanding that larger investments have a longer sales cycle, and that especially now, with the world in our pocket, consumers research a wide range of products before making their final decision. The lessons we’ve learned through marketing financial services, higher education, personal electronics and even nutritional supplements for endurance athletes can be applied to a wide range of other B2C products and services.

For most businesses — especially B2B brands — it is no longer enough for marketing content to sell. Marketing content needs to solve problems for customers.

We’ve talked in the past about setting goals and “doing the math” — you can’t know if you are succeeding, if you don’t know how to define success — but there is another step to take that has a similar ring to it:

You can’t sell if you don’t know who you are selling to.

Who is your marketing content talking to? Who is PR reaching? And what message does sales need to target to maximize ROI and bring in the most profitable customers?

If those targets and message don’t align from one department to another, you have a problem. While there are different types of alignment (here’s a look at aligning goals and expectations between departments), aligning the main message across all departments in order to focus on the best possible customers can be achieved by first creating solid buyer personas.

One of the first questions to consider when creating a marketing strategy or any individual piece of content to fuel that strategy should be this:
Who am I trying to reach?

Who are your customers? What are their needs? How do they like to get information? What is most important to them in making a purchase decision? What prevents them from buying?