While marketing teams swim in a sea of data and information, the future depends on creativity. Establishing a culture of human ingenuity gives purpose to data intelligence, transforms your team, and elevates customer experience.
You'll learn:
-Why being a marketer is more complex than ever before
-What the future of marketing will look like
-Five phases for leading the change from in-person to online experiences
17. Engage Your Customers
Online design elements that
encourage attendee participation
Chapterize your content
Personalized chatbot experience
Speak to attendee pain points
Engage your advocates
To get there, first, let’s take a look at an internet minute in 2020
Think about how a lot of our experiences have become digital AND
The way we consume content has completely changed
Over 700,000 hours of content PER MINUTE – that’s about 80 years of content within a minute
190 million emails sent per minute
The newer generations are growing up… (add nephews’ example)
Now as part of that the buyer journey has also completely changed (add friend example)
It’s no news to anyone here, that people inform themselves through other sources long before they ever go to your website
And even longer before they make a buying decision
And that journey is not linear anymore
It includes research online, googling, social media, external review pages like G2Crowd, etc.
All this makes the marketer’s job more complex than ever before
Think about it
Customers expect hyper personalized content - all while ensuring data privacy & security
They expect continuous rollout of relevant content ….
And within the company marketers are:
Ground zero for growth –
Advocating for a seat at the revenue table
Proving marketing’s impact on the business
…
So where in all this is the role of creativity?
It’s actually becoming more important than ever
Our VP of Marketing…
Constraint breeds creativity – that could be budget, or more like recently –
not being able to do physical events and moving all customer engagements virtual
We'll dive more into that in a bit
We asked ourselves – looking at all the marketers out there
How is marketing's role evolving for businesses in the next 5 years?
What matters to companies and marketers?
How does consumer behavior change? And impact how businesses operate?
So let’s dive in
First – EQ meets AI
And as marketers we MUST embrace the shift
Human connection becomes more important than ever before – now even more – technology empowers us marketers – and some of the tasks will likely shift – but the power of human connection won’t go away
It’ll be your differentiator
Second, it’s not enough to just engage your customers anymore
You must drive a seamless end to end experience for them
And that journey consists of many touchpoints
In that journey of your company to become an experience business - marketing is in an amazing position to LEAD
It’s becoming ground zero for growth for most of the successful companies out there
Why not lead this impact – but make no mistake – it’s not a marketing initiative – your whole business needs to drive it
Another really interesting insight from the survey was around the skillset needed to be successful in the next 5 years
When we originally came up with this question – we assumed analytics, AI, etc. would be up really high
BUT it’s Creativity and Teamwork that are the most sought-after skills
And it makes sense – why?
Because that’s what will differentiate you –
And you’ll need it to create those amazing experiences for your customers
We will share the full research report with you as a follow-up –
Now, let’s look at what we can do as marketers to drive business success now and in the coming years
There are 5 phases to driving that change
And to make this more tangible – we’ll use an example that most of us can relate to nowadays
How we went from an in-person event to an online-only experience
- Plan
Data is becoming incredibly important to drive decisions
It unlocks new insights for you – helping you create the right content and finding new ways to engage them
In our case we looked at previous registration of tracks
feedback from our in-person events and history of webinars (attention spans, timing,)
Thinking through keynotes (how we came up with innovation keynote)
Rethinking event goals – now that we have an online event
Deciding what can be done or not in a limited amount of time
And leveraging analytics and AI to drive personalized experiences for your customers…
content: the thought process of innovation keynotes
Marquee Content (Keynotes, Innovation Keynotes) – different recording formats for different sessions (keynotes, vs. innovation keynotes, vs. breakouts)
Shortening all content to make it more consumable
Shooting from everyone’s living room
How it’s displayed – the journey (will dive in shortly)
Chapterization
Last but not least – we are so thankful to have such amazing customer advocates – we had about a 100 customers that recorded at all times of the day/evening to get their session in , etc.
Think through online experience
How do you make sure to align content, experience & customer journey
Personalized chat bot
OUTSIDE IN POV – make sure you always start with the external POV/pain points and speak to those
Be relevant
Leverage your customers – they’re your best advocates
Source Image:-
https://pixabay.com/en/associate-business-call-calling-3548078/
But there is a second very important element to engage
It’s the internal team
One of the things that made our event so successful – was because a cross-functional team came together, …
And we really put the customer at the center of everything we did – and made it happen
Daily meetings, different workstreams, etc.
And we had over 400K attendees in week 1
Now one thing that every marketer should care about
The experience and content need to match the demand strategy
We need to closely pull demand in from the beginning
Think through the right content & gating & promoting strategy
Answer questions like …
Pick marquee sessions that can be promoted
Think through live experience & interactivity – do what’s realistic – where can you pull off the best experience
What content to you provide before or behind a gate, etc.
And last but not least – optimize
It’s a neverending process…
Understand experience
What content format works
Where do you lose attendees
What is relevant to them
How does your website layout impact visits & views, etc.?
How often do you want to rollout content? Just once? Rolling thunder?
In Summary – we talked about why the future of marketing is creative and clear steps on how you can lead your company to be a true experience business
Most important – put customer experience first
Embrace the shift – AI and EQ go hand in hand – and the faster you leverage the power of human connection – the better off you are
LEAD – don’t wait for another department to lead this change – be the change
Don’t just tolerate it – but FOSTER creativity – think outside the box – figure out things that haven’t been done before –
And last – follow a framework – plan, create, engage, convert, optimize
That’s what’ll make you a successful marketer today and in the future