Now, more than ever, marketing teams are pulled in many directions. Multi-channel marketing can provide a greater reach, and the usage of automated tools can increase efficiencies. However, many organizations are still missing out on essential opportunities that will help them be even more effective in their marketing. These include:
Not collaborating with other departments.
Marketing, Sales, Product and IT teams should regularly collaborate. Unfortunately, most teams don’t join forces like they should. They work together to get a job completed versus helping each other discover the best approaches for achieving common goals.
Examples of projects and processes that benefit from collaboration:
- If your marketing team uses a marketing automation system like HubSpot, Pardot or Marketo, or an email marketing service such as MailChimp or Constant Contact, you may experience better delivery results if you collaborate with your IT team. For example, did you know that if you set up your own DKIM and SPF authentication in Constant Contact or MailChimp, your campaigns may be more likely to arrive in subscriber inboxes than spam or junk folders? This task requires editing your domain’s DNS records and is something that most IT teams are familiar with.
- CIOs that involve their CMOs in the early stages of a digital transformation strategy may gain a better understanding of what their customer wants and needs since Marketing often owns customer experiences and utilizes big data analytics in their campaigns.
Not staying current with social trends.
Social media trends, opportunities and algorithms are continuously changing. The exact tactics that you used last year may not be the best ones to use this year. A few updates for 2019 so far include:
Targeting for certain ads on Facebook is now restricted. For example, housing, employment and credit ads can no longer be targeted by age, race or gender. However, you can still target those who have shown interest in products such as credit, loans and the category of product or service that you may be promoting.
Organic reach on social channels continues to decline. It’s more important than ever for people to engage and click on your posts for you to show up on as many people’s newsfeeds as possible. Photos of staff, clients (with their permission) and events that you participate in can help generate engagement.
Live streaming and video (under 3 minutes) continue to be the most effective content formats.
Not developing meaningful relationships.
Digital marketing has allowed organizations to communicate with their customers more than in the past. The problem is that communication is typically one-sided, which doesn’t often create meaningful relationships. Along with digital marketing (emails, social media, etc.), organizations should look for opportunities to build relationships through community outreach, hosted events and other in-person social opportunities. Friendships that are not entirely based online are often the strongest. The same goes for relationships with your customers and community partners.
Not investing in a marketing partner
A marketing partner can bring in new insights and innovation with expanded marketing channel expertise. Outsourcing can also trigger internal collaboration. Getting outside marketing support can be a great way to get fresh ideas, gain consistent branding, reach more customers and save costs. A good marketing partner can also help you create an effective marketing strategy and will provide whatever level of marketing support you need – whether it’s acting as your marketing team or performing or handling specific areas of your marketing such as digital marketing.
Have you been missing out on any of the opportunities mentioned above? Contact Break Ice Marketing if you’d like help with your marketing.