January is that time of year for prognostications of the future, for outlooks and trends, and of course, New Year’s resolutions. So why not a 2020 Vision – The Future of Marketing? Of course 20/20 vision is perfect, so is the future of marketing, perfection?
If you are reading this article, you are interested in marketing. So why not indulge ourselves for a moment? Marketing is now mission critical to the success of every organization. Every brand. Every thing! In hyper-competitive markets, categories or industries, perfected marketing is the key differentiator. Of course your products and/or services have to be perfected. But quality or excellence no longer guarantee success. Consumers and business customers will no longer beat a path to your door. Buying products and services is increasingly undertaken digitally, via the Internet or a search engine.
So like 20/20 vision, in 2020, the future of marketing is marketing perfection. Now available to everyone, not just global brands with huge budgets. Now possible because marketing is almost completely digital. And digital marketing can be perfected, or optimized using a multitude of tools, software, apps, and yes, skills. Skills that can be trained, certified, or outsourced.
No question, some consumer brands still require old-fashioned advertising. And many brands still acquire customers via old-fashioned trade shows and events. But the balance of the proverbial marketing mix is all digital. Websites are the foundation of marketing, and yes, websites can be perfected or optimized. Other digital marketing tactics including search engine optimization (SEO), content, email, social media, paid search, advertising, publicity, market research, and more. Each can be A-B tested, optimized, and often automated. In the not too distant future, many marketing functions will use artificial intelligence (AI) to automate, manage and report marketing initiatives. Today, you can subscribe to a custom Marketing Dashboard that automatically pulls analytics and marketing metrics from different platforms, for a real-time view of marketing initiatives. Following is an example from Geckoboard.
What is Scaled Marketing?
The aforementioned digital marketing optimization, marketing automation, and advanced reporting is well documented. But no one is talking about how to just do more marketing—more efficiently, faster, more frequently and more effectively. This is Scaled Marketing with a clear objective—to achieve no less than rapid lead generation, sales, and potentially market domination (sounds like marketing perfection).
Scaled Marketing involves creating content in multiple formats and distributing it via multiple communication channels. Scaled Marketing likely requires data-mining and segmenting email lists of decision makers and prospective customers to feed frequent email campaigns. Using promotions, offers, calls-to-action (CTAs), and registration forms. Scaled Marketing is multi-channel, so use websites, social media, video, webcasts, live events, publicity, and more. Scaled Marketing might require Pay-per-click (PPC), Remarketing, and display advertising. Scaled Marketing might have campaigns and initiatives for niche or vertical markets, or targeted communications for different customer roles (e.g. CFO). With Scaled Marketing it is important to measure all prospect actions, ideally reporting these measures real-time for immediate sales follow-up (and ultimately sales conversion).
Scaled Marketing Requires Speed, Awareness and Preference
Besides volume, scaled marketing is also requires speed and frequency. Think Volume & Velocity. Marketing technology or MarTech provides the tools to manage and automate many aspects of digital marketing.
But brands require something more than scale and speed. To achieve market leadership, brands require awareness and preference.
To hasten awareness, build brand preference and ultimately sales, brands must communicate higher values. For consumer brands, this can be a cause. For business brands, this might also be a cause, but most definitely requires thought leadership via educational initiatives. Consumers prefer to buy from a brand that cares about the world. Business customers want to buy from a brand that is the perceived expert or thought leader as a result of educational marketing and communications. Both scenarios can leverage scaled marketing to communicate to target audiences.
Scaled Marketing is the Future for High-Achieving Brands
The most rapid path to lead generation and sales is the scaling of marketing to large proportions. Double, triple and quadruple your marketing implementation without compromising quality to take market leadership. Take no prisoners. Dominate. No one is talking about this. A few (leaders) are doing marketing at scale.
With 2020 Vision, the future of marketing is scale. To be sure, scaled marketing is not just about quantity. Marketing must be effective. For consumer brands, communicating a cause can hasten awareness and preference. For business brands, marketing should strive for thought leadership via scaled educational marketing initiatives.
So the Future of Marketing is effective, scaled marketing, with cause and/or education components. There are many examples of consumer brands that have scaled rapidly with a major cause component (think TOMS shoes). Examples of business brands are more difficult to identify. Here’s a case study of a small healthcare software brand that scaled marketing, and implemented an educational program to achieve rapid growth, Wex Health.
Meanwhile, following are some relevant resources.
Recommended Resources:
The Pros and Cons of Hyper Marketing (Marketing Strategy Expert)
10 Marketing Dashboards for Visualizing Performance (Technology Advice)
Outsource vs. Insource Marketing (MMP)
Thought Leadership Marketing Guide (MMP)
BTW, contact Modern Marketing Partners (MMP) if you want to achieve market-domination via Scaled Marketing. We have some ideas.
