4 Key Marketing Factors that Even Experts Forget

As a marketing consultant, I have worked with a lot of different businesses. Both with past employers and my own company, I have developed many business-marketing strategies.  One thing I’ve experienced when it comes to marketing is that companies (from small to high-profile) can get in their own way of their success by being so locked into the “driving home” of what they want to push to their customers; and in the way they want to do it.  They can forget the basic crucial elements that drive success.

Here are a 4 key factors that are important to building your marketing strategies and should not be overlooked:

Listen to Customers

Many companies see marketing as a one-way street. They put their message out for customers, and then stop before an exchange can occur. They talk to consumers without listening themselves.

Proactive listening, however, can do wonders for a company’s marketing campaign. This means listening to current customers and their responses to the company’s marketing and products. This also means listening for potential new customers expressing a need that the company can fill. Online social media makes this listening easier than ever.

Connect as a Human

Successful companies are massive organizations with lives of their own. As such, it’s easy at times for marketers to present the company as a hive mind. But consumers are all individual people. Connecting with them as such means a better chance for a company to actually get heard.

For marketers, this often means approaching campaigns with authentic, simple messaging.  Do not talk over your customers’ heads with your promotional language and positioning. Talking to customers frankly about a product and what it does is what will get results.

This also means remembering that consumers have lives and commitments outside of consuming. However much they love a brand, they are not thinking about it constantly. Businesses shouldn’t expect them to. Instead, marketers should focus on making the brand relevant to daily life in regular conversation. This requires approaching customers as one group of humans to another.

Action over Argument

Marketing is a creative endeavor that requires a constant influx of ideas. Some of these ideas will work better than others. However, marketing teams can often disagree within themselves on the value of any given idea. There are two ways to go about this disagreement.

The inefficient way is for marketers to argue with one another over ideas. Even polite and relevant debate gets a marketing campaign nowhere.

The better method is to test the idea empirically for its effectiveness. This shows the whole team just how good or bad an idea really is. Argument then becomes unnecessary. Instead, marketers can move right on to implementing the idea or brainstorming a new one.

Content is King

Content makes up the bulk of any marketing vehicle, from advertisements to homepages. Marketing is often represented in terms of a funnel. At the top of the funnel is simple brand awareness. The bottom is where responses from customers occur. In the middle is the content of the marketing campaign.

Many companies focus their attention on the top and bottom of the funnel. They pour resources into spreading brand awareness. They optimize feedback avenues for customers to get in touch with them. But they neglect the middle of the funnel, which is where the real work happens. Content is where hooked customers come to learn more before responding to a campaign.

A flashy homepage with no information on it tells consumers nothing. Neither does plastering a brand everywhere without saying anything about why consumers should care. This is why good content is absolutely vital to a marketing campaign.

For more on content marketing strategies, check out 5 Quick Tips for Great Content Marketing.