How to be a good and successful marketer of the future?
The marketing function has changed.
In a recent media interview, I was asked to comment on how the introduction of industry-changing technologies such as social media has changed the role of marketing.
The shift to incorporate social media channels into marketing strategies can be witnessed across all industries, and not just within recruitment.
To be brutally honest, I would say that social media is no longer game-changing. It is just as essential, if not an even more important marketing channel in today’s post-digital world, as TV advertising had been back in the days when the telly was our best (and probably the only decent) form of entertainment.
So It’s not a new marketing technology. It's just another one of those basic channels that you’ve just got to use in your marketing mix. Any marketer worth their salt should already be familiar with the various key social media platforms and how to leverage them best for their campaigns and communications.
So what then has changed? And what makes a good marketer? Here are some of the top competencies a marketer would be expected to possess heading into the next decade.
The future marketer must be a sales driver.
If you want to be taken seriously as a business partner, you should know that the marketing function is increasingly expected to evolve from being a cost center to a sales driver.
In the past, someone who was adept in designing standard marketing collaterals, organizing events, launching email campaigns, or managing digital and social platforms would be deemed a pretty good marketer.
Today, those very same skill sets would be what I describe as “entry-level” competencies. If you are looking to join my marketing team, these are the skills you should already be equipped with. Unfortunately, these aren’t the skills of a good marketer.
More and more, business leaders are expecting their marketing teams to drive activities that will result in revenue. They are increasingly looked upon as sales enablers, strategic business partners, drivers of change.
You gotta get under the skin of the business, speak to the frontline staff, and be obsessed with finding and developing solutions for your sales teams and their customers. Hone your commercial acumen by focusing on solutions that have an impact on leads, revenue, sales, or profitability, but also getting rid of those that don’t.
The future marketer needs to be a driver of digital transformation.
Every industry has the potential to be disrupted.
If not now, then very likely in the near future. A good marketer constantly needs to have their pulse on the market to see what can potentially put your company out of business in this rapidly changing landscape of digital technology.
Most disruptions we see in the world today are driven by digital innovations - think Uber, Grab, Deliveroo, Netflix, and Spotify. This is why you would need to have the ability to lead the digital transformation agenda, along with other key stakeholders in the business.
This means having the courage to let go of your traditional practices and step out of your comfort zone to pilot new technologies. Be bold in crafting your vision to help your leadership visualize what the future could look like.
For example, salespeople have typically struggled with cold calling. Research shows that the ratio of cold calls to meetings is approximately 20 to one. That’s a big-time waster and impacts productivity.
Big data and artificial intelligence (AI) when used in tandem can, however, provide powerful analytics to help marketers develop razor-focused, automated lead generation strategies, so the sales guys no longer need to spend an exorbitant amount of time on cold calls. Instead, they can focus on providing more personalized and high-touch services to their customers.
In the last 24 months, our marketing team has been trusted to spearhead and pilot a number of digital initiatives, and we have started to see some of these projects reap amazing results and conversions for the business.
For example, we piloted an AI chatbot to connect with and qualify candidates from the technology sector. That project saw a strong passive-to-active conversion and even successfully managed to place some of these candidates in new jobs.
We have also built an online algorithm to automatically match our web visitors to their perfect job, based on their career requirements and personal expectations. This allowed us to potentially convert all passive (and active) job seekers into potential candidates the moment they land on our website.
By leveraging technology and automation, marketing teams can effectively re-allocate their resources to projects that have the potential to deliver stronger business outcomes or have a greater impact on the sales funnel.
If you have no idea how AI, machine learning, automation, or blockchain technology could impact your marketing and sales strategies, it’s probably a good time to start picking up knowledge in these areas.
There are tons of best practices and case studies out there from the likes of Adobe, Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, Google, Mckinsey, and EY - so I would strongly recommend that you at least start reading up and build a basic level of awareness in this space.
Good marketers are owners of analytics.
Marketing is, and should be, regarded as a core business driver of growth - that’s the most fundamental reason for the existence of marketers.
To do that effectively, it’s no longer good enough for marketers to look only at soft statistics such as number of followers and likes, engagement levels, web traffic, number of clicks etc. Sure, these are still essential data that would give us high-level insights into how well our campaigns are performing.
But in my team, I’d always ask the question following reports on such data: What do these numbers mean? What do they translate into? What impact do these numbers have on the returns on my marketing spend? How will that translate into sales, revenue or profit?
If they are not able to answer these questions, those soft data are essentially just vanity metrics - which would have absolutely no meaning to board members or senior executives.
My advice is to follow the trail of data relentlessly and ensure your analytics lead to impact. Here are some examples to guide you:
High web traffic - does this equate to an increase in sales or more purchases?
High engagement rates - does this equate to more downloads?
More downloads - does it translate to more warm leads?
More warm leads - do they eventually become paying customers?
More likes - does it lead to more positive reviews?
More positive reviews - does it lead to more referrals?
More referrals - does it lead to more paying clients?
As you can see from the above examples, a growth marketer focuses on tangible business outcomes that can be easily understood and appreciated by business leaders. If you are wondering how marketers can ever prove their worth - this is it.
Think with Google published an article recently which revealed that the 21st century CMO is expected to be an “alchemist who combines the classic art of branding with the latest advances in data and measurement”.
The data-driven marketer will always know how to leverage critical data, insights, and marketing analytics to demonstrate their commercial acumen, prove return on investment (be it time, money, resources), predict churn, forecast trends, generate pipeline, and influence customer behaviors.
And finally, a good and successful marketer needs to be a strategic business partner.
As drivers of change and transformation, there will be a greater need for marketers to develop and target engaging content through automation and technology, to help their salesforce gain higher efficiencies in their customer outreach.
Marketing professionals should also start acquiring the ability to predict trends and needs of the business, clients, and candidates through the strategic use of big data.
Predictive marketing analytics will increasingly be a critical topic on the CMO’s agenda - as business leaders will be relying on these to make more informed decisions on strategy, resource allocation, and spend.
Marketers will also be expected to partner more closely with Sales at the desk level, so that they can engage with their customers to understand their pain points and micro-moments - and offer more personalized services and content.
Remember: A competent marketer is always viewed as a business partner, never a support function.
The future marketer - in a nutshell.
Someone once asked me what I look for in a marketing candidate. Attitude trumps experience in my opinion.
Qualities of a good marketer need not necessarily have to include a distinguished educational background or solid industry expertise. But he or she needs to have the passion to make a difference, is able to think strategically, and possesses strong business acumen.
Great and successful marketers are commercially savvy, innovative, highly agile, and can embrace change. They are also forward-looking, have high standards, and are always uncomfortable with how things are done so that they will constantly push the boundaries and challenge themselves to be better.
Marketing professionals who have successfully honed their skills in customer experience, marketing automation, demand generation, and artificial intelligence can help shift the needle for the team to become a key revenue driver. The marketing team will also be depended upon to mobilize every coworker in the business, including the management team, to promote and reach the organization's objectives.
So, do you have what it takes?
