What high-performing marketers do differently.

Empathy

At the core of marketing is the ability to understand both your market and your customers. How your product or service elevates them, their team, their business and their customers.

As marketers we must understand the emotional drivers, the pain points our customers need us to solve. And translate those into product vision, purpose, and proposition.

“Our prime directive is not to do digital media or AI. Our prime directive is to bring the voice of the customer into the organisation. No one else does that except marketers.” -Mark Ritson

Curiosity

Buyer behaviour, channels to market, digital platforms, social trends are all changing in front of us every day. Marketers need an insatiable desire to experiment, think, discuss, ask, listen, learn, react, and evaluate, at pace.

Before tactics, comes strategy. Before Strategy comes understanding. That’s where curiosity plays.

With curiosity, comes resourcefulness. A hunch plays on your mind. Data provides direction. Yet only the intuitive insight of humans with unique perspectives comes truly remarkable solutions. Sometimes, almost always, asking people outside your community provides the game-changing revelation you seek.

Storytellers

Make it a category, a movement, a purpose. You need a story to be successful. That’s what your prospect will share with their team, the decision makers, the buyers.

But this is not purpose-led-marketing. It’s about a purpose-led-business, with stories that marketing tells and shares with the world. It has to come from the heart and soul of the business.

At the heart of the business marketers build culture. Experiences shared by employees and customers that build community, partnerships, and revenue.

Growth Merchants

The growth engine of almost every business lies in the heart of a Venn diagram between Marketing (attraction), Sales (conversion), and Product (enablement).

Success relies on these three functions working seamlessly together. Being lead by one IE Product Lead, demotes the value and importance of the other two in achieving growth potential. One cannot succeed without the other.

Great marketers strategically seek out partnerships, develop channels to new customers and revenue. These are not new hashtags, influencers or events, but carefully thought out campaigns that may take months to nurture. Patience is a virtue when the board is focused on 90–180 days of pipeline potential.

Long term vision

Most companies plan 12 months ahead, at best. The short term gratification of sales revenue often precedes the long term vision to build a brand that will deliver ever increasing value over time.

Marketers who focus on short-term ROI do well for a year, but often fail in years two, three and four.

Marketers need to influence the wider senior leadership team. To clearly understand the long term business strategy, 1, 2, 3 year company goals. And the milestones and outcomes marketing needs to deliver to help the company achieve those goals.

Everyone needs to see how they contribute to company success. Today, tomorrow, in 3 years time.

Short term results

“Any idiot can do short term and any idiot can do long term. The trick is to do both.” — Hugh Johnston, PepsiCo vice chair and CFO

Unicorns are hard to find.

It could be useful to compliment a marketing leader with vision and strategic strengths with a performance marketer focused on delivering the day-to-day numbers.

Most marketers are either strategy + operations OR tactical activators. If you can pull the strings, or manage resources effetely to deliver both, you’re doing well.

After all, if you can’t deliver the short-term revenue, the whole company won’t achieve any long term goals.

Simplicity seekers

“This strategy seems simple” is the ultimate response. Of course you know how damn complicated it was to get there.

A marketers job is to make the complicated simple.

To bring the team, the company along on the journey. To captivate, and engage customers, win new partnerships, and gain market dominance.

Creating simple stories everyone can lean on, will influence, convince and convert.

| By Justin Flitter - Chair Tech Marketers Group & Freelance Chief Marketing Officer