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Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to peek inside the mind of a digital marketer? Imagine catching a glimpse of how they process through day-to-day challenges. I think if you were to take a peek inside the mind of a digital marketing professional, you just my find a fragmented mess, almost like a highway with lots of on-ramps, off-ramps and throughways. Hang in there; it’s actually a lot more intriguing. You’ll see.
The thoughts that are happening inside the mind of a marketer are not just wildly creative stuff like some may think. Their minds are full of ways to solve ongoing complex problems that involve media, content, technology, products, customers, company value proposition, KPIs, business goals and oh so much more. Ask any marketing professional and they will tell you there is not a day that goes by that is the same as the day before. And the digital dilemmas we all face don’t have a simple, silver bullet solution. The constant ebb and flow of different types of work is non-stop and require a creative approach to making the marketing strategy work correctly and efficiently.
How Does Marketing Thinking Turn Into Action
In the diagram seen below is a great example of what goes through my mind as a marketing leader pretty much on any given day. I decided to create the process that I was thinking about last week, so this is real life stuff. Hopefully this will give you a clearer picture of what this process looks like. Keep in mind, before any of this actually turns into real tactical work, I have already processed and planned either on paper, on my computer or in my head – and sometimes all three. Here are a few things that must occur before successful marketing thinking turns into action.
Before a marketing team actually visually draws their own ecosystem, it’s best to define several critical informational-rich items first.
- End goal of your marketing strategy
- Customer attributes and their motivations for buying
- What’s the problem? The solution to the problem
- Integrate the brand’s value proposition
- Products and services
- Price and purpose of the product
- Best ways to communicate to the customer
- Digital channels to be used to reach your customer most effectively
- Anticipated outcomes
- Key Performance Indictors (KPIs) and conversion metrics
- Technology needed
- Marketing mix
Okay, here’s the hard part. Once your marketing team actually starts thinking and processing the spaghetti mess that’s probably making their jobs even tougher, they have already realized that they must get it done and create successful marketing and the marketing qualified leads (MQLs) they are expected. Once the marketing team gets through the marketing maze they are thinking about, they will then approach the last part, which is probably the most daunting (We will reach our goals? ownership of KPIs, will we be on Budget? On-brand? And on-time?). And if they haven’t accomplished these, they will have to start all over again – Welcome to the life of a digital marketing professional.
Resources for Your Marketing Team
- 8 Tips to Improve Your Inbound Marketing
- 5 Powerful Apps for Your Marketing Team
- Does Content Marketing Connect With Customers?
YourBrandExposed.com is a digital content marketing and strategy consultancy that works with businesses big and small to solve their most difficult questions surrounding digital content creation, brand and creative development, generating marketing qualified leads and creating a marketing strategy for business growth. Let us know how we can serve you.
Scott MacFarland – Founder, Chief Content Marketer, Digital Strategist
YourBrandExposed.com
scott@yourbrandexposed.com
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Source: Pexels.com & UnSplash – CC0 License
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