We’ve all had a bad year, but not many of us can relate to Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s year, as his wealth has been cut by $71 billion this year.
Facebook, rebranded as Meta in 2021, is down approximately 57% this year. Meta’s business is changing rapidly and implementing a strategy to innovate and grow is critical to its success. Meta’s big play is to define and dominate the Metaverse.
But don’t write Meta off just yet. Meta has a strategy to redefine the web and become the infrastructure that the Metaverse is built on and if successful, Meta and Zuckerberg will reclaim their wealth and position as the leader of the pack.
Like Meta, a marketer’s job is to develop and execute strategies that keep you one step ahead of your competition. Sometimes that strategy needs to be bolder and more aggressive than other times, but regardless of your specific situation, you must be prepared to handle change.
So what steps should marketers take to stay ahead of the competition?
- Talk to your target audience. When was the last time you talked to 10 or 20 of your target audience? Don’t be so busy that you stop connecting with your audience, because if you do, most likely you will miss shifts in the market.
- Take time to build a strategy. Too many times marketers are so busy doing programs that they don’t take the time to build their strategy to make sure that everything works together in an efficient and effective manner. Don’t just create an amazing content piece without developing a strategy to promote and distribute that content in as many ways as possible. Without a plan in place, you will never maximize the value of your marketing.
- Have a vision and continually communicate that vision to your team. If you are taking a ‘big swing’ in your industry, like Meta is doing, be prepared for your team to have doubts about your strategy. Don’t run from negativity but instead continue to cast your vision and get others to help overcome the challenges you face.
- Use your data to make the best possible decisions. Be a data-driven company. Data-driven companies not only collect as much data as possible but they use that data to predict future events and make better decisions.
- Have a flexible technology stack to meet your current and future growth goals. To avoid a bad year you will need all your marketing and sales working together and that will require a powerful and flexible tech stack. Email marketing, content marketing, sales engagement, CRM, social media, advertising, tracking, and analytics need to all come together so you can make your plan a reality.
As a marketing professional, your ability to stay ahead of the competition is based on how you handle the next phase of digital transformation. To do that you will need your marketing technology, data, and programs all working together.
Adopting an all-in-one revenue growth platform is the next phase of digital transformation. A revenue growth platform aligns marketing and sales technology so you can optimize your entire funnel—with a holistic view of channels, campaigns, prospects, and customers. When you can optimize your entire funnel, you have the ability to implement, measure, and adjust your growth plan.
McKinsey calls it “full-funnel marketing” and says that one key benefit is “Linking KPIs between channels and stages of the funnel to actual business results, such as conversions or leads, allows companies to better understand the real impact of their marketing and then create messages that will elicit the best responses.”
“Most businesses struggle to align their marketing and sales teams to achieve their revenue potential but cobbling together a bunch of marketing tools doesn’t solve the problem,” says Eric Stockton, VP of Demand Generation, at Constant Contact. “As a comprehensive revenue growth platform, SharpSpring from Constant Contact is deeply integrated and works together to drive conversions throughout the customer lifecycle so businesses can optimize marketing and sales activities and generate real revenue growth.”
(Download the 18-page research report, The State of Martech.)
An all-in-one platform will open new opportunities for you to implement your strategy and maximize your growth potential.
Like Meta is finding out, it’s one thing to climb to the top and another thing to stay at the top. Regardless of where your company is compared to your competition, you must be continually innovating. Preparing now with a strategy and putting the technology in place is a critical step as you plan for 2023.
Be bold. Be strategic. Be first!
