Wayne Lockwood: 3 Things Marketers Can Be Thankful For

Wednesday, 23 November 2016

3 Things Marketers Can Be Thankful For

Author: Marissa Lyman

The moment November 1st rolled around, I immediately began thinking of turkey, cranberry relish, and food comas.

For our international readers, November is the time of the year when Americans justify devoting an entire day to eating. I know what you’re thinking–what about the other 364 days of the year when the United States treats the McDonald’s breakfast menu like an all-you-can-eat buffet? Touché, my international marketers, touché.

However, beyond food and American football, Thanksgiving is actually about giving thanks. This time of year is rough for marketers. Many of us are already chin-deep in 2017 planning and can barely think about the rest of this calendar year. Or, perhaps you’re like my local supermarket, completely fixated on December. Don’t get me wrong, I love me some candy canes, mistletoe, and fat, festive animals, but let’s take a brief moment to think about what we’re thankful for.

What was that? Did I just hear you say vodka?! No! I meant in marketing. What are you thankful for in marketing?

Here, let me share a few things in marketing that I am grateful for to get you started:

1. Technology That Makes Life Easier

Remember when the only way to reach your buyers was through direct mail, magazine ads, television commercials, and out-of-home advertising? Back in those days, it wasn’t even possible to have a one-to-one relationship with your customers, not to mention prospects.

Today, however, not only can we use technology to drive real interactions with customers, we can do it in a way that’s effective and efficient. Need to find and reach out to your top 100 customers in one go? Done! Want to clone a drip campaign…and still be able to track conversions for each one? Mission accomplished! No need to start from scratch every time; technology is here to help! Technology cuts out the tedious, time-consuming tasks and allows marketers to focus on what we do best–build relationships.

2. The Opportunity to Continually Learn and Grow

Marketing is many things, but it’s certainly not boring. Who would have thought that something like Snapchat would become a MAJOR marketing channel? Any platform that has voice-changers and stickers and can still be seen as valuable to a business has my vote.

There will always be new channels, technologies, and trends, and more so now than ever before. As much as hopping on the latest internet sensation can feel like a rat race, the industry’s evolution always keeps things interesting. And it puts marketers at the cutting edge of nearly every new trend. It makes you the most in-the-know person at the party when you can start talking about VR and AR and IoT and AI and USA and VAT and–wait a moment…

Sometimes, I wish the industry would stop changing for a moment so we could all catch up, but it’s all for good reason! It’s evolving in a way that allows us to better serve the people we need to put first–our customers.

3. You Can See the Impact of Your Marketing

As a marketer you’re in a very unique day and age. Unlike any of the marketers that have come before you, you can actually quantify the impact of what you do. No more spending money in a vacuum or randomly putting messages out in the universe and crossing your fingers that they did what you intended them to do. By measuring the impact of your campaigns, from early-stage to late-stage, you can identify your most valuable programs and channels as well as which ones you need to optimize.

Today, you have the tools to show yourself, your manager, your CMO, and your CEO how what you’re doing actually impacts your business. Take Marketo customer Panasonic, for example, which was able to show how brand awareness–merely seeing an ad on Google or Facebook–could be tied back to revenue. That’s unreal! Or at least it was unreal…until now.