Wayne Lockwood: The 3 Topics Marketers Care Most About In 2018

Wednesday, 11 April 2018

The 3 Topics Marketers Care Most About In 2018

There has never been a more exciting time to be a marketer. With notable industry-wide changes, big questions loom in the minds of marketers everywhere. You’ve got social selling, the resurgence of email marketing, new regulations, and countless others. We looked to you, our readers, with a recent content subscriber survey to find out what subjects are top-of-mind for you right now so we can deliver more of what you want to hear about.

In this blog, I’ll cover the three areas of focus you told us were most pressing and how you can gain additional knowledge to move ahead.

1. Marketing Measurement and Analytics

The primary focus and concern for marketers is having a definitive method to measure effectiveness. Marketing attribution proves a tangible method of determining how much pipeline can be attributed to specific campaigns. Knowing which campaigns and programs are responsible for downstream revenue is critical to help marketers make more informed decisions in campaign strategy and budget/revenue forecasting.

As marketers begin to gain a basic understanding of attribution, increases in available channels at the average customer’s fingertips makes determining the effectiveness of each touchpoint a challenge. Thankfully, there is a pivot in the industry from single touch attribution—attributing all revenue to a single touchpoint—towards multi-channel attribution models, which use customizable models to attribute specific touchpoints and behaviors with a certain percentage of total revenue. This approach helps companies to be very granular and specific in their reporting and encourages accurate data-driven decisions around future campaigns.

If you’re interested in staying up to date on the latest attribution trends, join us at Marketing Nation Summit 2018, where Vivek Sinha, lead project manager at Marketo, and Ajay Awatramani, senior director of product management, will share details around the latest attribution solutions and industry best practices.

Regardless of where you are in your career, having a strong attribution solution should be the backbone of your marketing efforts. Without having quantifiable standards to measure—and defend, when necessary—your team’s share of revenues, the value your team drives year-over-year is at risk of going unnoticed or underappreciated across your organization.

2. Content Marketing

In the age of a million competing voices, thought leadership has become a fundamental piece of any marketer’s toolkit. Creating an aura of industry knowledge around your brand via assets like whitepapers, webinars, live social media sessions, and more is a surefire way to differentiate your organization. Claiming such a title is a long, thoughtful process that many companies mistakenly try to expedite. As author and strategist Daniel W. Rasmus explains, “successful thought leadership does not arrive with a published idea linked to a hope that someone will recognize brilliance and sweep your firm from obscurity into industry prominence. Establishing a firm or an individual as a thought leader requires consistent, diligent effort.”

Understanding the knowledge your audience is looking for and gaining the necessary expertise to deliver it is a time-intensive process, one that can only be crafted one piece of content at a time. With that said, the ROI on this investment of time and resources can heighten the trajectory of a company’s success, hence the increased level of interest amongst marketers this year.

An abundance of content marketing savants will be speaking at this year’s Marketing Nation Summit, including Nick Westergaard, chief brand strategist at Brand Driven Digital. In his session “Brand Now: How to Stand out in a Distracted, Digital World,” he’ll outline the keys to B2B digital storytelling, as well as how to establish an internal brand that drives your company’s culture.

3. Email Marketing

Email is every layperson’s favorite topic to bash and every marketer’s favorite to defend. Email marketing is not dead, but it is undoubtedly evolving. It’s a hot topic in 2018, and with GDPR regulations looming, marketers are seeking clarity in deliverability and compliance best practices. Ambiguous information is not an option for these high-stakes regulations, explaining the high level of interest in the matter.

Luckily, there are many informative sessions scheduled at this year’s Marketing Nation Summit. In particular, we’ll hear from Michelle Miles, Perkuto’s VP of consulting services, who will be presenting “Fearless Marketing in a GDPR World: Tips to Thrive Amidst New Regulations.” Learn how GDPR impacts marketing automation, cookie law, and your lead database, helping your team to not just survive, but thrive in the permissions-based world we’re in today.

Additionally, you can increase your understanding of deliverability best practices with SendGrid’s Jacob Hansen and Matt Rushing. Their session, titled “Inbox Providers Don’t Hate You, They Just Like Your Recipients Better” will offer context around how inbox providers judge your content as well as practical ways to impact your deliverability success.

Actively seeking knowledge around the dynamic standards of marketing is a critical trait of any fearless marketer. It’s easy to get intimidated by such seismic levels of change, but knowing there’s a community of marketers facing the same challenges head-on can be empowering. To learn from thousands of the world’s most cutting-edge marketers on these topics—and many more—join us at Marketing Nation Summit 2018 in San Francisco April 29-May 2.

The post The 3 Topics Marketers Care Most About In 2018 appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.