Marketing That's On Point, On Form and Fire

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Global Martech leader Fraser Hay is the author of 20 growth hacking books including Martech Simplified, and an acclaimed marketing consultant who helps owners, managers and entrepreneurs to identify, pursue and achieve their marketing objectives.

Martechvibe spoke to Hay about how businesses can win. He speaks about taking a strategic approach towards marketing challenges, using tech to automate and putting employees as the centre to create the most value. Hay will be a speaker at the KSA edition of Vibe Martech Fest that will take place on October 18 and 19, 2022.

Excerpts from the interview;

What common mistakes do business leaders make, and can technology help solve them?

Many don’t have a plan, a documented strategy or a good team of people with the correct mindset, skills and experience to implement (or automate) key tasks to deliver on time and within the budget. Many are stressed, confused, perplexed and overwhelmed by the demands from shareholders, stakeholders and investors for bigger and better results. Still, they are taking a very unstructured approach and reacting to bad, poor or selfish marketing instead of following a powerful, practical and proven four step process: business model,  customer journey, martech stack and then the sales & marketing strategy.

Many want to know how to do something, but they are too focused on the tactical implementation, so they hire someone to assist them, but they miss out on two key steps required before this.  They need a written action plan detailing their target audience, marketing message and routes to market. They need to identify the human, technical, and financial resources to resource the plan to achieve the ROI that stakeholders, shareholders and investors want.  They need to document the plan with all the KPIs and reporting systems detailed and share it internally before tactical implementation.

But before writing the plan, they need to conduct a situation analysis to identify why their marketing may not be working. They need to clearly understand where they are now and what’s holding them back and preventing them from achieving the results they are craving. They need to identify the root cause of their marketing problems instead of hoping that a “new hire” or a sub-contractor can deal with one of the symptoms of not following a very powerful, practical and simple four-step process.

What advice would you give someone starting in building their Martech stack? What should they start with?

For me, they need to do four simple things. They need to analyse, prioritise, strategise and optimise their marketing. As I mentioned above, they need to conduct a situation analysis and have a detailed understanding of their business model. They need to know their revenue streams, customer journey, and all the steps in their sales process and identify how they can automate key steps to reduce waste, stress and excessive marketing costs.  They need to be clear about the plan for creating their stack, the intended unified solution and what it will achieve with the appropriate results. They need to be clear on what areas of their business model they need to automate, how they will go about it, and why.

Unfortunately, as I mentioned, many people get stressed, confused and overwhelmed by the enormity of the task, the pressure and the expectation placed on them. Unfortunately, many are ill-prepared with the wrong mindset, strategy and tactics.  Some can spend many months testing different disparate solutions costing lots and lots of money, only to find that certain components are missing, that there are expensive upgrade paths or exorbitant support fees (SLAs).

Consumer behaviours have changed considerably in the last three years. How can enterprises keep their strategies agile?

Consumer behaviour has changed, and many people tend to research, compare, and buy online. They have many questions, and organisations need to be able to answer them and demonstrate confidence, progress and results from using their products, services and solutions. Good research tools like answerhthepublic.com can help, but also subscribing to RSS and news feeds, setting alerts and joining in some of the conversations online in groups and forums can give excellent feedback, including interrogating their own customer data and asking how they would like to enhance the customer experience.

Whilst a plan is important, it can change in an ever-dynamic marketplace. The secret is the ability to respond quickly to market changes and consumer demand, so an agile plan and team with the right mindset, skills, experience and technology to respond fully to customer demand and insights is important.

No one likes to be sold, ignored or forgotten.  However, knowing your customer’s communication style and information needs in addition to their purchasing motives, behaviours, and attitudes can go a long way in being able to respond to their needs quickly and service their information requirements by identifying the different types of content they digest and learning about you can improve the customer experience to keep them coming back for more.

What are the ways to create a culture of experimentation while measuring ROI so investments pay off?

I believe that each member of your sales and marketing team needs to enjoy “meaningful work” and from being on point, on form and fire with a positive mindset and gaining fulfilment from the tasks, they are being asked to perform (and automate). Stress, anxiety and absenteeism can be a big problem for many organisations, as is churn and retaining good talent.  If you don’t want to lose good talent to your competitors or have them start up on their own, incurring more and more costs. It makes sense to ensure that all your technical, sales and marketing staff enjoy meaningful work.

Many companies lose sight of costs, manage people’s time, and ensure key tasks are performed on time and within budget. Automation can help with this, but more often than not, whilst hardware, software and netware can be fine-tuned to maximise ROI and ROAS, it’s the Pinkwater. This human element is the most expensive that can deliver great results for stakeholders, shareholders and investors. Ensuring they know what to do and how to do it, that they have the resources they need to perform key tasks well, and by continually looking for ways to reduce bottlenecks, duplication of effort, wasting time, finances and adding strain on other members of staff can all have a dramatic impact on the bottom line. There are, of course, many tactics and routes to market that can help lower marketing acquisition costs and, thus, maximise ROI.

Tell us a key takeaway for marketers attending your session at VMF.

I think they will hate doing it but love having done it. I want to challenge their thinking and assumptions and help them question what they’re doing with their marketing and team(s) within their organisation. I want to ask some of the questions that they might not yet have asked themselves (or their staff). Most importantly, I want to help them identify what might be holding them back and preventing the sales and revenue opportunities they want. I want to help each of the attendees to my session to become on point, on form and fire with their marketing and to start generating the results they, their stakeholders, shareholders and investors want (whilst holding their team accountable).

For more information, visit Vibe Martech Fest, KSA 

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