Adam Oldfield, the CEO and founder of Force24, has over 25 years experience in marketing and, during his talk at last year’s marketingSHOWCASE, he shared what the very best marketers do consistently to maximise return on any of their marketing efforts.
To set the scene… “in order to 12 times your marketing ROI, you need to drastically change the focus of where your effort sits.” Adam goes on to explain how most marketers struggle with mundane tasks such as data segmentation and reporting, rather than the creative and strategic decisions that enable big results. Freeing up time by automating manual processes is huge.
Step 1: Have a clear objective
Adam puts things into perspective quite clearly, by challenging marketers and asking what the motivation is behind doing what you’re doing. For example, it’s all well and good to say you’re sending a newsletter out but what’s the purpose? Drive new business? To create awareness of a new product line? He takes this one step further and stresses how your objectives must be clear and specific. Turn “get more leads” into “Increase engagement with cold accounts in the north”.
Step 2: Understand segmentation
People still don’t truly understand what segmentation is and the power that leads to real tangible results. Adam introduces the idea of 3D marketing segmentation with an example of “Bakers, Butchers and Candlestick Makers” as 3 segments. However, overlay that with their engagement level i.e. cold, engaged, clients, etc. and you start to really focus on your audience segments. Once you have this level of segmentation you can tailor communications appropriately to drive action and focus your efforts on those that are ready to buy.
Step 3: Build great content
Having spoken to many marketers, Adam finds that many place high importance on developing good content. Yet, when it comes to time spent during a typical working day, there’s a disparity. “Move away from single campaign executions in favour of planned, well-coordinated, contact journeys.” Marketers don’t, typically, have time to create bespoke pieces of content for single campaigns never to be seen or used again. Adam flips this on his head and says “build great content, that sits within multiple campaigns across channels, that can be used time and time again. “Invest heavily in quality content and milk it”!
Step 4: Be more personal
“The right message, sent to the right person at the wrong time… is the wrong message. The right message, sent to the wrong person at the right time… is (you guessed it) the wrong message” Adam explains, you need all 3 factors to align to create the perfect message, and that’s the principle behind personalisation, not [insert first name here]!
Step 5: Campaign Execution
“You can’t run these journeys if you’re the one peddling the bike. Bikes have a freewheel, if you’re not peddling the bike is still moving forward – that’s automation!.” Adam stresses all marketers must be moving towards. We’re at the stage now where effective marketers are building intelligent marketing machines, which are doing the leg work and delivering “next best actions” to your customers. For example, rather than manually reporting on web visits and email clicks to feedback to the sales team to follow-up, which could take a week, spent that week building the logic behind those decisions, so forever more the sales teams are being fed warm leads, at the right time and with an appropriate action.
Step 6: Optimise your outcome
Now you’re at the stage where your content is amazing, your timing and segmentation are impeccable but you’re sending them to a blog or your home page. Adam shares stats with our audience that websites typically convert at 2%, blogs 10% and your average landing page at 15%. However, by going one step further and applying the principles of personalisation, timing and content, you can build a customised landing page tailored to the user, that could convert at 30% – 35%.
Adam is a stalwart of marketingSHOWCASE events. His passionate talks are fun and informative. They will inspire you with new ideas to implement in your own marketing initiatives.
