All this marketing technology is nothing without a strategy

With the rise of digital channels and platforms, there are more marketing technology solutions available than ever before, more than 5,000 software solutions available for marketers in 2018.

But all this marketing technology is nothing without a strategy. Ultimately, a marketer’s goal is to increase sales and drive customer retention.

The biggest challenge is aligning new technology with your marketing strategy to connect with the people you want to buy from your company. If you’re a business owner, you need to consider how this technology is going to help drive customer engagement at each stage of the buyer’s journey and customer experience. Adding a new tool isn’t useful unless you know how it will work to drive new revenue.

At the end of the day, regardless of whether you’re in marketing for a business-to-business (B2B) or business-to-consumer (B2C) business, it’s about creating human-to-human (H2H) connections.

Here are six reasons the future of marketing is human-to-human (H2H).

1. Engagement is the new “contact form.”

Less than 1% of leads ever become revenue-generating customers.

With H2H, engagement is a better way to measure success to see if the right people matching your ideal customer profile are interested in your company’s offering. Look beyond a website contact form or content download and use the data in your customer relationship management (CRM – Salesforce, Hubspot, Outlook, or just your Excel spreadsheet) tool to find other touch points of engagement.

2. Quality is more important than quantity

Tracking meaningful conversations is much more important than the number of cold calls and email blasts your team does every week. The future of H2H focuses on new ways to get in front of your target buyer.

Instead of having sales reps leave countless voicemails for prospects, there are a ton of marketing technology solutions to leave a personalized message. These include 1:1 videos and online chat.

3. Marketing is now multichannel

Your buyer isn’t just on one channel anymore. For personalization at scale, it’s a combination of email, targeted advertising, social media (Linkedin), and even direct mail. The early tech argument pitting new school against old school doesn’t matter any more. It’s whatever works. And don’t assume that only one channel will work for your campaign.

4. Your future customers come from a community

Across an array of industries, there’s a focus on building a community of like-minded individuals. Your community will be bigger than your current customer base, and the more humans that are part of that community, the more opportunities you’ll create for marketing and sales.

5. A renewed focus on storytelling

With H2H marketing, it’s about creating a compelling narrative, a story that people will actually care about. It’s extremely rare to get people to care about your brand unless you already have a certain amount of prestige associated with your company. Crafting a story that makes people care about what you’re selling will have a much stronger impact.

6. Become the trusted advisor

In a digital world, it’s so difficult for a salesperson to break through the noise. To truly make a connection, salespeople have to assume the role of a consultant or trusted advisor. Marketers can support sales by serving up business development solutions based on customer research, both personal and business.

At the end of the day, nobody likes to buy from a company: People buy from people. Your customers don’t care whether you’re in marketing or sales, but they care if you can help solve the problem they have.

SOS Knows B2B, B2C, and H2H

SOS works to help specialty coffee industry clients market their businesses more effectively to keep up and stay ahead. Contact us:

SOS
Specialty Coffee Industry Business Development Marketing
Email