4 top marketing strategy tips for 2024 – straight from the experts
17 January 2024
In a world where every penny matters and budgets are closely scrutinized, marketers find themselves in the midst of a challenging mission: to deliver more with less. That was the background for RevGenius’ webinar ‘Key Marketing Trends - Get Ahead for 2024’, which Exclaimer proudly sponsored.
This exploration into the future of marketing was led by Ashley Topping, Head of Marketing at Exclaimer. Joining her were Sidney Waterfall, SVP of Marketing at Refine Labs, and Jason Hubbard, COO at RevGenius. Their combined expertise painted a vivid picture of what we can expect this year and the winning strategies marketers can employ to thrive. So, let's delve into some of the panel’s top tips for 2024.
1. Start, stop, scale – one project at a time
When budgets and time are limited, it’s all about focus. Marketers should concentrate on one thing at a time so they can understand if it's working before trying other things. The ‘start, stop, scale’ concept helps you stay focused. It helps to set milestones for when marketers need to take action. It's easy to get excited about a new idea and want to do everything at once. But it's crucial to start small and validate the idea first.
Marketers should also map out everything and timeline it because it's easy to overcommit. Just because the team has many ideas, doesn't mean they all have to happen in osne quarter.
Prioritizing and laying things out in a practical manner also helps. Once it’s been proven that an activity or piece of content is right for your targets, it’s time to move on to the next ones. This approach makes planning easier and allows marketers to focus on what's most important.
2. Create and motivate internal brand ambassadors
Leveraging your people to build out your own brand is a great strategy for building trust. But how do marketers encourage their colleagues to make it a priority?
The first step is to look for subject-matter expertise internally. Marketers need to make it easy for internal subject matter experts to take part and offer incentives. Some might prefer special rewards or gifts over public recognition, so the approach needs to be tailored.
Marketers also need to break down tasks into manageable steps and tie them to the company's Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and overall goals. This helps everyone see how their work contributes to the bigger picture, which can be a powerful motivator. Plus, it makes it easier for the internal subject matter experts to prioritize their work. It’s even more of a win-win situation when the asks are related to a personal goal they’re trying to achieve.
3. Harness first-party intent for personalized content
In an era of content saturation, quality is paramount. And so is humanizing content as well as the customer journey. That’s where personalization comes in.
Personalization isn’t a new concept. However, the unprecedented access to data we have today allows marketers to elevate these practices. They can utilize intent signaling to understand what the audience needs and wants, and then deliver customized content that meets those needs.
The real game-changer is first-party intent. Using demographic data for personalization can be a good starting point, but once marketers have first-party intent, it's essential to use it to understand their customers' needs and tailor their content accordingly. It's not about creating one-size-fits-all content; instead, you need to personalize it based on use cases and problems, distributing it to various personas, industries, and segments. This approach not only helps marketers learn more about what these segments care about but also guides future content creation.
It's important to remember that everyone is unique. Making assumptions based on job titles or other superficial factors can be misleading. By focusing on use cases and problems, marketers can create content that truly resonates with their audience, giving them invaluable first-party intent signals. At the end of the day, this approach can help drive ROI, which is what we're all aiming for in 2024.
4. Look at the bigger picture of attribution
Simple attribution models connecting ads directly to revenue are no longer sufficient. Direct attribution only tells part of the story. Understanding the correlation between campaign timing and other factors is crucial for a deeper understanding. This complexity requires coordination across teams, from marketing to sales and customer success. As marketers navigate this complex landscape, cross-functional alignment becomes particularly challenging in our virtual work environment.
Shifting our mindset towards measurement and focusing on overall ROI instead of individual campaigns is also crucial. With integrated campaigns becoming more prevalent, there are numerous outbound and ABM campaigns, as well as a surge in content creation and demand creation. And these efforts are all affecting different channels in various ways, so marketers need to be careful about how to measure them. Finding the right balance between quantitative and qualitative measurement is important for getting an accurate picture.
