As a business owner, you’ve spent a lot of time and energy thinking about which products or services you could bring to market that would offer real value to consumers. Now it’s time to advertise those products or services to the right audience. But without the right mindset, your marketing efforts can go off the rails and quickly.
What does mindset have to do with marketing? Plenty!
When we hold deep-seated assumptions and opinions, we can often have a hard time aligning the right message to the right audience.
As a marketer, when you sit down to create a campaign, it’s important that you release any limiting ideas, opinions and outdated frame of references. Instead, allow for objective thinking and reasoning as well as an understanding about the future possibilities of technology and shifting consumer points of view.
Shifting Your Marketing Mindset
Okay, so we know that having the right mindset is incredibly important for marketing success, but how do you go about shifting into a new mindset that will help you reach your goals?
Don’t Fall in Love with Your Own Ideas
Effective Marketing requires giving up some control. You may think you have the best idea for a campaign the world has ever seen, but you may or (chances are) may not be right about that.
Always try to maintain your objectivity and get other people involved to hear their ideas and their opinions of yours.
Forget Awareness – Hold Attention Instead
When TV and newspapers were the only channels, grabbing a consumer’s attention and making them aware of your brand was enough to see a significant increase in sales. Eventually cable TV came along and fragmented audiences, and marketers had to begin to focus on identifying valuable segments. But by and large the process of grabbing attention and spreading brand awareness was still the norm.
But today, the proliferation of digital channels has completely broken that model. No longer does an ad get people to go to the store and buy your product. Ads nowadays lead to more search. In other words, awareness leads to search not to an instant purchase, and so marketers have to shift their mindset from grabbing attention to one of holding that attention by building strong relationships with customers.
Reach Should Give Way to Experience
Historically brands focused on reach. The more eyeballs you could get on your ad, the more of a chance you had to make a sale. Of course, that was easier said than done in an analogue environment, although duplication over many audiences was bound to happen.
Now the good news and bad news:
Digital technology allows marketers to reach people while maintaining precise control over how many times people see an ad. Online advertising lets you reach who you want when you want and whenever you want.
The bad news is, since digital media makes it incredibly easy for brands to connect with consumers (including your competition), brand messaging is typically no longer enough. Consumers are bombarded with messages and cutting through the noise has become increasingly difficult.
Today’s marketers should stop focusing so much on reach and start focusing on giving consumers a memorable first experience of the brand. It should be engaging, it should be seamless, it should invite dialogue.
Leverage Data
Marketers got used to relying on others for data to help them make marketing decisions. Generally the industry relied on the classic research surveys. In this antiquated scenario, a study is commissioned, data is collected and the results analyzed and published.
Admittedly, this has always been a somewhat flawed process that took anywhere from 6-12 month to get skewed results. We all know the numbers that resulted from these studies were typically wrong. Sometimes by a little – sometimes by a lot.
While it may seem easier to wait for others to give you numbers, it’s better to get them yourself. Today’s marketers have access to big data which can be analyzed in real time and updated as you go.
While no approach to data will be flawless, big data helps marketers be more right than wrong.
Develop Curiosity
The marketing landscape is constantly shifting, as are consumer demands and opinions. What is trendy and working today may not work tomorrow. A campaign of yours that has performed well for the past 8 months may suddenly stop working.
Instead of getting frustrated with all of these rapid changes – better to foster a sense of curiosity in yourself and your team. Become like scientists who enjoy discovering new things. Get inspired, enjoy learning, talk with other marketers to find new ways to innovate.
Don’t Go It Alone
You may know your company better than anyone else, but professional media planners know media and demographics targeting inside and out. If you’ve been reluctant to bring on an outside provider in the past, now’s the time to recognize the value they offer to your campaigns and bottom line.
Media Space works with business owners to optimize campaign budgets and creatives. We can help you leverage the data at your disposal to turn out campaigns that offer customers a unique and memorable experience of your brand. Get in touch with us and let’s get started.
