What does it mean to think beyond digital?
According to Marketo, 63 percent of respondents said they are highly annoyed by the way brands continue to rely on the old-fashioned strategy of blasting generic advertising messages repeatedly. Marketers know this, yet many are stuck in the same pattern, which explains why leads are not converting to sales opportunities. It’s important to embrace the latest digital tools and capabilities, however, in thinking and in strategy, you should go beyond digital.
Great campaigns focus on people. Digital marketing provides the toolset, but the goal is to connect with the audience. Develop meaningful personal interactions that engage, inform, entertain—or just provide something useful to help them overcome a challenge.
Here are a few ways to do it:
Engage through storytelling
Narratives pull the audience in and generate interest, because they make your content personal. Anytime you can get your audience to identify as the hero of the story, they will feel more engaged. This effect is multiplied when you engage your audience in a narrative that spans the buyer’s journey. When you have multiple touchpoints, you can create a story-driven buyer’s experience that keeps them interested every step of their journey.
Build a bridge between digital and sales
Sales and marketing teams are too often at odds. Sales teams complain that marketing teams are not providing quality leads. Marketing teams get frustrated that the sales team doesn’t follow up on the leads they have—or that they reach out to them before they are qualified as opportunities who are ready for contact.
Target high-value, personalized experiences
As we discuss in our blog post “Think you have enough content,” 82% of customers viewed at least five pieces of content from a winning vendor, according to Forrester. Customers love to binge, and tracking content engagement is a great way to determine interest and propensity to buy. However, content consumption is not the goal. You want customers to progress further down the funnel and become sales opportunities. Tracking activities, such as which content a prospect interacted with, can help you understand their interests and customize your approach as you nurture them. Personalized offers and events help qualify a lead and turn them into a likely customer.
Going beyond digital means designing campaigns that incorporate 1: many and 1:1 interactions with the target audience. This spans the worlds of marketing and sales, aligning both teams to approach the campaign collaboratively. You start at the beginning, by defining the target audience and personas, then work together to define what constitutes a qualified opportunity with a high propensity to buy. This is especially important in an account-based engagement, which offers an opportunity to have marketing and sales teams align on an account strategy. Design your digital campaigns to quickly drive leads to events or activities that naturally involve both sales and marketing teams.
Want to learn more about how Audienz can help you go beyond digital? Check out our e-book, “5 Keys to Digital Sales Acceleration” or visit our digital marketing practice area to learn how to go to market.
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