6 skills of a growth-focused marketing strategist
Posted: Thu Dec 12, 2024 4:39 am
More and more companies are demanding marketing professionals who know how to bridge the gap between consumers and technology. If you are managing a marketing department or a company, as I am, it is our responsibility to keep up with new trends.
Table of contents
More and more companies are demanding fusion database package marketing professionals who know how to bridge the gap between consumers and technology. If you are managing a marketing department or a company, as is my case, it is our responsibility to keep up with new trends, but, above all, to acquire new skills that allow us to achieve business objectives in an environment increasingly dominated by software and uncertainty.
I studied Systems Engineering, but my entire professional career was in marketing and/or sales. Along the way, I have had several surprises. Although I know about software, when I graduated the world was not as digital as it is now, and I never thought that one day marketing and software would intersect.
But if you think about it, software – the set of programs and routines that allow the computer to perform certain tasks – is present in everything today. From the moment you wake up and press the button on your cell phone to turn off the alarm, several pieces of code have been executed to complete that action. This has made marketing, sales and almost any profession become a digital profession today.
6-skills-of-a-growth-focused-marketing-strategist-1
Look at it this way: every time your consumer tries to communicate with you, they no longer use only physical channels. Instead, they go to your website, most likely from a mobile device, leave their details, and these are collected by a CRM that assigns the contact to a salesperson for assistance. Therefore, managing these digital touchpoints is leading us marketers and salespeople to become software creators.
It is we who now have to see the development of these digital projects (software), which demand many disciplines that work together such as: user experience designers (UX), programmers, content creators, database administrators.
How can marketers manage this new reality?
My profession as a Systems Engineer has made me understand that there are many characteristics that the modern marketer shares with software development. Here I will mention the mindset and skills that the modern marketer must adopt from the world of software to lead marketing strategies in a digital world.
1. Understand the importance of investing in creating experiences for the entire Flywheel (mindset)
Gone are the days when the funnel guided us when developing a customer attraction strategy. We say goodbye to the funnel and hello to the flywheel .
Now we will take a brief look at the past. For a long time I applied this thinking: I planned campaigns where the important thing was not the customer but the number of customers. In our committees we did not discuss how to increase satisfaction but how to increase market share. The Marketing Department had to focus on “making everyone aware that we had a new product, location or price.” While Sales had the mission of closing no matter what . As soon as we got a customer, we went out to find the next one.
6-skills-of-a-growth-focused-marketing-strategist-2
Since I started working with the Inbound methodology , my way of thinking changed. I use the Flywheel to design experiences focused on satisfying all the needs of the buyer persona during their purchase journey, starting by putting a lot of effort (fuel) into delighting customers, so that this force helps me turn the flywheel and, as a result, attract and interact with more customers.
Start by putting enough effort (fuel) into delighting customers, so that that force helps me turn the flywheel and, as a result, attract and interact with more customers.
Embracing the Flywheel means that your responsibility as a marketing leader is no longer just focused on “promoting the brand,” but on eliminating the friction that prevents your flywheel from spinning faster and maximizing the customer experience throughout their entire journey.
Think of the flywheel as a new compass that will guide your marketing, sales, and customer service strategies.
Flywheel inbound marketing
2. Plan and develop campaigns incrementally
For years I managed campaigns using the waterfall model. This model takes a long project and breaks it down into distinct stages such as:
Market research
Creative concept design
Production of creative pieces,
Media distribution
Review and performance.
It is called a cascade because you have to finish one stage before starting the next.
But this model always brought me a couple of problems. The first was that defining a campaign meant predicting what would be most effective before the rollout, leaving me with no room to adapt and adjust to the audience's response. The second problem was the time it took to implement it; it could be months or years. During that time, the competition would react.
Today, with the speed at which the world moves, everything changes very quickly, whether you like it or not. Competitors change, technology advances and consumer expectations transform.
That’s why you need a new model for implementing marketing campaigns. I found the answer in an approach used in the software world called Agile Sprint Cycles.
6-skills-of-a-growth-focused-marketing-strategist-3
Imagine thinking big, but implementing incrementally. Big ideas are good and inspire the team, but they will be achievable if they are executed as a series of small ideas. Because each small idea is an opportunity to learn what works and what doesn't. In this way, based on what we have learned, we can adapt to the market faster.
So, how do you develop an incremental marketing campaign?
At Impulse, the incremental approach is helping us simplify a big marketing idea, campaign or project into small steps.
For example, imagine you need to launch a new website. In the waterfall model, that project can take 6-9 months until you have everything ready and there is no guarantee that once you are live, the user will behave as you planned.
Instead, you can start by building an initial version, one part of the site, and progressively add more sections, more advanced features, and so on. The real feedback you can get from users will help you make data-driven and insightful decisions for your next incremental stage.
We call this approach to web development Growth Driven Design .
Learn how we did it with our website
But don’t think that just because the first version doesn’t have everything the company wants doesn’t mean it can’t be launched and offer an exceptional experience to the visitor. In the software world, this first incremental is known as a “Minimum Viable Product,” while in marketing we call it a “Minimum Exceptional Campaign.”
New call to action
Besides the website, can everything related to marketing be done incrementally?
Let me tell you, yes. Our Inbound Strategists are turning all marketing campaigns into incremental programs. Since:
Website and landing pages.
Lead nurturing campaigns (we start with a follow-up and then add more emails, conditionals and/or segments).
SEO campaigns.
Pillar Pages (we start with 1 or 2 chapters and then add more).
Dashboards (we start by integrating the data and then a first version of the dashboard with the metrics that matter most and progressively we add more indicators).
Content Marketing (the content topics we propose are tested in a blog post or social media post and those that resonate the most are developed into new incremental assets such as an infographic, or more related articles, surveys, webinars, ebooks, videos, etc.).
Paid search campaigns (we start with a group of keywords that are expanded incrementally to a larger audience or to sophisticated groups with their respective landing page).
But most importantly, the ability to create incremental campaigns will allow you to get out into the world faster. Reach your audience with new ideas before your competition. And accelerate your learning based on results. This is the way to stay ahead in the market, because your new competitive advantage is speed.
The ability to create incremental campaigns will allow you to go out into the world faster. Reach your audience with new ideas before the competition. And accelerate your learning based on results.
3. He does a lot of continuous improvement experiments.
One of the concepts I learned in my software development courses at the University is the concept of: “Iteration = Continuously testing and experimenting.” Iterations are small deliverables or changes made to a program or asset, which make up a campaign or product, with the goal of improving performance.
6-skills-of-a-growth-focused-marketing-strategist-4
A classic example is iterating a landing page to increase the conversion rate from visits to completed forms. You can start by creating a B version of the landing page, with the aim of testing the title, and then progressively test the images, text, layout, etc. until the CR (conversion rate) improves.
A modern marketing strategist must use this approach to test many ideas, iterate multiple versions of those ideas to maximize performance, understand why changes work, and execute these tests very quickly with minimal bureaucracy or operational delays.
A modern marketing strategist should use this approach to test many ideas,
Your mission is to inspire your team to find opportunities to experiment. As we say at Impulse: “Test, test, test.”
4. Base your decisions on data.
62% of executives still rely more on experience and advice than data when making decisions
The other day I read a study by PwC that said that 62% of executives still rely more on experience and advice than on data when making decisions. While it is true that I rely on experience, I do not let my ego guide my decisions; instead, I prefer to have knowledge of technology that allows me to perform effective and efficient data analysis, as well as foster a data-driven culture in my company.
With the world becoming so hyper-connected, virtually every touchpoint a customer has with a brand is leaving a trace in the form of data. When they are impacted by an ad, when they visit your website or app, every time they make a purchase, and even every time they visit your store… the amount of data and information available about consumers who interact with your brand and your products is growing exponentially.
Those professionals who are able to manage all this data efficiently and extract insights and conclusions that allow them to better attract and retain customers are, in short, the ones who will come out on top.
6-skills-of-a-growth-focused-marketing-strategist-5
But just doing it yourself is not going to be enough. You need to promote a data culture that helps your company to:
Build a holistic view of the customer from the data to understand them in a more granular way: who they are, what they like, why they buy from me or stop buying from me.
Carry out personalized communication campaigns automatically. That is, do things like: differentiate messages to users who know me from those who don't know me; adapt the offer based on what they have previously purchased or are interested in now; search for similar segments to reach new audiences and potential customers, etc.
Increase the number of satisfied and loyal customers at a lower acquisition and management cost
5. Get to know your ideal customer and their purchasing journey in depth.
I have said it thousands of times: “strategy before tactics”; but if there is one thing that I have to put before strategy, it is “ knowledge of the buyer persona before the product.”
Designing product-centric strategies is one of those approaches that I practiced for a long time in my business career and it wasn't bad, but the world changed. The Internet transferred all the power and knowledge to the user. In such a way that the product became secondary and the experience took its place. But the experience can only be built if you know your customer in depth.
Defining the buyer persona is not (just) a theoretical exercise that we must do before developing our product. Rather, we must verify what processes our customers are actually following until they make the purchase.
Table of contents
More and more companies are demanding fusion database package marketing professionals who know how to bridge the gap between consumers and technology. If you are managing a marketing department or a company, as is my case, it is our responsibility to keep up with new trends, but, above all, to acquire new skills that allow us to achieve business objectives in an environment increasingly dominated by software and uncertainty.
I studied Systems Engineering, but my entire professional career was in marketing and/or sales. Along the way, I have had several surprises. Although I know about software, when I graduated the world was not as digital as it is now, and I never thought that one day marketing and software would intersect.
But if you think about it, software – the set of programs and routines that allow the computer to perform certain tasks – is present in everything today. From the moment you wake up and press the button on your cell phone to turn off the alarm, several pieces of code have been executed to complete that action. This has made marketing, sales and almost any profession become a digital profession today.
6-skills-of-a-growth-focused-marketing-strategist-1
Look at it this way: every time your consumer tries to communicate with you, they no longer use only physical channels. Instead, they go to your website, most likely from a mobile device, leave their details, and these are collected by a CRM that assigns the contact to a salesperson for assistance. Therefore, managing these digital touchpoints is leading us marketers and salespeople to become software creators.
It is we who now have to see the development of these digital projects (software), which demand many disciplines that work together such as: user experience designers (UX), programmers, content creators, database administrators.
How can marketers manage this new reality?
My profession as a Systems Engineer has made me understand that there are many characteristics that the modern marketer shares with software development. Here I will mention the mindset and skills that the modern marketer must adopt from the world of software to lead marketing strategies in a digital world.
1. Understand the importance of investing in creating experiences for the entire Flywheel (mindset)
Gone are the days when the funnel guided us when developing a customer attraction strategy. We say goodbye to the funnel and hello to the flywheel .
Now we will take a brief look at the past. For a long time I applied this thinking: I planned campaigns where the important thing was not the customer but the number of customers. In our committees we did not discuss how to increase satisfaction but how to increase market share. The Marketing Department had to focus on “making everyone aware that we had a new product, location or price.” While Sales had the mission of closing no matter what . As soon as we got a customer, we went out to find the next one.
6-skills-of-a-growth-focused-marketing-strategist-2
Since I started working with the Inbound methodology , my way of thinking changed. I use the Flywheel to design experiences focused on satisfying all the needs of the buyer persona during their purchase journey, starting by putting a lot of effort (fuel) into delighting customers, so that this force helps me turn the flywheel and, as a result, attract and interact with more customers.
Start by putting enough effort (fuel) into delighting customers, so that that force helps me turn the flywheel and, as a result, attract and interact with more customers.
Embracing the Flywheel means that your responsibility as a marketing leader is no longer just focused on “promoting the brand,” but on eliminating the friction that prevents your flywheel from spinning faster and maximizing the customer experience throughout their entire journey.
Think of the flywheel as a new compass that will guide your marketing, sales, and customer service strategies.
Flywheel inbound marketing
2. Plan and develop campaigns incrementally
For years I managed campaigns using the waterfall model. This model takes a long project and breaks it down into distinct stages such as:
Market research
Creative concept design
Production of creative pieces,
Media distribution
Review and performance.
It is called a cascade because you have to finish one stage before starting the next.
But this model always brought me a couple of problems. The first was that defining a campaign meant predicting what would be most effective before the rollout, leaving me with no room to adapt and adjust to the audience's response. The second problem was the time it took to implement it; it could be months or years. During that time, the competition would react.
Today, with the speed at which the world moves, everything changes very quickly, whether you like it or not. Competitors change, technology advances and consumer expectations transform.
That’s why you need a new model for implementing marketing campaigns. I found the answer in an approach used in the software world called Agile Sprint Cycles.
6-skills-of-a-growth-focused-marketing-strategist-3
Imagine thinking big, but implementing incrementally. Big ideas are good and inspire the team, but they will be achievable if they are executed as a series of small ideas. Because each small idea is an opportunity to learn what works and what doesn't. In this way, based on what we have learned, we can adapt to the market faster.
So, how do you develop an incremental marketing campaign?
At Impulse, the incremental approach is helping us simplify a big marketing idea, campaign or project into small steps.
For example, imagine you need to launch a new website. In the waterfall model, that project can take 6-9 months until you have everything ready and there is no guarantee that once you are live, the user will behave as you planned.
Instead, you can start by building an initial version, one part of the site, and progressively add more sections, more advanced features, and so on. The real feedback you can get from users will help you make data-driven and insightful decisions for your next incremental stage.
We call this approach to web development Growth Driven Design .
Learn how we did it with our website
But don’t think that just because the first version doesn’t have everything the company wants doesn’t mean it can’t be launched and offer an exceptional experience to the visitor. In the software world, this first incremental is known as a “Minimum Viable Product,” while in marketing we call it a “Minimum Exceptional Campaign.”
New call to action
Besides the website, can everything related to marketing be done incrementally?
Let me tell you, yes. Our Inbound Strategists are turning all marketing campaigns into incremental programs. Since:
Website and landing pages.
Lead nurturing campaigns (we start with a follow-up and then add more emails, conditionals and/or segments).
SEO campaigns.
Pillar Pages (we start with 1 or 2 chapters and then add more).
Dashboards (we start by integrating the data and then a first version of the dashboard with the metrics that matter most and progressively we add more indicators).
Content Marketing (the content topics we propose are tested in a blog post or social media post and those that resonate the most are developed into new incremental assets such as an infographic, or more related articles, surveys, webinars, ebooks, videos, etc.).
Paid search campaigns (we start with a group of keywords that are expanded incrementally to a larger audience or to sophisticated groups with their respective landing page).
But most importantly, the ability to create incremental campaigns will allow you to get out into the world faster. Reach your audience with new ideas before your competition. And accelerate your learning based on results. This is the way to stay ahead in the market, because your new competitive advantage is speed.
The ability to create incremental campaigns will allow you to go out into the world faster. Reach your audience with new ideas before the competition. And accelerate your learning based on results.
3. He does a lot of continuous improvement experiments.
One of the concepts I learned in my software development courses at the University is the concept of: “Iteration = Continuously testing and experimenting.” Iterations are small deliverables or changes made to a program or asset, which make up a campaign or product, with the goal of improving performance.
6-skills-of-a-growth-focused-marketing-strategist-4
A classic example is iterating a landing page to increase the conversion rate from visits to completed forms. You can start by creating a B version of the landing page, with the aim of testing the title, and then progressively test the images, text, layout, etc. until the CR (conversion rate) improves.
A modern marketing strategist must use this approach to test many ideas, iterate multiple versions of those ideas to maximize performance, understand why changes work, and execute these tests very quickly with minimal bureaucracy or operational delays.
A modern marketing strategist should use this approach to test many ideas,
Your mission is to inspire your team to find opportunities to experiment. As we say at Impulse: “Test, test, test.”
4. Base your decisions on data.
62% of executives still rely more on experience and advice than data when making decisions
The other day I read a study by PwC that said that 62% of executives still rely more on experience and advice than on data when making decisions. While it is true that I rely on experience, I do not let my ego guide my decisions; instead, I prefer to have knowledge of technology that allows me to perform effective and efficient data analysis, as well as foster a data-driven culture in my company.
With the world becoming so hyper-connected, virtually every touchpoint a customer has with a brand is leaving a trace in the form of data. When they are impacted by an ad, when they visit your website or app, every time they make a purchase, and even every time they visit your store… the amount of data and information available about consumers who interact with your brand and your products is growing exponentially.
Those professionals who are able to manage all this data efficiently and extract insights and conclusions that allow them to better attract and retain customers are, in short, the ones who will come out on top.
6-skills-of-a-growth-focused-marketing-strategist-5
But just doing it yourself is not going to be enough. You need to promote a data culture that helps your company to:
Build a holistic view of the customer from the data to understand them in a more granular way: who they are, what they like, why they buy from me or stop buying from me.
Carry out personalized communication campaigns automatically. That is, do things like: differentiate messages to users who know me from those who don't know me; adapt the offer based on what they have previously purchased or are interested in now; search for similar segments to reach new audiences and potential customers, etc.
Increase the number of satisfied and loyal customers at a lower acquisition and management cost
5. Get to know your ideal customer and their purchasing journey in depth.
I have said it thousands of times: “strategy before tactics”; but if there is one thing that I have to put before strategy, it is “ knowledge of the buyer persona before the product.”
Designing product-centric strategies is one of those approaches that I practiced for a long time in my business career and it wasn't bad, but the world changed. The Internet transferred all the power and knowledge to the user. In such a way that the product became secondary and the experience took its place. But the experience can only be built if you know your customer in depth.
Defining the buyer persona is not (just) a theoretical exercise that we must do before developing our product. Rather, we must verify what processes our customers are actually following until they make the purchase.