June 2022CIOAPPLICATIONS.COM9While technology is a huge part of the marketing landscape, it's only a portion of what's required to successfully navigate those watersthen test it. Prove your idea works - or prove to yourself that it doesn't. Either way, let the customer decide the best approach. Like knowing your audience, understanding your previous campaign performance in conjunction with a healthy amount of competitor analysis provides insight into your industry. Looking at it from the customer perspective, all your research is focused on identifying how they might have been introduced (or not) to your brand or why they prefer your competitor. Internally, everything from channel performance to messaging, from audience insights to creative ­ all of it is worth investigating and mapping out how it performed and why. If you have questions about past campaign performance, then your marketing team does as well ­ and you'll be doomed to repeat past mistakes until you learn from them.When I worked at an agency, we created a series of ads to help craft a client's branding recommendation. We tested multiple colors, logos, CTAs, and fonts across an engagement campaign. We basically let our target audience (who had no vested interest in the brand but would ultimately be served the product in store) decide how the brand should look. My team made a game of guessing what color or logo would get the most engagement and we were surprised by the results every single time! In that same way, don't assume you know better than the customer.Know Your ToolsIn college, I did construction work to help pay the bills. There was a slew of tools we were required to bring on Day 1. One of which was a chalk reel. Being young (and cheap) I thought I knew better and didn't consider this a necessary expense. After making a single cut that ended up wasting nearly a dozen sheets of plywood, I decided a $10 chalk reel would be the more cost-effective option.Similarly, you need to know the `what' and the `why' of your company's tech stack. You very well might have a better solution in mind than what your leadership or even your predecessors chose technology wise, but it's rarely a safe bet to assume so by default. Not only can you make a poor investment in new technology or cut an essential piece of tech you didn't know was needed, but you just might damage your reputation (with your team, customers or both) by making such hasty decisions either in the name of performance or budget optimization. Be slow to speak (or act) and quick to listen. You can discover a lot if you ask questions behind why your company leverages the tech you have. Then you can begin to identify the gaps and any changes or supplemental tech investments needed to optimize your marketing performance. Don't be hasty ­ make educated decisions in your tech stack. Know Your DataCustomer personas, industry standards, and technology are all important, but it's the ability to sift through mountains of data, organize it to communicate relevant information accurately and concisely, and glean actionable insights from that data that determine the trajectory of a campaign's (and ultimately a marketing department's) performance. I'll be the first to admit there is a lot of data to go through and it can be overwhelming, but I can't stress this enough: as a leader, you must compartmentalize the data. Compartmentalization is a process that helps organize a plethora of information into actionable steps. It's not that you over generalize customer data or put a positive spin on a poor campaign's performance. Instead, it's a skill used to translate data from past campaigns and market trends into educated, honest, and improved steps for the next campaign. It takes a healthy bit of compartmentalizing to tackle the gamut of information and options one could take.While technology is a huge part of the marketing landscape, it's only a portion of what's required to successfully navigate those waters. Listen and learn. Get to know your audience. That will help you understand your industry (the world you're competing in). Learn and analyze your existing tech stack ­ ask more questions initially. Finally, use the lens of compartmentalized data to increase performance and ­ instead of focusing on revenue, focus on the enhancement of your customer's experience. Revenue will follow.
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