Defining your leadership style is essential when mentoring and managing junior-level employees. By emphasizing empathy and nurturing, you can create an environment where everyone has the opportunity to learn, grow, and succeed. This article will explore the steps to define your leadership style and incorporate empathy and nurturing into your management approach.
Cultivating Empathy Empathy plays a pivotal role in effective mentoring and management. By understanding and sharing the feelings of your junior employees, you can create a supportive work environment. Developing empathetic communication skills, such as active listening and understanding body language, will help build trust and create a safe space where team members feel comfortable expressing their thoughts and concerns. Building Trust Foster an environment where trust is central. Encourage open communication, ensure confidentiality, and value ideas and opinions from each team member. Trust enables collaboration and facilitates the sharing of diverse perspectives. Establishing Expectations Setting clear expectations ensures employees understand their roles and responsibilities. Communicate the goals you expect them to achieve and empower them to make meaningful contributions. Clearly define expectations, deadlines, and desired outcomes. Establishing accountability holds your team members responsible for their actions and encourages a sense of responsibility. Empowering Autonomy Delegate tasks to your employees and empower them to make decisions. Provide guidance and support, but allow them autonomy in executing their responsibilities to help foster a sense of ownership and build self-confidence. Providing Feedback Regular feedback is vital for growth. Provide constructive feedback that focuses on strengths and areas for improvement. Acknowledge and appreciate their talents. Act as a mentor and coach, guiding their professional development. Offering Development Help your junior employees acquire new skills and knowledge by providing development opportunities, including workshops, conferences, online courses, or access to relevant resources. Encourage continuous learning and support their growth ambitions. Encouraging Teamwork Promote teamwork and collaboration among your employees. By encouraging them to collaborate on projects, share ideas, and leverage each other's strengths, you will cultivate a sense of belonging and collective success. Recognizing Personalities Embrace the diversity within your team. Celebrate different personalities and encourage collaboration between contrasting styles to create a well-rounded and inclusive team environment. Setting Examples Lead by example and adhere to high ethical standards. Display integrity in your actions and decisions to help set the tone for ethical conduct within the team and reinforce trust. Showing Vulnerability A humble leader demonstrates authenticity and openness. Admitting mistakes and seeking input from others boosts morale and encourages junior employees to learn from their failures. Being Approachable Make yourself accessible to your team members. Encourage open-door policies, regular check-ins, and one-on-one meetings. Being approachable builds trust and ensures your junior employees feel supported. Balancing Discipline While nurturing is important, maintaining a balance is equally important. Establish clear boundaries and hold team members accountable when necessary. Balancing nurturing with discipline ensures professionalism and efficiency. Contact me, Michael Rohde, to discuss how these strategies can help your company succeed. In this article, I discuss the significance of a 30-60-90 plan for marketing professionals focused on empowering the sales team with content and qualified leads while achieving key performance indicators (KPIs). Essentially, a 30-60-90 plan is a strategic roadmap that outlines the objectives and goals for the first three months of a new job. When starting a new role, having a well-defined plan is crucial for effectively navigating a new setting, aligning with the organization's objectives, and driving success.
Understanding Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are measurable values that show how well you achieve specific goals. As a marketing leader, it is crucial to identify the KPIs that align with the overall sales and business objectives. These may include metrics such as sales revenue, conversion rates, lead generation, content utilization, and sales cycle length. By establishing baseline metrics and setting realistic targets for these KPIs, you can have a clear benchmark for measuring progress and success. 30 Days: Setting the Foundation In the first 30 days, it is important to lay a strong foundation for success. This involves meeting with key stakeholders such as sales leaders, marketing teams, and other relevant departments. These interactions will help you gain insights, understand expectations, and build relationships essential for collaboration. Additionally, conducting extensive research on the company, its products/services, and the target customers will give you a deeper understanding of the organization's unique value proposition. During this phase, it is important to assess the current sales enablement processes and tools. Identify gaps or inefficiencies that hinder sales productivity and develop strategies to address them. Lastly, creating a content inventory allows you to assess the existing materials and identify gaps or areas that require improvement. 60 Days: Developing Strategy and Execution In the second phase of the 30-60-90 plan, it's time to develop a strategic roadmap for sales enablement. This involves defining specific goals aligned with the organization's overall sales objectives, focusing on improving sales productivity, increasing revenue, and enhancing customer engagement. Collaborating closely with the sales and marketing teams is vital to ensure alignment and establish shared goals. Developing a content generation plan is necessary during this period. Assess the needs of the sales team, understand the buyer's journey, and create relevant content for each stage. This may include educational materials, case studies, customer testimonials, and sales training resources. Additionally, implementing sales enablement technologies, such as CRM systems, content management platforms, and analytics tools, can streamline processes, measure effectiveness, and enhance efficiency. 90 Days: Evaluating and Optimizing At the 90-day mark, it's time to evaluate the effectiveness of the implemented strategies and make necessary improvements. Analyze the previously identified KPIs to assess progress and identify areas that require adjustment. By measuring the impact of the implemented sales enablement initiatives, you can track improvements and identify gaps or areas for further optimization. Refine the content generation strategy based on feedback from the sales team and customers. Continuously analyze content utilization, feedback, and sales performance data to optimize and align content offerings with buyers' needs and preferences. Regularly providing feedback to key stakeholders also ensures ongoing collaboration and reinforces the sales enablement efforts within the organization. A 30-60-90 plan provides a clear roadmap for success in a new role. By focusing on KPIs and content generation, marketing can align their efforts with the organization's objectives, drive sales productivity, and enhance customer engagement. By consistently evaluating, refining, and optimizing the plan, sales enablement managers can create a sustainable cycle of continuous improvement and maximize their impact on the organization's overall success. The success of a business relies heavily on the alignment between sales and marketing departments. By establishing common Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and goals, these departments can work cohesively toward achieving effectiveness and synergy. Read on to explore the importance of sales and marketing alignment and the key strategies that can help drive this alignment.
Lead flow plays a critical role in aligning sales and marketing. Marketing efforts should focus on generating quality content and leads, while sales should provide feedback on lead quality. By sharing insights, both departments can refine lead generation strategies, improving the overall quality and quantity of leads. Conversion rates are a fundamental metric that aligns sales and marketing. A shared understanding of conversion targets helps both teams evaluate the effectiveness of their efforts. Marketing can refine lead generation and content strategies to ensure qualified leads are passed to sales, while sales can provide feedback to marketing on lead quality and required content. Nurture campaigns are crucial for engaging prospects throughout their customer journey. Sales and marketing teams must collaborate to develop and execute effective nurture campaigns that provide valuable content and move prospects toward conversion. Regular feedback loops ensure these campaigns are optimized based on the insights gathered from sales interactions. Collateral usage refers to the materials, such as sales presentations and product brochures, utilized by both departments. Regular communication and feedback allow marketing to develop collateral that supports the sales process. In contrast, sales can provide insights into the effectiveness and relevance of these materials during their interactions with prospects. Share benchmarks and targets between sales and marketing to create alignment between both teams to help them work toward a common goal. By aligning pipeline targets and revenue objectives, both departments share responsibility for the company's success. Tracking and displaying data through tools such as Pardot and HubSpot offers real-time updates for all parties involved. By accurately monitoring lead sources and interactions, sales and marketing teams can gain insights into the efforts driving results. Analyzing campaign performance and data helps identify strengths and areas for improvement, enabling data-driven decision-making. By presenting shared KPIs and metrics through reporting dashboards, both departments have an understanding of performance. This type of transparent data sharing encourages collaboration and fosters a more cohesive team environment. Joint training sessions foster understanding and enable both teams to comprehend each other's perspectives and unique challenges. Cross-functional meetings provide opportunities for collaboration, knowledge sharing, and brainstorming ideas. Emphasizing continuous improvement through feedback and insights leads to an ongoing alignment process that drives effectiveness and synergy. Aligning sales and marketing through shared KPIs, metrics, and tools is crucial for achieving effectiveness and synergy within an organization. By focusing on lead flow, nurture campaigns, conversion rates, and collateral usage, both departments can work together towards common goals. Conclusion This is a quick overview discussion on how to align sales and marketing through shared KPIs, objectives, and continuous feedback loops to help ensure closed sales and increased revenue. Contact me, Michael Rohde, to discuss how these strategies can help your company succeed. The synergy between a finely tuned Go-to-Market (GTM) strategy and a well-crafted Content Marketing Strategy (CMS) creates a catalyst for success. The fusion of these two strategic frameworks becomes paramount in effectively launching products, engaging target audiences, and driving revenue growth. By harmonizing the GTM strategy's market-focused approach with the CMS's content-driven tactics, companies can amplify their brand visibility, establish thought leadership, and forge meaningful connections with customers, setting the stage for long-term business success and market dominance. Develop a Go-to-Market strategy When developing a GTM strategy in conjunction with a CMS strategy, key elements such as defining target audiences, creating compelling and relevant content, selecting appropriate communication channels, and synchronizing sales and marketing efforts must be emphasized. By meticulously crafting these interdependent strategies, businesses can effectively reach their target market, cultivate brand loyalty, drive customer engagement, and ultimately achieve their growth objectives. Define your product and customers The anchor for any Go-to-Market (GTM) strategy is the fundamental task of defining the product and understanding the nuances of the target customers. This pivotal step involves a detailed exploration of how the product resolves customer pain points, what specific features resonate with users, and the unique value proposition that sets it apart in the market. Identifying the ideal customer profile is equally crucial, clarifying whether the product caters to, for example, IT managers, line-of-business executives, or C-suite officers. By delving into these key aspects, businesses can craft tailored messaging, fine-tune their product offerings, and align their strategies to resonate with the specific needs and preferences of their target audience. This insightful groundwork not only informs marketing and sales tactics but also lays a solid foundation for building lasting customer relationships and driving sustainable business growth. Determine your marketing channels Choosing the right marketing channels is crucial for success. Determining the optimal market channels involves a comprehensive evaluation of how to best reach and engage the target audience. This process entails assessing various digital platforms, social media channels, traditional advertising avenues, and even face-to-face interactions such as conferences and networking events. Understanding where the target customers are allows businesses to tailor their messaging, content, and outreach efforts to maximize visibility, resonance, and impact. Moreover, leveraging data analytics and performance metrics enables ongoing assessment and refinement of channel selection. This ensures the GTM strategy remains agile, responsive, and finely tuned to capture market opportunities and drive sustainable business growth. Distribute your product The distribution of a product plays a pivotal role in seamlessly integrating a Go-to-Market strategy with a Content Marketing Strategy. This crucial step in the customer journey marks the convergence of marketing efforts with the tangible delivery of the product to the end consumer. Whether offering digital downloads, web-based services, or physical goods requiring shipping, the distribution strategy must align closely with the messaging, positioning, and customer expectations defined by the GTM and CMS frameworks. Effective product distribution involves fulfilling orders and creating a positive post-purchase experience that fosters customer satisfaction, loyalty, and advocacy. By synchronizing distribution channels with marketing initiatives, businesses can ensure a cohesive brand experience, streamline customer interactions, and optimize operational efficiencies, ultimately driving long-term customer engagement and sustainable business success. Determine a pricing strategy When determining a pricing strategy, it's crucial to align it with a Content Marketing Strategy to maximize business success. Your pricing strategy should reflect the value proposition communicated through your content marketing efforts. By understanding customer perceptions shaped by your content, you can set prices that resonate with their expectations and reinforce the perceived value of your offerings. Moreover, your content can educate customers on the benefits of your products or services, justifying higher price points and building trust. By integrating pricing considerations into your content strategy, you can effectively communicate the value of your offerings and empower customers to make informed purchasing decisions, ultimately driving revenue growth and enhancing customer loyalty. Drive engagement Beyond defining personas, selecting channels, optimizing distribution, and setting pricing, the messaging and positioning of a product or service stand as vital components of a Go-to-Market (GTM) strategy that must align with Content Marketing efforts. Ensuring consistent messaging across content channels solidifies value propositions, enhances brand identity, and fosters customer engagement. By harmonizing messaging and positioning between GTM and content marketing, businesses can create a cohesive narrative that resonates with their target audience, bolsters brand credibility and drives meaningful interactions that lead to conversions and sustained business growth. Conclusion
This is a quick overview discussion on how you can develop a Go-to-Marketing plan that mixes in with your Content Marketing Strategy. Contact me, Michael Rohde, to discuss how these strategies can help bring your product to market. The goal of this blog post is to emphasize the importance of having a content marketing strategy for any company that sells products or services and to explain how a content marketing strategy can help a company tell its story, attract and retain customers, and become an essential component of the company's overall marketing plan. This post provides a comprehensive overview of the key elements of a content marketing strategy, including the importance of a collaborative team, a publishing calendar, and a consistent message across different mediums. It also provides an example of how a content marketing strategy can be executed across different buying cycle stages. Ultimately, the post aims to educate readers that content marketing is essential to any successful marketing plan and that they should consider implementing a content marketing strategy for their company. “Content marketing is the marketing and business process for creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience–with the objective of driving profitable customer action.” —Content Marketing Institute Developing a Collaborative Team for Content Marketing
A content marketing strategy contains all the parts of your company’s story, how to execute, when to publish, and who will tell your story. Your story needs to be on point, from site content to downloadable fact sheets to video messages and infographics. You need a collaborative team to make sure all the moving parts are in synch, and that the message doesn’t stray from one department to another, and you’ll need an evangelical whose voice is heard across the entire company. If your company comes complete with many departments—marketing, sales, business development, engineering, and customer service—chances are you will need a content marketing strategist who can coordinate the strategy, production, publication, and execution of your campaign. Executing Your Content Marketing Strategy: Fine-Tuning to the Buying Cycle Content marketing strategies are executed across several mediums continuously and are fine-tuned to the buying cycle. This is where a publishing calendar comes in extremely handy. Your calendar will show which part of the story you are currently telling, when you are telling it, and where you are telling it. In this manner, you can use your calendar to put your video producers and writers on the same page with customer service, sales, and engineers. Types of Content for Your Content Marketing Strategy By telling the same story through different mediums, and then altering it to fit the different phases of the buying cycle, you will create a positive customer experience. An example of a content marketing strategy might go like this:
Conclusion To develop a consistent message, it’s important to tell a story, a story rich in themes. Each theme should tell a different part of the story—the product’s features, the integrity of the company, the customer’s pain points, and so on. Your message should be told in text, video, animations, and webinars and spread across several mediums so that your customers are continuously exposed to a consistent message that informs them about you and why they want to buy your products or services. That's just the beginning of content marketing! Please get in touch if you think this plan will work for you. Introducing a new product or service to the market can be exciting and daunting. As a business, it's crucial to have a well-thought-out strategy that guides potential customers through the buying cycle. The buying cycle consists of four phases: Discovery, Consideration, Conversion, and Retention. Each stage has its own challenges and opportunities for businesses to create compelling content that resonates with their target audience. In this blog post, I'll dive into each phase of the buying cycle and explore the best type of content to create for each stage. Let's get started! Phase 1—Discovery The beginning of the story starts with potential customers finding you. At this stage, your potential customers need to become aware of your company’s products and why they should choose your products or services. A successful beginning starts with introducing the company to the potential customer. The goal is to show the customer that your company is aware of their needs and can fulfill them. You will have reached your Phase 1—Discovery goal when the customer becomes aware of your brand. The best content at this beginning stage should be educational. Viral content is also important in helping spread awareness. Types of content that work well during the discovery phase include:
Phase 2—Consideration After the customer becomes aware of your company, you will want to start the education process on how your company’s products will help the customer succeed, describe how your company excels where the competitors might fail, and answer all of the customer’s questions so that they can make an educated decision on choosing your company’s product. The goal at this point is to get the customer to consider a purchase. The best content at the consideration stage of the buying cycle is to supply potential customers with content that helps them evaluate you and your products, such as:
Phase 3—Conversion The story’s climax is when the potential customer becomes a paying customer. For this to happen, the customer’s pain points must be resolved, any lingering doubts about the competition must be removed, and the customer must feel confident they made the right decision. All of this is accomplished through a consistent message, adhering to set themes that address the customer’s concerns, and relaying confidence that the company’s product is the best product or service on the market. The best type of content for converting the customer includes:
This content will be the heart of your direct sales materials and should showcase all your best features — this is the point of the story where you want to drive home the message that your products or services are the best available. The story won’t end there of course; there should always be an epilogue. The theme of the epilogue is to keep the paying customer happy so they remain a paying customer, and would recommend your products and services. That’s where Phase 4—Retention, comes into play. Phase 4—Retention At this point in the story, you have a paying customer, and you’d like to keep them around in the hopes they might refer you, offer a great review, provide a testimonial, or, best of all, remain a paying customer. The best type of content to retain a customer is:
Now that you know what type of content you want to develop and where it fits in the buying cycle, you should create a calendar so the team knows what they need to do and when they need to do it. Do you need help keeping your content marketing efforts on track? Do you find yourself publishing content haphazardly without a clear plan or strategy? If so, it's time to consider creating a publishing calendar. But what exactly is a publishing calendar, and why do you need one? In this blog post, I'll explore the answers to these questions and provide tips on creating a successful publishing calendar that will help you achieve your content marketing objectives. What is a publishing calendar? A publishing calendar is a schedule that outlines when you plan to publish content, what type of content you plan to publish, and where you plan to publish it. It's a roadmap for your content marketing efforts. Your calendar should include goals so the team understands objectives clearly — this is essential to ensure your content is relevant, valuable, and aligned with your business strategy. Why do you need a publishing calendar? There are several reasons why a publishing calendar is essential for effective content marketing. First, it ensures that you have a steady stream of content going out on a regular basis. This helps build your brand's visibility and credibility in the eyes of your target audience. Additionally, a publishing calendar makes it easier to coordinate your efforts across multiple channels and team members, ensuring that everyone is on the same page. When working with a team, it is important to have some flexibility in your content calendar to allow for last-minute changes, updates, or additions. Leave some room in your schedule to accommodate any unexpected events. When should you create a publishing calendar? The best time to create a publishing calendar is at the beginning of an overall marketing campaign. Let’s say your company wants to develop leads for a specific product, territory, or audience type. To generate those leads, you’ll need several types of content, all working in harmony, to create a branded, coherent, consistent message that educates the audience on why they want to choose your company. Different types of content take different lengths of time to generate — while a blog post might take a day or two, planning a webinar or shooting a video could take a month or longer. The calendar will keep you on track so that all the different content pieces can be produced, published, tracked, and analyzed in sync. Doing so will help you create a comprehensive content campaign that generates new business. Content types to include in your publishing calendar Now that you understand the importance of a publishing calendar, let's take a look at some of the content types you can include in your calendar: Blog posts Blog posts are one of the most popular types of content for a reason. They're easy to create, they're shareable, and they're great for driving traffic to your site. Use blog posts to highlight thought- leadership, recap recent webinars, or write an employee spotlight post to support recruitment efforts. Your calendar should include time to interview an SME, draft, review, edit, and publish. And don’t forget to include the Graphic Designer so they have time to create a header image, that will also match the image used in the social media post. Social media posts - paid and organic Social media is a great way to connect with your target audience and build brand awareness. Include a mix of curated content and original content to keep your followers engaged. Always promote your blog posts on social media — this will help drive top-of-funnel traffic — so you don’t have to rely on SEO alone. If your company attends industry events, post which events you’re attending and encourage people to schedule a time to meet with you. And don’t forget to use hashtags and tag people to help drive awareness. Webinars and videos Video content continues to be increasingly popular, and for good reason. It's engaging, shareable, and great for building brand awareness. Always allow for more time to create a video than, say, a blog post due to the additional steps involved. While a blog might consist of an interview, draft, review, edit, and publish process, creating a video includes all that and writing the script, planning the shoot, filming the video, editing the video, and adding music and special effects. All of this takes time and should be planned at least a couple of months in advance of the blog and social posts. For webinars, don’t forget about adding an email campaign. eBooks and whitepapers eBooks and whitepapers are great for lead generation. They provide in-depth information on a specific topic and are perfect for attracting prospects who are interested in what you have to offer. They follow the same basic process as a blog in terms of interviews, drafts, and revisions, but for an eBook you’ll want multiple SMEs and will need additional time for review. Email is another integral part of any content campaign and should definitely be included in the calendar to coincide with social media posts — the idea being, they see the email in their Inbox and then they see a similar post on LinkedIn — this builds brand awareness through repetition. For webinars, you’ll want to send out at least 3 invitation emails, each with new information, that start a month before the event. And always send a follow up email after the event. For emails, you’ll want a simple banner image with your logo, and it’s always a good idea to A/B test Subject lines, email body, and even landing pages. Landing pages To generate leads, you’ll need forms for prospects to fill out. That’s where a well-designed landing page comes into play. To drive visitors to your landing page, you need to include links from your email, blogs, social media, and even pop-ups on your website — so people are funneled into your lead generation platform, like Hubspot. In conclusion, a publishing calendar is an essential tool for effective content marketing. By planning and organizing your content strategy, you'll be able to build your brand's visibility and credibility, while also improving your overall results. For more examples, contact Michael Rohde today and kick-start your publishing calendar today. To gain a competitive edge in your industry, it's crucial to analyze your competitors. You can develop strategies to improve your business by understanding their strengths and weaknesses. However, gathering and analyzing competitor data can be time-consuming and challenging. That's where ChatGPT comes in. In this blog post, we'll show you how to use ChatGPT to analyze your competitors quickly and easily.
Step 1: Gather Data on Your Competitors To analyze your competitors, you'll need to gather data about them. This could include their market share, revenue, customer base, products and services, and marketing strategies. There are several ways to gather this information, including online research, industry reports, and customer feedback. Once you have this data, you can move on to the next step. Step 2: Define Your Research Question Decide on the research question you want to answer. For example, you should know which companies are leading your industry, which are gaining market share, or which companies have the most innovative products. This will help you focus your efforts and obtain the most relevant insights. Step 3: Use ChatGPT to Analyze the Data You can use ChatGPT to analyze the data you've gathered on your competitors. ChatGPT is an AI-powered assistant that can help you find answers to your research questions quickly and accurately. You can ask ChatGPT questions like "What are the top [industry] companies?", "Which companies have the most innovative products in the [industry]?" or "What marketing strategies are effective in the [industry]?". Step 4: Analyze the Results Once you have the results from ChatGPT, you can analyze them to gain insights into your competitors. Look for patterns or trends that could help you understand your competitors better. For example, if you find that one company is consistently gaining market share, you may want to investigate what they're doing differently than your own business. Similarly, if you find that certain marketing strategies are particularly effective, you may want to consider implementing them in your own business. In conclusion, analyzing your competitors is essential for staying ahead in your industry. By using ChatGPT to analyze competitor data, you can quickly and easily gain insights that will help you improve your own business. So why not give it a try? We're confident that you'll find it to be a valuable tool for your business. Modern content marketing techniques such as Inbound Marketing is growing in popularity while cold calls, direct mail, and spamming email are now considered ineffective sales tools. Inbound Marketing is a term used to describe the collective efforts of blogging, SEO/SEM, and social media. You'll know you have an effective Inbound Marketing program when your leads start coming to you. Here are a few good ways to make that happen.
From a top-level perspective, you'll want your marketing content to position your company/product/service as an expert consultant and not a salesperson. You'll want to generate content that provides insight and guidance in a non-threatening manner. When you do this, you'll draw potential customers to initiate contact with you rather than you calling them. Your customers will find you through your blog posts, social media, and Google searches, which is what makes SEO and an SEM such an important part of the equation. As an expert consultant, you will take the time to learn your potential customers pain points and why they would want your services or products. Your blog and social media posts should discuss those pain points in a manner that shows you understand the problem; and then conclude your content with possible solutions that your company can provide to heal their pain, solve their problem, and help them do their job better. You'll want your content to be friendly, confident, and knowledgeable. By doing this, you will establish trust with your potential customers as you are someone who can help them, not sell to them. At a more granular level, you'll want to write blog posts, but that's only the beginning. After you write an introductory post on how your service can help solve pain points, you'll want to turn that post into a video, an infographic, a webinar, and eventually case studies and white papers. And then rinse and repeat that cycle of content repurposing for each of your verticals or business segments. After creating and posting on your site (and optimizing your content for SEO), you'll want to post it where your customers are, for example, if you're B2C, you might want to focus on Facebook, Snapchat, Pinterest, and Twitter; for B2B, you might focus on LinkedIn as well as Facebook and the others. As you start to attract potential visitors to your social media sites and your company site, you'll want to start collecting information from them so you can stay in touch. A simple way of doing that is asking for a visitor's email address so you can answer questions, keep in touch through a newsletter, or you can follow up with additional information. A good CRM is necessary here. Depending on how large (or small) your staff is or what stage your company is in, you could use anything from MailChimp to HubSpot to Marketo to Salesforce or any combination. To effectively put together a solid Inbound Marketing plan, you will need several people involved, including: a writer, an editor, a videographer, a graphic designer, a social media expert and a CRM expert. You could hire an agency to do all of this work for you, but for larger companies or start ups that are ramping up, hiring and building your own content marketing team could make the difference between you and the competition. If you do prefer to keep your marketing efforts in-house, you'll need a professional with experience in all of these areas who can direct a team to create great, lead-generating content that brings the customer to you. A Lifetime Value Strategy is designed to increase your customer’s value during a certain period of time. For example, the lifetime value of your customer begins at the first interaction, their value increases at the first purchase, and their value further increases after repeat purchases and referrals. The total value of your customer shouldn’t end at the initial purchase, rather, your customer’s value should increase as time goes on. In this article, I discuss how to increase the value of your customer over a period of time. Enabling the Customer to Improve Your Company Many marketing strategies that orbit around the idea of Lifetime Value (LTV) focus on the difference between how much it costs to acquire a customer and how much value that customer brings to the company. If it cost $10 to acquire a new customer, but that customer only spent $1 on their initial purchase and then disappears, your company is not going to remain a company for very long. The job of the marketing strategist is to figure out how to increase the value of the customer, so that over the long run, they spend more money than it took to acquire them. One way to do that is to enable the customer to help improve your company. Taking a note from Michael Schrage’s article from the Harvard Business Review, he states that, “customers become much more valuable when… To me, that almost sounds like a focus group on steroids. To collect that kind of information (without herding a group of customers into a closed room), you’ll need an LTV strategy integrated with your Marketing Content Strategy, which coincides with the fourth phase of the buying cycle, which is retention. Not only are you looking to retain your customer, but you’re looking for valuable feedback: how do we improve, what do you want, how do you use the product, what are your pain points, what are your comfort points, and so on. You will need to provide a means for your customers to provide that information, whether through a forum, a chat room, social media accounts, meet ups, interactive webinars, or an opportunity to be showcased in a case study; the avenues to obtain feedback are out there, you just need to implement them. Having an active community that provides feedback, suggestions, reviews, and input are vital to a successful Lifetime Value Strategy. How LTV Applies to the Mobile Game Industry The mobile game industry, as reported in VentureBeat, was worth $91 billion worldwide in 2016. It’s an industry that’s only going to grow as time goes on. And now, with Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality taking off, the mobile space is only going to keep getting larger—which means the competition is only going to get tougher. So, how does the mobile game industry look at the Lifetime Value of their customers? For some, it comes down to Cost per Install (CPI) and Cost per Click (CPC), which translates to: does it cost more to acquire a customer than it does for that customer to install the game, and when they do, how much do we earn through advertising (the value of CPC). If the customer does provide greater value through an initial purchase than it cost to acquire them, then you’re doing great! If not, then you need to look further on how you’re going to increase the customer’s LTV. The first step is to calculate the Lifetime Value of your customers. Lloyd Melnick, author of, Understanding the Predictable: How to calculate, understand, and improve Customer Lifetime Value to build a great company, lists “...three categories of variables used to calculate LTV: Conclusion
Hopefully, this article explained why the Lifetime Value of your customer is very important: not only does it provide a metric that compares spending to customer value, but that by implementing an LTV strategy, combined with your Content Marketing Strategy, you can increase the value of your customer over time—and at the same time improve your company’s product. The initial purchase is only the beginning, after that, you not only need to retain your customer, you need that customer to provide vital feedback. In that way, you can build a supportive community around your successful business. If you are interested in applying a Lifetime Value Strategy to your Content Marketing Strategy, get in touch! |
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