Long story short – after years of being a developer switched to managing our own product team and finally turned to marketing (and sales) almost full time.
Since then, I've been teaching myself and dealing with pretty much every area of online marketing – from strategy to content to email to paid to social to search – with mixed results.
However, I feel like I still lack the big picture, the underlying structure of it all – so even when I'm doing great in one particular area (say, SEO) I'm never sure I should be in this specific area right now at all, especially when good results in one area don't move the business needle at all.
The lack of work experience as a marketer really doesn't help here. Can you teach all of this yourself being your own marketing team? Do you find a mentor or hire a marketing person and learn while working with them? Do you just take a break from your business and go work in marketing as an intern?
There are tons of great guides on every marketing aspect, but what's the best way to get the big picture right? I imagine that's something a new CMO goes through when joining a new company.
There are so many answers to that question, but the critical thing is that you have to be tuned in to your organization's strategic goals. You have to know what the organization wants to accomplish -- and why --- before you can offer guidance on the best way to get there and how to measure your success.
As an example...your marketing initiatives would be different if your organization's main goal is to increase your share in an existing market vs. expand your offerings in an existing market vs. enter a brand new market.
At the risk of seeming overly promotional, I think you might find some of your answers in my content marketing blog. My focus is on cutting through "best practice" hype and focusing on what actually matters to the business. It's www.patttipodnar.com/blog/, and feel free to contact me with questions.
Sales, which you are noting. Coming from being a developer to business development is not easy because you lack real-world experience in sales and marketing. The key components are who is your core customer? What pain point(s) are you solving for your core customer? Who are your competitors? What differentiates your product/service from competitors? Your product/ service has to have a purpose in the marketplace and your marketing must communicate the purpose and value to prospects. Indirect marketing pales in results compared to direct sales. I've built and led 3 successful sales teams and I have been first in national sales and entered the list at fifth. On a call I could quickly assess what your company offers, where it fits in today's market and what advantages you can take. Finally, no, a chief marketing officer would not face your dilemmas because a CMO would need experience and a successful track record to get hired.
I am Priyanka...
First things first, take a deep breath. Okay. Now, ask yourself one question, “What are you currently spending your time on?” Be honest. If you feel like inbound is taking way too much time, you may be falling victim to one of two things.
You are spending more time thinking about your marketing than you are actually doing it. Unfortunately, this won’t help drive results or ROI.
You are focusing on the wrong activities to the results you want. This is also not good.
To be successful with inbound marketing, it’s essential to be conscious of how you are spending your time. Once you can do that, you are on your way to being a more productive inbound marketer. With such awareness of your time spent, it is easier to decide what to stop doing, what to start doing and what to continue doing.
Before we can reach inbound marketing bliss, let’s talk about the habit-breaking and habit-making that can get us there.
1. Keep Track of Time Spent on Training & Research
To understand this have to go in detail.
. Plan Ahead
If you are already setting aside time to plan ahead with your marketing, give yourself a pat on the back - this can be tough to stick to! If you are not yet scheduling planning sessions, it’s time to start. A planning session is not just designed to help you plan out your blog titles for the next 4 weeks, but also to give you an opportunity to see what has been working and what has not.
. Get Comfortable with the Imperfections
Worrying about publishing only the most perfect marketing pieces? Give yourself a break! For many marketers, aesthetic perfection in the final product of their work is almost non-negotiable. That might make this hard to hear, but seeking perfection is the top killer of being productive.
Organize Your Inbox
These days, there are many theories about improving email and inbox productivity. No matter what methodology you believe, what's most important is that your inbox works for you, but does not dictate your day. Grouping content together by type, and even going so far as to setup filters, can alleviate the crippling feeling of a growing inbox and way too much content to feasibly read in one day. This also allows you to find your content when you have the time to digest it, not necessarily the second it appears in your inbox.
For further queries you can consult me.
Proactive BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT outreach, hands down, no questions about it, period, full-stop.
One-to-many leverages your time and resources the absolute most you possibly can... especially as you begin to master the process for your specific niche.
Question #1: WHO do your prospects already trust?
Question #2: WHY would they promote you?
Question #3 (since I'm an SEO guy at heart): HOW can you get them to link to your website?
To get the big picture right, pick up a good book on strategy. I highly recommend reading Good strategy bad strategy. It might not seem applicable to marketing directly but it will help you put together a strategic framework you can use to solve any problem and how to think strategically.
Once you have done that, put together all the high level questions you need to figure out in a doc: What problem are we solving? Who are we selling to? Are they looking for something like this or do we need to educate them about this product? What triggers/events lead them to look for something like this? Why are they buying from us? Where do they go when they are looking to buy something like this?
Once you have put these larger questions down, your day to day will help you figure these questions out and the more clarity you have on them, the more you will be able to focus on doing the right things instead of just doing a lot of things marketing blogs might ask you to do.
Hi, Andy Jacob here...Make sure your customers like your product or service!
Identify how/where/why you're getting closed business and hammer that channel/method.
Then build a team of specialists and operate as a GM/coordinator.
What's your ICP? How do you find them?
1) The best way to look at your data. Depending on what platform you use for example: Google Analytics first take a look at your GA account. Pay close attention to top pages, referring sources, time on site of those and bounce rate etc.
2) Find someone with similar niche and discuss these issues.
3) Use FREE tools like AHREF, Majestic SEO etc.
4) Similar web is a good website also.
Unfortunately, it's impossible for a single person to focus properly on multiple big pictures, and many of the things you list here each belong in their own photo album. I've never met a stellar marketer who is also stellar at SEO.
Your best bet is to choose your real niche and then surround yourself with great players who also need people to bounce things off. I bring in other people all the time because - newsflash - you can't be great at everything. Focus on too much and the best you can hope for is mediocrity across the board.
