2014: The Year of Marketing

By Jeffrey Hayzlett

When the end of the year winds down, marketers begin winding up. This time is important for a company; this is when they draw up battle plans, rally the troops and lead them into a victorious New Year.

As you develop your marketing plans, do so with a strategic and tactical mindset. To meet your conditions of satisfaction, or the definition of your mission, goals are critical. They’re the stepping-stones for you to keep promises you make to yourself, your company and your customers. Develop a set of achievable goals that include the following tips.

If 2013 showed us anything it’s that content is king. According to WebDAM, 78 percent of CMOs believe custom content is the future of marketing. Capitalize on content marketing by developing a schedule and sticking with it. Decide how many blog posts per week, webinars per month or white papers per quarter you want to participate or write. Develop a schedule with due dates, topics and content. Then follow the plan.

Content is more than the written word. Video content is growing at exponential rates. Michael Litt, CEO of Vidyard, the leading video marketing platform, makes his own bold predictions.

“The majority of your content may be text at the moment; however, with the current shift toward easily consumable media, your sales teams will be begging your marketing teams to create more video assets to share,” Litt said. “If your sales team isn’t already asking for video, it’s only a matter of time before they realize the benefits [and] tools available and ask for an in-house production manager.”

Don’t limit your content; make it mobile friendly too. From landing pages to overall website design, it’s important to be able to be found on any medium in order to take full advantage of second screen technology.

“Second screen — which is anything that happens on a screen other than the one you are watching your program on — is going to keep on growing,” says Alan Wolk, global lead analyst at Piksel. “It’s much more than just Twitter and ‘social TV,’ which is just one of ‘4 S’s‘ we’ve identified for second screen content, the others being Stories, Stats and Shopping. So that’s a lot of types of content that you can use to create engagement beyond live tune-in.”

Piksel recently did a study on binge viewing which revealed pretty interesting statistics. “Only 18 percent of the audience exclusively watch(es) their favorite programs live. That means there’s a huge opportunity to engage those super fans after they’ve finished watching and to then create an ad market around all that second screen content,” Wolk said.

After creating content and making it friendly across different platforms, share it! Social media is the highest and best use of OPM – “other people’s money.” Distribute content across multiple social media platforms. Don’t limit yourself to Facebook or Twitter.

Virginie Glaenzer, vice president of marketing for LiveWorld, knows this all too well: “Everybody is different, and every social network has its own personality. One type can’t fit all. By understanding better the uniqueness of each social network, one can reach different target audiences.”

“Social media makes it easy to engage with customers using content marketing strategies,” Glaenzer said.
She added, “The variety works in marketing’s favor, as it forces organizations to think of what is in it for others. This is the real opportunity: to shift the ‘What’ into the ‘Why.’ Transforming your business story into why it matters to customers can be achieved through greater listening and engaging on social media networks.”

The final piece of this battle plan is marketing ROI. Without it, the c-suite has no way of knowing whether their marketing dollars are reaching maximum effectiveness. “Everyone is talking about Marketing ROI, but not many are doing it. For those that are, their company performance is greater than its peer set that is not,” said Jeff Winsper, founder and president of Black Ink.

In order to combat that, marketers must realize that enterprise marketing ROI does not equal campaign level ROI. To really impress the c-suite, Winsper said, “All too often marketers measure the tactical means to the end, not the end game. Enterprise marketing ROI must be reported the same way as executive management reports, with margin, revenue and net present value KPIs.”

The New Year brings a fresh start and new opportunities to the c-suite. Pay attention to these key areas as you sit with your teams to continue formulating plans for 2014. In doing so, you are creating the foundation for you, your team and your company to meet your conditions of satisfaction — and bring home marketing victories.

Jeffrey Hayzlett is a global business celebrity and speaker, bestselling author, Contributing Editor and Host of C-Suite with Jeffrey Hayzlett on Bloomberg Television. He is the CEO of The Hayzlett Group, an international strategic business consulting company focused on leading change and developing high growth companies.
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