Of the many demands on marketers, messaging is considered among the most difficult to deliver.
We want our brand’s message to convey the perfect balance of being fresh and creative while striking a chord of inner recognition. Not only do we need to hit this combination repeatedly, but we need to do so quickly if we want to elevate our brand in this fast-paced digital world.
It’s a tough standard to meet — and many businesses turn out bland or predictable content in their efforts to keep up. Even worse, some try to ride an outdated trend or speak to a need that no longer exists. Stale, repetitive messaging makes any company look like a dinosaur. To stay in the spotlight, you need high-impact marketing, with compelling messages delivered swiftly to the most relevant targets.
To be blunt, you need marketing that moves at the speed of ideas. There’s no time for coasting in our world — not anymore.
Let’s talk here about an overused buzzword: innovation. There’s nothing wrong with innovation per se, but it must fulfill a customer need — creating something new doesn’t mean anything when no one needs it. And by its very definition, innovation has a shelf life. After a short time, an innovative product becomes the status quo, and the audience tunes out.
In marketing terms, this means your messaging must stay inventive and meaningful.
Digital life moves fast; the explosion of touchpoints and channels means customers are perpetually thirsty for new content. They want immediate satisfaction, whether they’re looking for a new product or a promotion from their favorite brand. And with the never-ending flow of media and information, it takes bold campaigns to grab the eyes and minds of these leads and customers.
If you’re a marketer, you’re already living and working in this world. The rush will not slow down to accommodate your brand, which leaves you with two choices: adapt to this new warp speed or disappear. The problem? Most marketers have no idea how to operate at this rate.
The Greed For Speed
If all of this sounds familiar, you may be one of the marketers who wants to accelerate but isn’t sure how. So here’s some good news. Achieving this kind of marketing velocity is possible; you just need the right tools and the right practices, as outlined below.
Cultural Shift. Many marketing teams still operate through planned quarterly cycles and ossified processes. The idea is that solid, reliable structures lead to solid, reliable results. This idea no longer applies in our new marketing world; successful marketers are leaving behind rigid structures and formal processes to embrace a more organic and spontaneous marketing infrastructure.
Real-Time Data. This is the key to figuring out what people need and delivering it on the fly. By incorporating behavioral data, customer feedback, response rates and other data, you’ll modify and multiply your campaigns to release a new batch of messages that triggers precise audience needs and interests.
Nuanced Campaigns. The marketplace is always mutating. New buzzwords, catchphrases, headlines and jokes spread like wildfire within moments. By staying flexible enough to quickly respond to emerging influences, you can reflect these changing nuances in your campaigns.
Brands stuck in slow marketing cycles try to do this and fail, because their references are inevitably stale by the time the work gets released. But marketers with the right tools can unleash laser-sharp campaigns in real time that perfectly mirror the tenor of the cultural conversation.
Grabbing The Spotlight. That same flexibility will also help you plug into existing buzz and harness its existing power for your own brand. Wily marketers do this by paying attention to current phenomena and seizing opportunities to jump into the spotlight.
By noticing a high-profile conversation on a sports or entertainment development, and creating a clever and well-timed response, you can insert your brand into the conversation — no heavy lifting required.
Creativity. Marketing teams usually have plenty of creative talent to offer, but the limitations of existing technology have often curtailed that firepower and forced their ideas into limited, generic templates. Today’s latest digital tools have changed all that, offering marketers unprecedented creative control.
Brands can create customized, highly distinctive assets that reflect their unique brand feel and business objectives, while testing out different flavors of campaigns. By offering highly creative and interactive digital experiences, these new assets grab attention and make a bold impact.
Syncing Across Channels. Nothing slows down marketing like having separate teams create their own ideas and campaigns, and then discuss ways to work together. Our multi-channel world demands a synchronized brand look and feel across all channels, with unified campaigns that adapt to a variety of mobile, social and digital platforms — instantly.
Agile Marketing. Just like their counterparts in tech, agile marketers practice collaboration, communication and rapid cycles, all to keep campaign creation as flexible and powerful as possible. That means monitoring and modifying campaigns on the fly, discarding elements that aren’t performing and generating targeted campaigns for any new audiences identified by the data.
If all of this sounds like a big change from your current marketing infrastructure, remember that marketing at the speed of ideas also delivers instant results. From grabbing attention to establishing lasting engagement and a bold brand reputation, your quicker marketing lifecycle will keep you competitive and positioned for even greater success in a world that shows no signs of slowing down.
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