Most major advances in technology come with a corresponding leap in complexity. When cars first became common, for example, the need for roads, traffic control, and gas stations suddenly grew exponentially. Database marketing managers are still at the dawn of a new era in marketing tech and are just beginning to outline what the nascent industry needs. Here’s a look at the challenges B2B marketers and database managers are likely to face.
Integrating Social Media and Email Marketing
Both social media and email loom large in marketing impact analytics, but connecting and optimizing these disparate channels remains a primary consideration for database managers. Tracking crossover is also vital for getting a clear image of where to invest further sales and marketing efforts.
Putting Data into Context
We’re swimming in an ocean of data, but we need to know how to contextualize information to navigate these seas. Sound database architecture and database management strategies allow you to see data as more than isolated points of information, instead linking it to a larger framework and relating it to established benchmarks and known quantities.
Keeping Content Flowing
Marketing automation is content-hungry. Content may not seem directly related to data, but it’s a primary data magnet, attracting viable leads and revealing volumes of information about them. Only with plenty of relevant, compelling content can database management experts collect what they need to build a better picture of an audience.
Making Mobile-First Design a Priority
Businesses that are slow to adopt responsive design and a mobile-first strategy are missing data on a major part of their audience. Tracking on mobile platforms is often more challenging for conventional software, so marketing automation is an essential tool to making a mobile-first campaign generate useful data.
Catching Up to Leads on the Buying Journey
The conventional model of marketing depicts marketers and sellers as guides along the winding path of a buying journey. Today, buyers are often the ones blazing trails, and marketers are scrambling to keep up. Leads may go through 50 percent or more of the sales journey without ever appearing on the sales team’s radar; with marketing automation, that can change.
Humanizing Marketing
Automation should never remove the human touch from your database marketing program. It’s the way to organize and streamline the process of connecting with your buyers, not a replacement for that connection. Yet too many marketing database managers look to automation to substitute for personal interactions. Never lose sight of your leads as people, and make sure your marketing strategy does likewise.
Moving at the Speed of Change
Your leads’ attention is more divided than ever, and it’s now measured in micro-moments. If you can get your audience’s attention in those few milliseconds of attention, you’re far ahead of the competition. Data can tell you how to build for micro-moments and put your message where it will get seen.
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