Digital Marketing: 4 Must-Have Core Competencies

Point of View: A high-level review of a recent blog post or article and M2C's point of view on the topic.

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Blog Post: 4 Must-Have Digital Marketing Core Competencies by Vala Afshar, April 27, 2014

Synopsis: Vala wrote an excellent blog post boiling digital marketing compentencies and best practices down to a focus on 4 'things':

1. Customer engagement strategy: Since 60 - 70 percent of the buying process takes place before the buyer contacts a vendor, executing more campaigns just isn't enough. Instead, you need to focus on delivering content that engages the buyer and initiates a conversation, a dialogue.
2. Influence marketing: Because of the change in the buying process, you need to find ways for the buyer to find you versus you finding the buyer. This is about content. Vala writes, " According to B2B Magazine, 'content marketing' is one of the top priorities for marketing in 2014. Content marketing was listed as a top priority by the Altimeter Group. In a recent survey, 78 percent of CMOs think content is the future of marketing. 
3. Data-driven marketing and the power of contextual intelligence: The focus on data is increasingly important as marketers move away from 'mass marketing' towards a segmented approach - even to achieve the 'segments of one' - micro-segments that target each buyer in a unique way so you can convert them into a long-term, high-value customer. Data provides us with the information to better know our buyers and engage in developing an authentic relationship with them. Marketers also need data to know exactly what is working and not working so they can prove success and makes changes for continued success.
4. Marketing automation (lead nurturing, marketing campaign influences, sales enablement): It is difficult, if not impossible, to do segments of one without social listening skills that come from integrating social CRM and social listening technologies into marketing automation tools.You can't respond to customers in real, or near-real time without these tools. Sales and marketing automation tools have also done much to dramatically improve the adversarial relationship between sales and marketing. With these tools, you can answer questions like, 'Do we have the right content?', 'Do we have the right skills to market in this new world?,' and 'How are we integrating this process throughout the entire organization?'. You can't consider yourself a digital marketing without these automation tools.

M2C Point of View: Excellent synopsis of what digital marketers need to do but I'd like to add / emphasize a few points.

With influence marketing, it is important to include industry 'influencers' in the equation; that means finding ways to reach out to more just just the media and analysts but industry subject matter experts that cover your technology areas. Look for bloggers who may have an interest in your content and invite them to collaborate with you on thought leadership content - invite them as a guest blogger or key speaker at a digital or live company event. The marketplace looks to these individuals for counsel and advice so make it a priority to build appropriate relationships just as you would with the media and industry analysts.

Point 4 above talks to the relationship between sales and marketing. If the leadership between sales and marketing is not aligned, neither will the team members be aligned. In addition to leveraging marketing and sales automation tools to help improve the relationship, also consider using consultants to assist. For example, many organizations call in sales training consultants such as Sandler Training to assist in building out sales teams and scale up sales training. Many times, these organizations are working with the sales team coaching them on how to better drive business, follow-up on leads, drive deals through the pipeline. If your sales team is constantly complaining about the quality of the leads your marketing team is providing, you may want to consider bringing in an organization such as Sandler to asses real-time the quality of the marketing leads and the follow-up techniques your sales team follows. To assure success of such an engagement, make sure your CEO is committed.

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Digital marketing is an exciting evolution for us B2B marketers but if you aren't executing basic marketing techniques such as sales / marketing alignment, integrated marketing, targeting / segmentation, etc., your digital marketing plans will fail regardless of your creativity.

Your thoughts???