2022 The Year In Marketing
You know the saying, "The more things change, the more they stay the same?" This is how I think about marketing in 2022. Marketing is constantly figuring things out: better data, better audience understanding, better content, better tools, and better tactics. Everything is better. And nothing translates easily from one company to another. Marketing is constantly learning and adapting. That won't change in 2023, but hopefully we can start laying the groundwork to help marketers learn to figure things out, not just tell them what to do.
Because legacy SaaS can only identify up to 5% of a brand's website visitors at any given time, marketing executives say that raw data has the least positive impact on revenue. Brands must find a way to unlock first-party data as a new performance channel to offset the loss of third-party cookies.
why? How often do we get to have that conversation that we need our data to build the right marketing and sales programs? In 2022, ownership of first-person data was a big deal, and I can bet that we're heading into 2023 when many companies are still trying to achieve this. These are data/technology silos, but there's more to it, because your own data, while important, isn't the only one you need. I look forward to digging into this data in 2023.
[Tai] Heath said that marketers always ask, "What are other people doing?" It's true that marketers care about what's going on in their industry and how their competition is doing their marketing. Then they go out and do the same thing. It might be a little different, but if it works for one brand, it definitely works for their brand, right? Why try to reinvent the marketing campaign?
why? Heath shared some marketing trends that go against conventional marketing and I loved it. Yes, there are proven tactics that reputable marketers will stake their reputation on. But, oh, to be able to try something new, to stand out from the crowd, not because it's a different style, but because it's a different tactic that works! The pressure to get results is quickly getting in the way of marketing. Finding a company to work with that understands practicality and marketing acumen is key.
I think the big thing here is that we're seeing these customers double their investment in ABM, and by that I mean specifically their investment in targeted account sharing. Not just in brand awareness and not just in the pipeline. Those who focus their investments on the entire revenue driver, on the entire customer life cycle, and strive to get the most out of each of these stages.
why? Ah, ABM: Who doesn't love to talk about account-based marketing? And we seem to have talked about it a lot in 2022. Companies understand this, but they also change, and Natalie Cunningham of Terminus has done this very well. The main point? Find the right target accounts and do more than capture acquisition strategies; Marketing needs to think about ABM throughout the customer lifecycle.
As the choice grows, marketers get frustrated and don't always know how to choose the best technology for their stack or how everything fits together. In another report , From Digital Transformation to Digital Evolution: Survival is Faster , 57% of marketers either fully or partially agreed that "the marketing technology landscape is so confusing that it's hard to understand how different products fit together."
why? When the Martech Landscape report came out in June, there were just under 10,000 solutions. Now there are more than 10,000 of them. Marketers only have a choice when choosing the technology to help them run their software. At some point this growth has to stop, right? Will the economy and inflation significantly affect how this list looks next year? Time will tell. In the meantime, remember: technology is enabling; This is not the answer. And sometimes bigger isn't always better, but other times entering a niche creates a problem.
My gaming contact and my main client share the same philosophy: more content means more audience, which equals more value.
As Luke Skywalker once said, "Wow! Every word in that sentence was wrong."
why? Next. Next. Next. you like you like (Here I am singing an old unrelated song). Every business needs a good content strategy before it needs more content. The problem is that some people think that you create a content-rich editorial calendar and that's it. Just start posting to channels. It's more complex, and marketers need to be smarter and more willing to adapt to change. More content makes us an audience, but great content that serves an audience, no matter how small or small, will set us apart.
Evangelist is not a job title; It's a way of life. This means that evangelicals must love what they preach. No matter how great a man is, if he does not like the cause, he cannot be a good ambassador for it.
why? I've spoken to several leading evangelists this year, and this is clearly not a "marketing" role. These people live and breathe the ideas that drive companies to create products and services. This is a role that brands should consider as they have the opportunity to draw attention to themselves. But there is also a caveat. Evangelicals can go and do. And when they disappear, who will protect your thoughts and ideas?
It can also make your content hub more productive by consistently delivering multi-channel content. But the mindset of collective creation affects quality.
why? Very well, that's why consumers today have to analyze so much "stuff" online. Great content doesn't have to be polished videos, podcasts, white papers, or infographics. Quality content isn't about the presentation, it's about the content itself. Marketers need to spend more time creating content that their customers and audiences want and need, and that take time to understand.
The B2B OS metadata concept would automate a long list of "battle-tested" playbooks that could perform "millions of marketing tasks." It will handle all those regular and repetitive tasks that marketers do every day. But the vision is actually more than that.
why? So this article focuses on a specific Metadata.io platform that they call B2B OS. But the concept itself is worth discussing, whether it comes from this company or another. Marketers have to work through multiple systems and interfaces to do simple things, and time is running out. Marketing automation was supposed to be the answer - it's not. I think this is an area with a lot of potential for the next few years.
Of course, she [Anne Handley] didn't mean that marketing is mostly spam, but she clearly explained what most marketers know: there are many strategies and tactics in marketing, and they are moving forward. While it's hard to keep track of them all, it's impossible to use them all at once, and it's hard to know which ones to use when.
why? If you're a marketer and feeling overwhelmed, I don't blame you. We are inundated with tactics and technology and it shows no signs of slowing down. Keeping up with new things, learning what works and what doesn't for your business, and having to support multiple departments can be overwhelming. Training is very important to help traders understand things and know the right way. Brands that understand this and act accordingly will be more successful in maintaining the strength and effectiveness of their marketing teams.
We came when we were writing the book and thought, "Oh, we know what marketing is." I built the brand marketing at Bardot; I was at Salesforce and we built Terminus. We know exactly what we are doing in terms of marketing. And now I'm leaving after a year thinking, "My God, there's so much to learn in the world of marketing." There is a lot of shade. There are many different ways to do this. There are many ways to think about it.' So now I am more of a market student than a market expert.
why? If ABM is the theme of 2022 (which it certainly seems to be), then GTM (go-to-market) will be the theme of 2023. We're already seeing this term used everywhere, not just in marketing. 2023 will be the year brands realize they may need more of a GTM approach, or realize they're wrong and need to refocus. The key to marketing will be understanding the models, how marketing fits into them, and how this will change the way they work today. The most interesting part has just begun.
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