I’m going to let you in on a little secret. It’s taken me my entire career to learn this.
The silver bullet to success with marketing automation is…
THERE ISN’T ONE, DAMMIT. STOP LOOKING FOR IT.
The temptation of the shiny object
Our industry is obsessed with hyperbole and the next big thing. If I had a dollar for every time I heard:
“The playbook is broken…”
“Everything has changed…”
“Modern marketers are doing [fill in the latest buzzword].”
…then we could all be spending our days doing something a little like this:
Don’t get me wrong — thinking about the future is vital.
But if you’re looking for the martech equivalent of that “one weird trick to lose your belly fat in 30 days,” you will be disappointed.
There’s no substitute for strategy and disciplined execution
When things aren’t quite working the way you hoped, it’s tempting to succumb to the lure of this “playbook is broken” messaging.
But the companies that are killing at aren’t fluttering from shiny object to shiny object. They’re crafting a thoughtful strategy. And then they’re executing. And then revising the plan. And then executing some more.
The fundamentals are as relevant as ever
Sure, a lot of things have changed. We need to grow and evolve. We need to be ahead of market shifts and the competition. And that’s on top of (not in place of) rolling up our sleeves and doing the hard work involved in the foundational tasks of digital marketing.
There is still so much bad marketing out there — and this is actually a good thing. In many market spaces, you will leapfrog the competition just by executing the basics well.
I can’t tell you how many companies I hear ranting and raving about the “next big thing” – AI, machine learning, bots, augmented reality – and then you turn around and look at their website and it’s some amateur shit. Or they don’t even have a content calendar or a written marketing plan.
There’s an abundance of room at the top — so claim your spot!
Okay, okay </rant>.
The main point I’m getting at is that there’s so much opportunity for companies who understand digital marketing and customer experience to get ahead and win. And the beauty of digital marketing is that it rewards people more for the width of their brains than the width of their wallets.
So here’s to the marketers out there fighting the good fight and showing up every day to ship amazing work. I’m rooting for you, dudes!
