5 Things You Can Learn From Marketing Trailblazers

Find out what marketing innovators are doing well

A trailblazer is someone who is a pioneer, an innovator who makes a new track in the wild country. They make a path for others to follow.

In marketing, it’s important to follow the ones who are blazing the path for others to follow. Marketing trailblazers are lifelong learners who transform their companies. They inspire others with their innovation and make the marketing profession better.

Let’s dive into what fearless marketing trailblazers are embracing to drive innovation in the marketing profession. Here are five things they are doing well.

1. They Use Technology Wisely and Simply

Many marketers get carried away with tools and technology. There are a lot of digital marketing tools available in the marketplace. Marketing trailblazers are always looking for new tools to incorporate into the marketing technology stack, but they use marketing technology wisely and simply.

Marketing automation and other technology tools can help the marketing team and everyone at your company. Yet, marketing trailblazers know there are downsides in relying too much on technology. Technology can overshadow skills and blind spots.

Technology needs to be used the same by everyone, but certain people in an organization can only handle so many things, especially salespeople. Marketing trailblazers conduct technology audits a few times a year because they know less is more. They know efficiency is the goal of marketing.

For example, according to Gartner’s Digital Marketing Transit Map, they cataloged more than 1,800 vendors to create this map. There’s a lot of breadth and depth to digital marketing. Marketing trailblazers know they can’t tackle all of the tracks at once so they prioritize with a marketing strategy.

A tool may be underutilized, unnecessary anymore, or not deployed properly. Marketing trailblazers know over-complication of technology leads to less value and wasted time. Before they can go faster, they must standardize their tools to complete the main mission of marketing: lead generation and demand generation.

2. They Know Feedback Is Critical to Success

Marketing trailblazers know they need to talk to customers and be the eyes and the ears of the customer. They know the better the understanding of the customer’s world, the better decisions they can make about marketing and how to guide the company in the right direction.

Successful marketers know the power of feedback, and the feedback helps with data enrichment. Feedback can help with messaging decisions so marketing creates better attention-getting content that generates more leads. By using customer feedback, marketing can make better decisions about pricing and packaging of products and services.

Marketing trailblazers use customer feedback to make sure new products and services have the features, packaging, and pricing that resonate with customers and prospects. For example, HubSpot redesigned their pricing page and it increased their marketing qualified lead (MQL) conversions by 165% and free sign-ups by 89%. They conducted qualitative user testing on their old pricing page to determine what was and wasn’t working.

Successful marketers master the flywheel model that relentlessly builds momentum so they don’t lose it, and so their company moves from good to great. The smartest marketers in the world can’t do it on their own and need to use feedback to find out what’s not working and what is working.

3. They Earn Trust Quicker

Marketing trailblazers know that to earn trust, you need people to like you. Marketing is a people’s business. No matter how good your product or service is, it’s a person selling to another person. People don’t do business with people they don’t like.

Successful marketers don’t get caught up with branding, colors, positioning, and messaging. They know that people have to like your brand and tell their friends about your company. The most successful marketers concentrate on thought leadership because it helps build the brand, open new doors, and close deals.

Research from Edelman and LinkedIn found most marketers significantly undervalue the power of thought leadership, impacting their demand, and lead generation efforts. Trust plays a critical part in today’s digital age, and it quickly shapes a company’s brand perception and a buyer’s confidence. One of the major drivers of improving trust is by producing authentic thought leadership content.

Marketing trailblazers position their company’s subject experts as thought leaders in their industry. This helps their company shorten sales cycles, increase credibility, and subtly sell their products and services. Research shows 58% of decision-makers said thought leadership influenced them to work with that organization, and 55% of decision-makers use thought leadership pieces to vet potential vendors.

Successful marketers know that a customer’s experience will determine whether or not they buy from you. It will determine if they tell their family and friends about you. Thought leadership and customer experience are the new demand generation.

4. They Know Marketing Is Now Sales

Great marketers know that marketing is changing, and marketing is taking a bigger part of the sales cycle. According to Gartner, 57% of the buying journey is done before a sales representative is involved. In the business to business (B2B) world, Gartner says a typical buying group involves six to ten decision makers‚ each consuming four to five pieces of content independently about a complex solution.

This dynamic of a large buying committee makes marketing more like sales because they need to educate the buyer before they are ready to buy and talk to a salesperson. They are handling more of a typical sales cycle. Marketing trailblazers know that the most important thing marketers can do is to better educate potential customers and increase the productivity of sales.

For example, a potential customer of the cloud-based work management software company Upland Software asked them about how to solve one of their content problems. Marketing quickly answered the question in a blog post, advancing the sales cycle with the prospect.

Successful marketers enable salespeople to have meaningful and insightful conversations, so they are successful on the first call or virtual meeting. According to Corporate Visions, 74% of buyers choose the sales representative who was the first to add value and insight.

Effective marketers also enable their sales teams with content to follow up after a call or meeting. They do it by making sure their sales teams use the sales enablement content they produce. According to Forrester, 60-70% of the content produced by B2B companies goes unused.

Marketing trailblazers make sure their teams can follow them on the trail by making sure their sales team uses their content, and it doesn’t sit in a portal or on the website. Effective marketers enable their sales team to have better conversations with buyer insights, so salespeople positively come across to future customers with a lot of empathy and a deep understanding of their problems.

Marketing is the new sales because marketers are now tasked with building relationships and empowering sales teams with tools, context, and insights on how to solve customer problems. Marketing is now responsible for helping sales (and potential customers) buy from their business by facilitating relationship building that’s at the heart of marketing and sales.

5. They Experiment A Lot

Marketing is constantly changing, and what worked yesterday may not work today or tomorrow. Marketing trailblazers are always testing to see what works today. They are always experimenting.

Successful marketers don’t worry about making mistakes. Mistakes help marketers learn about customers and challenge the status quo. Marketing trailblazers don’t believe that’ll never work because they always testing to see what works.

Effective marketers know that the way they have always done something is the way they will lose their jobs as marketers. They are looking to do things differently, and their biggest risk is to not take a risk. Marketing trailblazers are encouraging their talented teams to bring new ideas to the table.

For example, Experian tested their email subject lines to see if emojis made an impact. They found by including an emoji in the subject line, they had a 56% higher open rate compared to email subject lines that were just text-based.

Marketing trailblazers look for interesting ideas and test them out. If they observe something and want to know if their theory is true, they test the idea because that’s the best way to reach a goal. They don’t see experiments as failures, but as opportunities to learn and grow.

Bringing It All Together

Marketing trailblazers are leading the way in shaping marketing. They are doing these things well:

• They use technology wisely and simply
• They know feedback is critical to success
• They earn trust quicker
• They know marketing is now sales
• They experiment a lot

You can learn a lot from marketing trailblazers who leave a path for us to follow. They embrace failure, they are constantly learning, and they constantly pursue success by stepping outside of their comfort zone because the only way to grow is to get comfortable being uncomfortable.