How Marketers Can Drive Sustainable Growth (PROVEN TACTICS) with Adam Erhart | Salesforce+

Marketers have a lot on their plates these days. Competition is at an all time high, there are concerns over inflation, and consumers are demanding more from the brands they do business with than ever before.

Our consumers all over the world are telling us they expect more from brands, they want more from brands and they want to understand and trust the people behind the brands.

And it's up to us as brands and marketers to meet these demands. But don't worry, it's totally doable with the right strategies. I'm Adam Erhart and today I want to unpack a recent episode of Connections, the show for marketers on Salesforce Plus. In this episode, PepsiCo CMO Jane Wakely talks about some key insights into what she and PepsiCo are doing in order to drive sustainable growth for the company. I'm going to take some of the bigger picture ideas she shares and translate them into proven and profitable marketing strategies, tactics and frameworks that you can use right now in order to become a better marketer, grow your business and position yourself and your company for the future. Before we start, if you want to check out the full episodes, you can right after this on Salesforce Plus. It's completely 100% free to watch and there are a ton of other great episodes on there as well. So I'll make sure to put a link down in the descriptions for you to check out right after this video. For now, let's dive right in by taking a look at what Jane calls the science of growth. Marketing is both an art and a science, and the best marketers are the ones that find ways to mix them both together in a kind of business alchemy that makes the whole thing look, feel and sell almost effortlessly. Let's start with the science part first.

There's many, many forms of behavioral science that can inform the way we think, so if pepsic we use System one thinking, we believe that consumers essentially take most of their decisions emotionally, not rationally, and therefore neuroscience has been incredible at unlocking our ability to understand how people react to what we're showing. That's what I mean by the science of growth.

And Jane is totally spot on here. The better you understand how the brain works to evaluate information and make buying decisions, the better all of your marketing is going to work. This is because our brains as humans haven't really changed all that much in tens of thousands of years. We still avoid pain, seek pleasure, and prioritize safety over success. This is why one of the most important things you as a marketer can do is really highlight the end state the outcome or the primary benefit that someone will experience as a result of doing business with you. That's awfully expensive for a pen. No? I mean, sure, some people might look at this and say, it's just a pen, but imagine for a second this is the pen that sets your life on a completely new trajectory that you could have only ever dreamed of before. I'll take all of them, please. In psychology, the act of imagining or helping someone imagine a better future for themselves is called prospection. Big ol fancy word and is the perfect example how we as marketers have access to so many different tools and resources and ideas from the fields of both art and science. And when you combine both the art and science of marketing, you get one step closer to becoming what Jane calls a growth architect.

So I think impact as a CMO comes as partly being what I call a growth architect. Someone that helps vision to the future, bring the outside in, bring the future back.

I love Jane's term of growth architect because no matter how you look at it, growth should always be at the core of marketing. And architecture, much like marketing, is both technical and aesthetic. Technical, because it has to work. After all, nobody cares how pretty your bridge looks if it falls down the second someone steps on it. And aesthetic, because without getting too nerdy here on the science and interpretation of art and beauty, how something looks actually does influence how it's perceived and thereby ultimately how it performs. So the big question then is in an industry like marketing that's so big and so diverse and so full of so many different segments and strategies and sections and stuff, where should you even start in order to reach this elusive and highly prized title of growth architect? First things first. Know thyself. Are you more creative or analytical? There's something in marketing for everyone, from writing social media posts to analyzing and optimizing a campaign. So it's important to be clear about your strengths and weaknesses right from the start. Next team player, Lone wolf. Both can work. So it's important to figure out how much social interaction, both internally with other members on your team and externally with your customers is going to be important to you. Then, how much variety do you enjoy? Do you want every day to be different? Or do you like your calendar to look fairly similar week to week and month to month? And how about different industries? Are there certain markets or businesses or services or products that you care about? If so, pretty much every business out there needs marketing. Finally, and maybe most importantly of all, what areas of marketing interest you the most? Content marketing, Email, SEO, Paid ads. Because no matter how you answered any of the previous questions, there's something inside each of these for everyone. Like Jane said, it's not just about using our own intuition and judgment, because when we match these with science, we become better marketers.

I mean, the one thing that we always know is that our predictions are likely to be wrong. We need to be agile. We need to build in resilience.

And resilience really is the name of the game. In another episode of Connections, Polyderry talked about a similar concept that he called a heat shield in regards to the amount of goodwill you've built up around your brand that allows you to withstand any bad weather that your business might go through. And Kawalirsky also talked about this in another episode when she explained her take on innovation as a way to constantly be mixing data and creativity in order to do more with less. And here Jane explains resilience in this episode by saying how we all need to stay flexible, agile and tuned into the market.

You have to pivot resources very quickly towards tailwinds, towards the future facing growth.

Opportunities, and one of the best ways to stay tuned in and up to date on all the latest and greatest marketing tools, tips and tactics can be found in the rest of the full length episode alongside a ton more great takeaways and lessons that you can learn from not only this episode of Connections, but the entire series where we're talking with some of the world's most creative CMOs. And you can stream it now completely free on Salesforce plus just by clicking the link in the descriptions below this video. And for more actionable takeaways to help you grow your business, make sure to check out the video I've got linked up right here. Talk to you again soon.