How To Clarify Your Business Value & Make Customers Care w/ Adam Erhart | Connections on Salesforce+

With everybody competing for your customers attention. Getting customers to not only notice but actually care about your brand is harder today than ever before.

We think we need to be helpful. We need to provide a solution. We need to educate. We need to go above and beyond brand storytelling to really do something more.

Smart marketers know this and are finding new and creative ways to better connect with their market. Customers aren't afraid to spend, but they've become pickier and expect personalized experiences, socially conscious companies and the ability to interact and engage with brands when and where they want, making omnichannel marketing pretty much mandatory. But all these things take time and cost money and raise the level of marketing complexity. 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, Bloomberg Media CMO Anne Kawalerski talks about some key insights into what she and Bloomberg are doing in order to be ready for whatever's ahead. 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 stay ahead of the curve, create better, more effective marketing campaigns, and get more from less 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 start unpacking one of the most important psychological marketing principles to understand why customers buy. To remain competitive today, it's not enough to know who your customers are and what they care about. You also need to know why you.

Are big on learning from your audience. You recently conducted a huge audience survey. Tell me about it. We know that they are successful in and out of the office, but we didn't know what they cared about why. And some interesting findings came out of that. So first and foremost, not only do they want to succeed, they actually want to change the world. That's a huge ambition. And so how do we, as sort of a content news insight provider, feed them and empower them to do that?

The way consumers see themselves determines their behavior. If a consumer believes themselves to be socially responsible, valuable, conscious, but still trendy and cool, they'll make buying decisions that confirm those beliefs. On the other hand, if a consumer sees themselves as smart, sophisticated, and having exquisite tastes they'll operate from a completely different frame of mind and their purchase decisions are likely to look very different. If you can align your business, brand and marketing with how customers see themselves, or more powerfully, how they want to see themselves, then you can align yourself with their most deep rooted values and beliefs. Customers don't buy when they understand, they buy when they feel understood. This is why one of the most powerful things you can do in marketing is try to really understand your customer. Not just on a superficial demographic level like age, gender, income, occupation, but really dive deep into what I call their miseries and miracles. Your customers miseries are all of their pains, problems, fears and frustrations. All the things they're presently dealing with and would love to find a solution for. Their miracles, on the other hand, are all of their wants and needs and goals and desires, all the things they're trying to get to. Your job is to show them how your business can help them bridge the gap from where they are right now, their miseries, to where they want to go. They're miracles. And the only way to do that well is by first understanding exactly what it is that matters most to them. Which just so happens to be where data driven marketing comes into play. Doing marketing without any clear goal or direction or understanding of what you're doing and why is a recipe for disaster. After all, if you launch a new marketing campaign and it fails well, you don't know what to fix in order to make it better next time. And if you launch a marketing campaign and it works well, you don't know why or what was responsible for its success. Which means you can't replicate this strategy again in the future with any sense of predictability. But first, there's another connections clip that I want to share with you to help all this make more sense.

I see innovation almost being a hub within marketing and the creativity because thinking outside the box, like new ideas, it's a job as a marketer to do that. And so being able to do that as it applies to revenue is so important. So important, I think to the point on data too, not losing sight of that side of your brain and that side of the job too, of the really the mix of the rigor and the data with the creativity and sort of the, the inspiring part of what we do.

Tracking the performance of your marketing is one of the fastest ways to scale up your business. And not tracking the performance of your marketing is one of the fastest ways to sync your entire empire. The key though is finding the balance between data, creativity and revenue. I have A system that I use for this that I'm going to break down for you in just a minute. But the big question then is how do you balance data, creativity and revenue in a way that gets results, makes everyone happy, and doesn't compromise the brand? Well, my friend, the answer can be found in a four part framework that I call Data, Design, Deploy, Defend. Part one is data. Because every good marketing strategy starts by taking a look at your audience, insights, market research, and any other information you have to help make sure you're doing the right things in the right place for the right people. Once you have that, you move on to part two, design, where you can start putting together the big idea, the copying creative and the messaging. Then it's time to deploy. So press, publish, get that stuff out there. Because the best idea in the world won't do a thing if it's just sitting there on your computer. Remember, nobody can buy from you if they don't know you exist. Then when all that's said and done, it's time for my favorite part of this whole process. Step four, Defend. It's here that you make sure that your marketing is accountable. So measure your results, see if your hypothesis was correct, and determine whether the campaign was a success or not and what needs to be tweaked or modified to make it even better the next time. One of my favorite parts from the interview is when Ann says the days.

Of here are my soft metrics on marketing and sort of. We are increasingly going to have to show tangible hard metrics that correlate marketing spend with revenue growth.

This is what I call accountable marketing. Marketing that's not done for more likes or more comments or more shares, but marketing that generates real business growth in the form of new leads, new customers and new sales. So to help you do that, no matter where your business is at, I want to share with you a few tips on how to maximize your marketing budget so you can get more from less.

You do literally have to do more with less. So what are you not going to do?

This next part is going to sound simple, but stick with me. The best way to maximize your marketing budget is to do more of what works, less of what doesn't. Yeah, that was pretty deep. I know. But this is where you get to tie together the importance of knowing who your customers really are alongside building data driven marketing campaigns. Because when you do, things get a whole lot more effective and profitable and fun. For example, when you're clear on who your target audience is, where they're present and active online and what kind of media and content they enjoy, you can focus all of your energy on that and avoid wasting time and money and energy on platforms and channels where you're unlikely to find them. When you know your customer lifetime value your clv, you can then work out an acceptable amount to spend in order to acquire a new customer. And when you know your customer acquisition cost your cac, you can start measuring different campaigns and platforms against each other in order to find the ones that give you the biggest bang for your marketing buck. But we've only just scratched the surface, and there are 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 CMOs from every industry. And you can stream it now completely free on Salesforce plus just by clicking the link down in the descriptions below this video and for more actionable takeaways to help you grow your business, make sure to check check out the video I've got linked up right here. So check that out now and I'll talk to you again soon.