Marketing Strategies To Innovate, Learn, & Connect with Your Audience w/ Adam Erhart | Salesforce+

Successful marketers need to remain relevant, updated and innovative to stay ahead.

Are you doing the job that the customer hired you for? And I think if you always think about that, the core no matter what product you're selling and thinking about at scale, you will always serve your customer right.

And while constantly trying to come up with new and better ideas can seem like an overwhelming task, there are a few proven things that you can do that are going to make your job a whole lot easier and more profitable. 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, Poshmark CMO Stephen Tristan Young talks about innovation and trends, lessons that you can learn from other industries, the power of listening to your consumers and embracing what makes your brand and your company special and unique. I'm going to take some of the bigger picture ideas he shares and translate them into proven and profitable marketing strategies, tactics and frameworks that you can use right now in order to build a relevant and resilient brand that customers love. Because with over 80 million users, Poshmark is clearly onto something here. Before we start, if you want to check out the full episode, 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 one of the least obvious but most beneficial places to get ideas and inspiration from other industries.

It's incredibly important to work in different industries because you see how different companies try to solve the same problem about how to drive consumer adoption, how to change behavior, and ultimately how to win consumers hearts and minds. For me as a marketer, it's been fundamentally interesting to be able to say, hmm, I remember how we solved this problem at that X company. Maybe we could take parts of that solution and see how we can apply to us, which I think allows for pattern recognition at scale. And, and as a marketer, I think that's one of your biggest weapons is to be able to do that.

As Steven said, pattern recognition at scale is what allows you to look at the bigger picture for changes in consumer behavior, perceptions and shifts taking place in your industry as well as keeping your finger on the pulse of the market in general. So how are you actually supposed to learn and apply this to your business? The first way is to make sure you've got the fundamentals of marketing on lock. Things like knowing your audience and brand positioning and understanding what makes your company different from your competition. The second way is to get out of your comfort zone and introduce yourself to new industries. And the third way is the easiest and most fun way of all, and that is to take up a new hobby, go see a new movie or travel to a new location. Creativity comes from connecting existing ideas rather than coming up with new ones. And giving your brain a constant stream of new ideas and experiences is one of the fastest ways to always be innovating. And often the best source for great ideas is right in front of you and your existing customers and community. A great way to stay relevant is to tear down as many walls as possible between your business and your customers.

One thing I'm incredibly proud of is a lot of our customers have a direct line to my CEO, to a lot of our senior leaders, our founders. I think most of the time your best customers just want to be heard.

Customers love to share their opinions and their ideas, and customer feedback is always valuable to us as marketers. Good marketers know that listening to customers, taking their ideas, advice and input and letting them know that you appreciate them sharing leads to more satisfied customers, leads to more engagement by showing other customers that your brand is open and receptive, leads to more interaction on social media where much of this communication takes place and leads to more information available for your business about what customers actually care about, which results in better data driven decisions for you moving forward. So clearly there's a ton of power in listening to your customers. And another one of the key ways to build community, increase engagement and stay relevant to your market is to share your values and be human, authentic and real. Or in other words, do as Steven suggests and embrace your weirdness.

And the value is called Embrace youe Weirdness.

Oh, I love this.

And for me that has always been my core what makes me love marketing. And I think just noting also that embracing that weirdness allows you to be vulnerable, allows you to just admit who you are. We want people to be who they are.

Steven's line there about wanting people to be who they are is more powerful than you might think because we're all looking for acceptance. So anytime you have the option to include messaging in your marketing that affirms someone's identity, either current or aspirational, you're doing good things for both them and your brand. This is probably not going to come as a surprise, but people like to do business with the brands and businesses that represent their personal values, attitudes, beliefs and lifestyles. In psychology, this is called similarity, which says we like people who are just like us. Hey, you're a lot like me. I like you. But there's another psychology hack at play here as well, called the liking principle, and that shows how we're more likely to be persuaded by people we like and those we want to be like. So the big question then is how do you tap into the psychological powers of the liking principle and similarity in order to stay relevant, increase engagement and build your business? Well, my friend, here's the secret. Stand up, stand out and stand for Stand up by not being afraid to say who you are and what matters most to you. Stand out by not being afraid to be different. Or as Steven says here, embrace your weirdness and stand for something by talking about and sharing your brand's values and personality. Doing this will allow you to attract more super fans to your business who value and understand your brand instead of customers who are a ton of work because they just don't get it. And when you do this right, you build a brand like Poshmark has done that makes learning, innovating and connecting with your customers easy and automatic. And if you'd like even more details on how to make this all happen, as well as get even more of the latest and greatest marketing tools, tips and tactics, you can check out the full length episode alongside a ton more great takeaways and lessons 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.