10 essential steps to create a winning content marketing strategy

Looking to create a winning content marketing strategy? Follow these 10 essential steps!

1. Define your marketing business goals and objectives

Such as every company has business goals and objectives, so every marketing department has marketing goals and objectives. Setting marketing goals is essential because they support businesses to achieve their goals and objectives.

Marketing goals differ depending on the stage your business is in.

If your business is looking to enter a new market, your marketing goal should be market development.

If your business is looking to expand its market share, your marketing goals should be market penetration.

Discover what strategies did Apple use to achieve market development and market penetration.

Is your business in early-stage development?

Your marketing strategy should focus on building a tribe and raising awareness. That’s a different strategy than entering a new market.

Here are 6 marketing goals that you could focus on depending on your set business goals:

• Increase brand awareness
• Empower your email subscribers
• Build brand ambassadors
• Boost your sales through referral programs
• Identify customer behaviour change
• Increase website traffic with guest content

Learn how to achieve them.

2. Define your target audience – Be clear and specific on your audience’s pain points and challenges you are helping them solve

Now that you are aware of the marketing goals and objectives you need to achieve, define your target audience or buyer persona.

You need to have an in-depth knowledge of your customer’s profile or buyer persona.

Be very specific with a focus on psychographics more than demographics.

What are your buyers’ challenges, pain points, goals and aspirations? Write them down.

How can your brand help your buyers overcome their challenges, solve their pain points or support them achieve their goals?

Once you have the answers to these questions, you can now look into the type of content that helps your audience.

3. Choose your unique angle

There are thousands of pieces of content on luxury, but Louis Vuitton has a unique approach stemming from the brand’s longtime history.

Every business needs to find its unique point of view and use it to differentiate from the competition.

From a business standpoint, price shouldn’t be a differentiator because it’s a losing game. There will always be another business with lower prices than yours.

That is why your business should have a strategic plan in place. The main goal of the strategic plan you create for your business is to define how your business differentiates itself from the competition.

From a content marketing strategy standpoint, choosing your business’ unique angle means you will be able to create fresh and relevant content for your audience.

4. Define content guidelines and goals

Your brand’s content marketing strategy must include content guidelines and goals.

What type of content are you going to produce to help your audience? If your audience needs help to get better at their jobs, curate lists of digital tools, apps or platforms.

If your audience needs help to achieve their goals and aspirations, write how-to content, tips & tricks.

No matter what type of content you choose, the goal of your content marketing strategy should be to exceed your audience’s expectations.

The result of a successful content marketing strategy is to position your brand as a valuable resource for your audience.

5. Decide which content formats you are going to use

What type of content format is your brand best suited to produce?

If your content team includes talented graphic designers, then your brand could focus on beautifully designed images to publish on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest or LinkedIn.

If your content team includes videographers, your brand could also produce long-form videos to be published on YouTube.

Whichever content format you choose to use, your content needs a powerful copy. A copywriter with a strong set of skills is able to turn a 1000-word blog post into a 10-image carousel on Instagram or an infographic on Pinterest or a 10-min video on YouTube.

Turning one piece of content (usually long-form) into five new pieces of content in different formats for different social media platforms is a great content marketing tactic.

6. Select the channels you are publishing to

There is a wide variety of social media platforms: some new (Clubhouse), some old (Facebook), and some that are growing under the radar of most marketers (Mighty Networks).

Should your brand be on every channel?

Experts say brands should communicate on the platforms their audience is spending time on.

Content marketing expert Joe Pulizzi argues that it’s time to revisit the well-known content marketing rule of Be where your audience is.

Yes, you need to be where your consumers are, but if your consumers are on 10 platforms, you need to choose which platform you focus on. At least at the beginning, before you start to diversify your efforts.

7. Set KPIs to measure the effectiveness of the content

A successful content marketing strategy is measurable.

The way to measure your marketing results is by setting KPIs.

A KPI in marketing is a measurable value tied to specific objectives.

What should you measure on Facebook? The number of likes, comments and shares are not KPIs, but vanity metrics. A valuable KPI for your content on Facebook could be the CTR to the website.

On Instagram, a useful KPI to measure the effectiveness of your content could be the number of saves your posts have.

If you look at the number of saves as the indicator of success, you need to design your content with this in mind.

What type of content prompts your audience to hit the save button? This should be the mindset underlying your content creation.

Need to learn more about KPIs? Check out 20 essential KPIs you should be tracking to improve your marketing (updated for 2021).

8. Prepare the content calendar

Now that you have the content marketing strategy in place, it’s time to start writing!

Map out the content for the next week or month for every channel you are going to publish on.

Write the copy and discuss it with your graphic designing team to find the best suitable format. Are you going to publish a post daily or twice a week?

Mark your calendar with the international days that are relevant to your brand and brainstorm content to celebrate them in advance.

9. Publish and measure KPIs

Once the content has been produced, publish it.

If there are comments from your audience, make sure to comment back without delay.

Thirty days later, check the analytics of every social media platform you have published on and calculate the KPIs.

For the next month, you can use these KPIs as a baseline for your content’s effectiveness and improve the content to drive growth.

10. Select the winning types of content and formats

Not every content template or format will become a hit with your audience.

Identify the content type that is not achieving satisfactory results and retire it.

Select the winning content and analyze it to discover what makes it successful.

Create new and improved content that replicates the winning elements.

5 easy steps to set SMART goals in marketing

Looking to set achievable marketing goals? Be SMART and follow these 5 steps!

Your product solves your customer’s problem efficiently. It looks good, it is easy to use and offers more value for its price than other available products. But your prospects don’t know that. Yet.

Now that your product is finished and ready to delight your customers, you need to do some marketing. Why? Because as sales expert Grant Cardone puts it, Best product does not win the game; best KNOWN product wins the game. If you want to learn more business takeaways from Grant, watch this 2-minute video.

Are you ready to start your marketing journey?

Let’s go!

First of all, we need to talk about marketing goals. There are many marketing goals you can set for your company depending on the stage you’re in.

Companies today don’t usually wait for the product to be finished, they begin to market the product while still in early development. It’s a smart move. What they are doing is building a tribe for their product and raising awareness for the company. The members of the tribe will be the first people to buy the finished product. They are more likely to become ambassadors for the product and the company can attract new customers from word of mouth marketing.

Marketing goals for this stage could be building an emailing list of enthusiasts interested in your product. These individuals would be your product’s die-hard customers and it would also be smart to find ways to get to know them and engage with them. And even ask for their ideas on features that could improve your product.

Once the product is finished, the company already has its first customers, it doesn’t start marketing from zero which could be a competitive advantage.

But if you’re company doesn’t take this build-it-before-it’s-finished approach, don’t worry, there are many other marketing goals you can set for your company.

Here are 6 marketing goals that you should set in 2021 to support your company to achieve its business vision:

1. Increase brand awareness
2. Empower your email subscribers
3. Build brand ambassadors
4. Boost your sales through referral programs
5. Identify customer behaviour change
6. Increase website traffic with guest content

If you want to know more about these six marketing goals, read this article where I discuss each of them in-depth.

Now that we’ve touched on the subject of marketing goals, let’s see what SMART and setting SMART goals in marketing means.

S.M.A.R.T. is the acronym for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound and refers to business objectives.

Consultant George T Doran is credited with writing down the S.M.A.R.T. acronym and laying out the main principles of SMART goals in his 1981 paper, “There’s a S.M.A.R.T. way to write management’s goals and objectives”.

Although the SMART concept was created to support good management, setting SMART goals goes beyond that and can be used as a rule of thumb for setting goals in every area, business or personal.

What does a SMART goal in marketing look like?

You first start with a SMART business goal.

Here’s an example. Let’s assume you have an online ladies’ shoe shop. You want to grow your business.

A SMART business objective should be defined like this:

Spring is around the corner. I want to sell 15% more ladies’ shoes for spring. To achieve this I will invest $1000 in Facebook ads targeted at young fashion-forward professional women for a period of 3 months.

Why is this business objective SMART?

Because it is specific and measurable.

There are many ways in which you can grow your business (partnerships, investments etc), but you have chosen to focus on sales. You also narrowed down the sales offer to shoes for the springtime, not office shoes or running shoes. The 15% increase in sales is measurable.

Let’s assume your sales have grown by 10% last year, therefore, a 15% increase is achievable whereas a 100% increase in sales would not be achievable.

You have also decided to invest $1000 in Facebook ads to target a specific customer base comprised of young fashion-forward professional women. Once again, specific and relevant to your business.

Your Facebook campaign will run for three months so the business objective is also time-bound.

Now that you know what a SMART goal in marketing should look like, I’ve put together a simple template with 5 easy steps that you can use to set SMART marketing goals for your company.

5 easy steps to set SMART marketing goals

1. Link the marketing goal to a business goal

As you saw in the example above, marketing goals must be relevant to the overall business goals.

So the first step is to set a marketing goal that relates to your business goal.

It could be a short-term goal like increasing sales of a specific product or it could be long-term business goals like increasing brand awareness or share of voice.

To increase sales you could set several marketing goals like increasing the number of qualified leads or increasing the number of email subscribers. To achieve long-term business goals like brand awareness you could increase the number of brand ambassadors or increase website traffic.

2. Establish the benchmark

Pulling numbers out of thin air is not going to help you achieve your goal.

Perform a marketing analysis before setting a new marketing goal. Run the numbers and come to a conclusion with regard to previous results.

How much does it cost to get a new customer or a new email subscriber?

What is the average cost per lead?

What is the current landing page conversion rate?

Learn how to calculate them and other key performance indicators in this two-part article.

Only after you know these numbers ie the benchmark, you can set achievable marketing goals.

3. Write the goal using the SMART framework

Follow the example above and make your marketing goal specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound.

4. Design the strategic plan you will use to achieve the SMART marketing goal

The goal of a strategic plan is to provide you with a roadmap to achieve set marketing goals.

The plan outlines what (resources), how (specific tools, activities, platforms etc) and why (the reasons behind your choice of a specific resource or tool) the company will use to achieve this goal.

Referring back to the online ladies’ shoe shop and its goal to increase sales by 15% through Facebook ads, you need to establish who will design the creative concept of the Facebook campaign and who will write the copy.

What is the format of the campaign: video, image, link? Once the campaign is ready to be launched, establish who will set the campaign in your company’s Facebook Ad account and solve any problems that might arise.

Should the customers reacting to your campaign need the help of your customer support, how are they going to reach your company?

A successful campaign is an eco-system where every factor is aligned and working in perfect harmony.

5. Implement & optimize

Now that your campaign is ready to go and you have planned everything in detail, you can implement the campaign and optimize it if necessary.

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6 marketing goals you should set in 2021 to support your business vision

6 marketing goals you should set in 2021 to support your business vision

1. Increase brand awareness

2. Empower your email subscribers

3. Build brand ambassadors

4. Boost your sales through referral programs

5. Identify customer behaviour change

6. Increase website traffic with guest content

Let’s talk about each of them.

1. Increase brand awareness

If a stranger approached you in the street offering to be your friend would you accept? I can’t speak for you but I’m sure my answer would be I can’t be friends with someone I don’t know.

It’s the same with your brand: why do expect your customers to buy your products if they are not aware of your brand? That’s why brand awareness is an essential part of brand building. Brand awareness is a process leading to sales. The first stage of an effective sales funnel is awareness followed by interest, decision and action.

Brand awareness is also an ongoing process. Coca-Cola is the leading global soft drinks company and has been on the market for 128 years. You would be hard-pressed to find someone who hasn’t drunk a bottle of Coke in their life or is unable to recognize the brand’s iconic logo. This happens thanks to the company investing billions of dollars in campaigns. More precisely, $4 billion each year since 2015 to market its drinks to consumers around the world. If the company didn’t commit to this goal of maintaining and increasing brand awareness year after year, it would quickly lose the top spot and market share.

So how do you increase your brand’s awareness? It certainly helps to have a big budget but that’s not everything.

Let’s explore ways that you can increase awareness for your brand!

Share of voice

Marketing effectiveness expert Les Binet recommends that brands should run both sales activation and brand building campaigns but tweak the balance to 75% brand building and 25% activation.

Binet’s research found that sales activation delivers short-term sales volume while brand-building campaigns lead to long-term growth and higher sales volumes. Learn about brand awareness and why SOV (share of voice) is important for your brand (with examples).

Partnerships

As a business owner, you are competing with other businesses in your market for the attention of your customer base. What if you took a different approach and choose to build brand partnerships instead of competing with each other?

Here are 9 benefits of brand partnerships:

• Sharing customer bases;
• Break into new markets;
• Cross-selling;
• Expanding your customer base;
• Lead-generating opportunities;
• Brand strengths are amplified through collaboration;
• A great experience for the customers;
• Enhanced brand awareness and exposure.

If you decide that partnering is a good strategy for your company, there are factors you need to consider for a successful brand partnership before you draft your first contract.

Standing up for your brand’s values

Brands are no longer setting the pace for its consumers. In fact, it’s the other way around – consumers have the upper hand over brands.

Over the past few years, consumer behaviour reports have highlighted this fact: it’s important for consumers to see their favourite brands act on their beliefs and values.

A 2018 study from Shelton Group found that 86% of consumers want brands to take a stand on social issues and said they’d purchase a product because a company advocated for an issue they cared about.

There are many examples of big brands taking a stand on social issues and receiving praise from the public (Nike’s Dream Crazy, UK supermarket chain Iceland and its Say Hello to Rang-tan ad, Barbie’s Close the dream gap) while other brands are facing backlash for failing to engage with their customers’ needs and expectations and their outdated marketing (Victoria’s Secret).

2. Empower your email subscribers

Email marketing done right outperforms social media in terms of reach, CTR, conversion rate and ROI.

And by outperforming ROI I mean 42:1 which means for every dollar spent, your company’s return is 42 dollars.

To get this high of an ROI, you need to focus on the words done right.

First, make sure you don’t make these 5 email marketing mistakes and second, update your buyer’s persona especially at the pain points and dreams categories.

What stands between them and their goals? What are they dreaming to achieve? What do they need to meet their objectives? Find out what they need and give it to them.

Of course, your email marketing strategy should include sales-focused emails, but maintain a balance between promotional content and non-promotional content. If you don’t know what that balance is, you can start with the 80-20 rule of thumb: 20% sales content and 80% empowering content.

Once you have identified what empowering content looks like for your customers, invest your resources into designing the ways in which to deliver that content. Infographics, video, expert quotes, listicles, how-tos, links to in-depth articles etc.

Find a way in line with your brand goals to reward your most engaged subscribers.

Also, create the opportunity for your subscribers to get to know each other. The end objective of your email marketing strategy is to empower your subscribers individually and transform them into a community.

3. Build brand ambassadors

In 2018, marketing software provider Hubspot said goodbye to the marketing funnel and hello to the customer flywheel.

The shift happened when the company noticed that customers were purchasing HubSpot products after they have been recommended by their friends, already HubSpot customers.

The situation was that word of mouth was selling HubSpot products instead of the company’s marketing efforts.

The customer flywheel is not a funnel but a process where customers feed growth. The Customer Flywheel leverages the enthusiasm of existing customers and turns it into a driving force for attracting new customers.

What makes the flywheel spin faster and faster? Increased force and reduced friction. The more force with less friction applies to the flywheel, the faster it spins.

Once the flywheel gains momentum, it can spin forever with little effort from the company. Momentum comes from retaining customers and transforming them into brand ambassadors leading to increased customer retention and brand loyalty.

Learn more about improving customer retention and loyalty.

4. Boost your sales through referral programs

A referral program is a word-of-mouth marketing tactic that encourages customers to advocate on behalf of your brand.

The purpose of a referral program is to attract new leads. Compared to other lead generation tactics, the leads that referral programs generate are better because their profile is more likely to match that of your customers.

This means more qualified leads and less time and resources used by your company to nurture and engage them.

Referral programs have higher chances to succeed because they leverage the power of peer-to-peer marketing and one of Cialdini’s Principles of Influence: social proof. The social proof principle states that people will look to the actions of others to determine their own. Man is by nature a social animal: we are influenced by our environment and our friends.

Statistics support this: 90% of consumers trust peer recommendations and only 33% trust ads (Nielsen).

Here’s how to build a customer referral program.

5. Identify customer behaviour change

Thomas Cook was the world’s first travel agency, one of the leading companies in the leisure travel industry present in 17 countries, owned an airline and operated thousands of hotels around the world.

In 2019, Thomas Cook ceased its operations leaving around 600,000 tourists overseas including 150,000 British citizens. It was the UK’s biggest peacetime repatriation.

One of the reasons that led to Thomas Cook’s failure was this: the company missed the opportunity to include Millennials among its customers.

When Millennials entered the market, it was obvious that the market had to change. The Millennials would rather take more short trips i.e. city breaks throughout the year rather than one big vacation package. Also, Millennials behaved differently than their parents or grandparents in that they planned their own itineraries, used digital tools (like Airbnb or Booking.com), focused on transformational experiences and were influenced by social media or user-generated content (source).

The company failed to acknowledge this change in behaviour and adapt its offer to cater to the needs of this new type of customer. This and other factors contributed to the failure of Thomas Cook.

6. Increase website traffic with guest content

Does your company use social media as a marketing channel? I’m pretty sure the answer is yes.

According to the latest statistics, 77.6% of small businesses report using social media to promote their businesses.

What would your company do if Facebook, Instagram or YouTube suddenly disappeared?

That’s right, all your efforts would have been in vain. It’s not to say that you shouldn’t use any social media channels for your company. Only that you shouldn’t invest all your resources in them.

What you should do is invest a large portion of your resources into driving traffic to your website. Remember that social media platforms are rented space whereas your website is owned, you control what happens in your house.

To increase your website traffic consider featuring guest content on your company blog.

Guest content is a great way to expand your reach and increase brand awareness.

In order to achieve this goal, it’s essential that you choose the right contributing authors for your brand.

Whoever you choose, note that your brand will be associated with that particular contributor.

Make sure that your brand’s values are aligned with your contributor’s values.

And most importantly: the best guest content contributor is the one that your audience follows organically.

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Get in touch with us on our LinkedIn Page, Facebook Page, Twitter or TikTok.

Content Writer vs Content Marketer vs Content Strategist

In this article, I attempt to define and differentiate between three marketing roles: content writer, content marketer and content strategist.

It’s human nature to organize information in well-defined compartments. We like it like that because it helps us avoid confusion. Marketing is about human communication which is a complex process in itself. Digital communication adds an extra layer of challenges. That’s why you will find that these three roles sometimes overlap.

Without further ado, let’s dive in!

Content Writer vs Content Marketer vs Content Strategist

What is a content writer? What does the content writer do?

A content writer is a marketer trained in the art of writing. The content writer is part of the marketing team and his/her job is to write digital content that caters to the needs of customers.

Content writers wield their digital pen skillfully, writing content that answers customers’ questions.

They are brand’s ambassadors offering customers a solution to their problems and essentially helping them achieve their goals.

Their power resides in the words which they use to facilitate the communication between your brand and your customers. They are part journalists, part copywriters, part storytellers. Content writers are always looking for the best metaphor which helps readers become leads or customers. They are always looking for inspiration and Google is their ally. They write for customers but also pay attention to keywords. If you want to make a content writer happy, tell them how much you liked their article or how useful it was.

What do content writers write?

Content writers write blogs, articles, reviews, guides, customer stories or any other long-form usually in-depth content (above 800-1000 words) that is relevant to the brand and its customer base. The corporate blogger is a content writer specialized in writing for the company blog.

Whatever the form, the content must be engaging, easy to read and achieve one or all of the following goals: educate, inform, inspire, entertain. The overall goal of branded content is to build brand awareness, build trust with the customer and create a community.

Discover the 6 attributes of excellent content.

Content writer = Copywriter?

The content writer must have copywriting skills, but he/she is not a copywriter. Their skills overlap, but the jobs are not the same.

A copywriter writes copy to drive sales or lead generation, looking for the perfect 5 to 10 words which influence the customer into taking a specific action: download a paper, click a link, subscribe to a newsletter, read an article, join a Facebook Group. They write for emails, social media posts, Google and Facebook ads, product descriptions, websites. If the content writer writes to educate, inform, inspire or entertain, the copywriter writes to influence and sell.

Copywriting – 4 Techniques to write persuasive copy

Why is content writing a vital part of your marketing efforts?

Here’s a short and simple example. To attract brand awareness, you need to get customers to your website. To get customers to your website, you need Google to show your webpages in search results for what your customers are looking for.

Your customers don’t search for your brand or your products/services, they search for a solution to their problems.

Your content needs to address these problems in a relevant and engaging way. That’s how you earn brand awareness and build trust. These pieces of content are part of your overall marketing efforts which drive leads and sales.

Latest stats show that corporate blogging supports the company’s marketing goals.

• 434% more indexed pages which means more chances to appear in Google search results;
• 55% more website visitors which means more opportunities for lead generation and remarketing;
• Companies that blog generate 126% more leads than those that don’t;
• 47% of customers have interacted with 3-5 pieces of content prior to contacting a sales agent;
• 61% of consumers have made a purchase based on a blog post;
• 70% of consumers learn about a company through their blog rather than ads (because nobody likes ads, but everyone likes a good story).

What is a content marketer? What does the content marketer do?

A content marketer is a professional who markets the brand’s product through content.

The content marketer plans, creates, and shares valuable content to attract and convert prospects into customers, and customers into repeat buyers. It’s also the content marketer’s job to analyze content-driven results and calculate ROI.

Together with the art director and the videographer, the content marketer creates content which takes various formats: images, infographics, videos, quizzes, memes, gifs, ads, blog posts etc. These pieces of content are then shared on social media or other mediums of communication to help the company achieve its marketing goals: leads, sales, downloads, views, subscribers to the newsletter etc.

There are so many content formats, which should your brand use? There are so many channels to share content, which are more appropriate to reach customers? The content strategist decides which content the content marketer should create, which format to use, which channel to publish to and how often.

Creating new content by repurposing blog content for social media

Corporate blogs are a rich source of content ideas for the content marketer.

The content marketer can repurpose blog content and turn articles in other formats which can be shared on social media.

Here’s how Gary Vaynerchuk repurposes one long-form piece of content into dozens of smaller pieces of content, contextual to the platforms that his team distributes them to.

Did you know Gary Vaynerchuk is speaking at BRAND MINDS 2020?

What is a content strategist? What does the content strategist do?

According to Kristina Halvorson, CEO of Brain Traffic, a content strategy consultancy, the content strategist is a professional who connects the company’s content efforts with business goals and user needs.

Here are three definitions of content strategy written by Kristina:

1. Content strategy guides the creation, delivery, and governance of useful, usable content.
2. Content strategy means getting the right content, to the right people, in the right place, at the right time.
3. Content strategy is an integrated set of user-centred, goal-driven choices about content throughout its lifecycle.

Any of these definitions are correct.

Kristina also describes what content strategists do:

• Create content strategy frameworks;
• Establish metrics for success;
• Gather information about the brand’s priority audiences (to include user interviews);
• Help determine which organizational/business/functional goals will drive your content-related decisions;
• Analyze existing content and content ecosystems;
• Interview stakeholders about their roles, experience, needs, and expectations.

Robert Rose, the founder and chief strategy officer of The Content Advisory, writes in one of his articles for Content Marketing Institute how the content strategist is different than the content marketer:

The content marketer draws the story and plans the channels that will be used to develop the customer relationship with the brand. The content strategist ensures that story, language, and management processes work consistently and efficiently across multiple teams, languages, and every publication the brand leverages.

Robert Rose

Do you have content writers on your team?

How about content marketers or content strategists? 

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5 pieces of advice for entrepreneurs in 2018, the media agency point of view

Having the right media mix and campaigns represents a very important moment in a company’s marketing strategy. Choosing the right track might be hard to find, therefore every business needs a good media consultant. A point of view written by Razvan Varabiescu – CEO Dentsu Aegis Network Romania.

1. Disrupt Or You Will Be Disrupted.

In a digital economy you have to look at things as a start up or as a business turnaround. If in the past because of the volume of media budgets one could afford to “ignore” the small competitors who due to the financial entry barrier did not afford big reach on TV or other kind of exposures, today, regardless if you are a startup or a 20-year market leader, one can not ignore the new environments, the opportunities that appear, you have to be forever ready to disrupt and to think things like a start up.

2. Content Is King

Today, the consumer has an overwhelming number of options on how to consume media. Whether we are talking about digital radio or analogue TV or live vs. registered by Netflix, Amazon Prime, HBO Go, YouTube etc., it is very important to integrate the product into the content. The environments are evolving and it is increasingly difficult to predict where and how consumers consume media. However, it is certain that the relevant content for them is different, so the big players continue to invest permanently in premium and unique content. The more we manage to integrate the media into the content, the more we make sure that we will not be ignored.

3. Data Is The New Currency

Everybody talks about our data. However, data collection is still at the beginning. 92% of the data we have today is gathered over the past 2 years and probably the trend will continue. It is still not too late to collect data on our consumers. Why? This is simple: in the future when all the media acquisition is done programmatically, the data we have will make the difference. Imagine a world where the cost per thousand is given by supply and demand, the difference being made by how many consumers I need to reach to meet my marketing goals, sales, etc.; the most effective campaign will be the one that achieves its goals by reaching as few people as possible by getting in contact with those who are willing to act. But how do we figure out who they are? Using the data, obviously.

4. Strategic Thinking At The Core

As media moves towards programmatic, the price pressure will drop and a relevant and different strategy will make a difference. If in the past we were all strategists and we had strategies for media, PR, BTL, communication, marketing, etc. all today’s touchpoints are interconnected and need to have a single strategy able to deliver in all communication disciplines. We cannot have a TV campaign anymore and pray that someone writes a post on a blog about the product, we cannot pay 2 bloggers hoping to get the story. Things must be thought from the beginning, interconnected, measured. The strategy will make the difference exactly as low prices on TV was the law.

5. Attract The Right Talents

This is probably another cliché. But we have to realize that the Y generation is the generation that will provide the main workforce for the next 20 years. 54% of companies will work with online workforce over the next 5 years. It’s the savvy digital generation. Every hour a car replaces the work of a man. The main problem we have in the coming years is to succeed in attracting and securing talent in the organization. For this, every manager should ask himself how can he change organizational culture to adapt to the new needs of the millennial generation. Let’s not forget we’re talking about a sensitive generation called the Snowflake Generation.