The truth is, modern marketing is tough and CMOs have many demanding masters.  CFOs demand accountability for profitable campaigns that generate a positive return on investment.  CTOs demand a vision, plan, and cost justification for AdTech / MarTech infrastructure investments.  CEOs demand insight into mercurial customer behavior and guidance on product development and innovation.  Above all, your customers demand more than ever before. Today’s consumers are armed with powerful social media tools to magnify any dissatisfaction, and growing access to companies from across the globe who will fulfill their needs if you can’t.  Add to this the constant onslaught of new media, new tools and technology, new tactics, — more more more more.  Even within a specific project the complexity of implementation and integration can be overwhelming.

With all these demands, it’s easy to get distracted.  Where to even begin? What if there was a clear framework for simplifying and delivering focus for modern marketers?  The ten truths of modern marketing brings order to chaos, by enabling marketers to focus on what really matters in solving marketing challenges and demystifying complex ecosystems and technical projects.   Other more tactical manuals will follow this guide and will support step-by-step implementation of specific solutions, from selecting vendors to scoping projects. This article is intended to establish a framework for strategic thinking and a guide for focusing modern marketers’ energy and attention.

These concepts build on and enable each other, but the approach is applicable for organizations at any stage of transformation. Together, these provide a framework for using technology to leverage data to deliver customer delight through seemingly serendipitous moments.  These moments create meaningful relationships between brands and consumers.

Ten Truths of Modern Marketing

  1. Focus: It’s impossible to do everything – use First Principles and Leverage to do the right thing for your business, strategic insight and Exocentric obsession give clarity
  2. Relevance: Marketers must be Excocentric – reaching customers where they are on their path to purchase, with the right information, delivered in the right way
  3. Data: Without data, marketers cannot be relevant, because they can’t differentiate individuals, their needs, and their context
  4. Technology: The volume, velocity, and variability of customer data demands technology to capture, manage, and activate
  5. Immediacy: Customer journeys have accelerated, marketers need speed to adapt to changing consumer contexts in real time
  6. Automation: Intelligent, timely interactions are impossible without predictive analytics and automation technology
  7. Insights: Armed with the right data and the right technology to make sense of it, marketers can now have a richer understanding of their customers and their context
  8. Creativity: The insights available with robust customer data, and the capability to speak to  changing contexts empowers marketers to be ever more creative in their messaging and execution
  9. Agility: With a focus on measurement, marketers can now test and learn faster, creating the opportunity to maximize success and minimize failure
  10. Change: Consumer behavior changes quickly, and marketers must adapt to new habits, and learn new technology to power successful solutions while constantly seek new, better sources of data

Building on this strategic framework, Ten Truths Marketing provides guidance on identifying and collecting the right data, picking the right technology to glean insights from this data, and activating the right programs to increase your relevancy in customer communications maximizing business outcomes.