Impacts

Addressing change

When does change create an opportunity for marketers to successfully drive organizational improvements?

Follow trends to stay fresh in marketing.

We have to stay well read and well educated on ever-changing technology and trends, and on anything that could help our internal partners do their jobs better.

Develop a guiding vision

If you have a buy-in to the vision, and the mountain top you’re trying to climb, everyone can get aligned with that and move forward.

Messages should be relevant, consistent, and helpful.

Physicians are our primary target, and they are really busy and difficult to reach.

Marketing needs a seat at the table

It is important for marketing to put their knowledge into the vision strategy for product and service decisions.

Strong positioning and consistent messaging

Consistently communicating how changes align with the brand—and how they will impact and resonate with customers—is important.

Creating relatable messaging

How can you be creative? How can you tell your story in a relatable way? Creativity can help marketing drive that message home.

People are the first step

Getting teams on board and getting people excited about the new direction and change in an origination is really the first step.

Customer experience

How do marketing leaders define and establish ownership of the customer experience?

Teams must coordinate for success.

If a customer calls your customer service team and asks how to purchase something, they should get the same answer that the marketing and sales team would provide.

Customer integration ensures success

Our customer success team is the tip of the spear for our customer success and we get our clients integrated early in the process.

Cohesive marketing strategy

It is important that we engage the customer through cohesive messaging and communication and help them travel through the funnel.

Speaking the customer’s language

We build common themes in our materials so that we are consistent on the web, in newspaper articles, in PR, or in customer-facing documents.

Customer-focused communications

We have actually heard from several customers lately telling us they would like to be called a little bit more. In this day and age, they want to stay connected.

Creating a career-development community

When so much information is available online, we strive to provides value through the in-person connections: networking, professional development, and career opportunity.

The value of membership

Membership provides people access to the professionals they want to meet and education they can’t get anywhere else.

Driving revenue

How do successful marketing leaders develop programs that demonstrate the connection between marketing and real revenue—and transform their conversations about budget?

Metrics, Metrics, Metrics.

It’s all about getting those numbers, tagging those campaigns the correct way, making sure sales is following up, watching and nurturing leads. It really is all about the numbers.

Find the greatest impact

We feel we’ve hit that sweet spot of not spending too much and not spending too little.

Break down the communication gap.

It is important that you break down the marketing jargon to language anyone can understand. We have to provide a clear roadmap of what we did and the results we saw.

Aligning marketing and revenue for impact

Aligning marketing strategies companywide can increase revenue and provide strategies that increase the top and bottom lines.

Proactive communication and transparency

As a marketing team, we try to be very transparent about what we are doing. We meet with sales on a regular basis to update them on what’s new and where we are going.

Your bottom line

This past spring, we did a three-part series directly focused on revenue. We did three events on driving revenue, demand gen, and steps for putting revenue efforts in place.

Addressing challenges for members

AMA helps education. We bring in speakers to talk about the most relevant challenges in marketing so our members can take those learnings and immediately apply them.

Team/Partner management

How do successful marketers best leverage outside partners to support their internal teams—and ensure they are getting the most value from those partners?

Partners provide outside thinking

You need someone to come in as a jolt, to drive the organization in terms of thinking about something differently.

Partners have specialties and niche areas of expertise.

You may be lacking technical skillsets on your team. Ask whether it make more sense to outsource that skill rather than hiring a full-time person.

Outside perspective and expertise

Partners can provide expertise in their areas of specialization. They can steer you towards benefits and help you avoid unfavorable situations, especially in digital experience.

How do we get it done?

With the pace of technology, we need to have our partners at the forefront to help us understand what is coming, what we need to do, and what technical variables we need to understand.

Partnerships based on specialization

For exhibits and trade shows, we have big properties we cannot manage on our own. Or we may need to hire for writing because the project is too large or because of subject matter. These types of needs make outside partnerships important.

Referring the right resource

I recently had lunch with a member who was looking for someone who does specialty incentives. He wanted someone I had worked with and I would refer. The referral carries a lot of weight.

The need for expertise

We all have our own expertise and are experts in our own lanes. But when going outside your own expertise, you need to hire an outside partner who has the right skillset.

Leveraging Technology

How are marketing leaders asserting their voices in selecting, using, and demonstrating the benefits of technology investments?

Committing to an investment

It is a challenge to get out of our own minds and our own skin to think about the customer first. Sometimes a tool that may make things easier for us, my not help the customer.

Tech must prove its worth

We ask, does this technology increase our productivity, increase our speed to market, our speed to revenue, and ultimately does it help our team achieve their goals?

The realities of automated technology implementation.

To convince your leadership team to invest, you have to be able to explain what the technology will do for your organization—and you have to be realistic about the timeline to ROI.

Embracing personalization

Personalization is helping drive the end user through the site on an individual basis, so they get the information they are looking for without having to identify themselves.

Does marketing have a seat at the table?

I am more of a technology influencer and user than decision-maker. When decisions are made, we have the opportunity to see the technology, get a demonstration, and give our opinions.

Will new technology really solve the problem?

I think more marketers are leaning towards getting the most out of what they have versus trying to find more technology that might not work or create more issues.

Tech tools drive change

Tech tools make it easy to see how you can make more strategic decisions, A/B testing, and metrics. This is allowing for learning in real time and drives changes in direction and tactics.