Beyond the Basics: 4 Fresh Areas for New Marketers

Last week I wrote about the essential skills young marketers at technology startups should have. However, those just covered the bare essentials! To beat out the competitors’ marketing ninjas, so to speak, marketers should be on the lookout for new ideas and techniques that enhance their campaigns, conversion rates and impact in the market.

In my humble view, there are four such areas that are either lesser known or are not traditionally considered as belonging to the “marketing” profession. Yet because they have such leverage over most marketing activities and efforts, it is crucial that we marketers understand them and possibly play a role in these activities, especially at resource-strapped technology startups where everyone is playing many different roles.

1. Market research

Everyone learned some basic principles of marketing research while learning the basics of marketing. However, in recent years, market research has changed dramatically with the advent and increasing prevalence of online research techniques such as online panels, customer communities, and so on. In the past, really rigorous market research was only feasible for large brands with the budget for in-house research teams or contracting with professional researchers. Today, these tools and the availability of vast resources of information allow almost any business to carry out market research on their own to understand their market, competitors and prospects a lot better.

Being able to rigorously develop a deep understanding of the target segments, customer personas, and competitive advantages in the market is crucial in helping marketers build truly effective messages and deliver them to the right audience.

2. User research/experience

Intimately connected with market research is user research and user experience measurements. This is not a new topic, as it’s very much entrenched in any decent product management and development team  technology companies. What is new here is that the marketers have to be more involved and proactive in understanding their end users and their experiences.

This is because with the prevalance of social media, online feedback tools and online user communities, users are becoming more and more vocal and influential in the market. Their recommendations or disapprovals readily affect the success of marketing efforts. Of particular importance to marketers are “super users” who will become brand evanglists as well as important sources of product/messaging improvements over time.

3. Event management

Ironically, as the marketplace becomes more virtual and dominated by online interactions, what we’ve seen in the last few years is the resurgence of event marketing as an effective marketing channel. However, events today spread beyond the standard textbook examples of industry conferences, annual expositions such as the Interop or CES. Now, equally important are smaller, more targeted events such as meetups, local user groups, and a company’s own user conferences. These are distinct in that they are mostly participant-driven and have very free flowing format, which calls for a different setting for marketers to engage with. Thus, companies now need to win on both the national level with the major conferences, and also on the local levels with smaller, self-organized events. The marketers play an essential role in this, as both organizers, storytellers, and marketers of those events.

4. Database management/data quality management

In the past, “database marketing” used to be a very distinct branch of marketing, one that had little glamor and hype attached to it, even though it was one of the most important drivers of business. Today, with the growth of marketing automation tools, marketers rely on massive databases in almost everything they do – email marketing, direct marketing, lead nurturing, lead scoring and qualification.

Indeed, marketers now have to deal with complex database technologies and techniques everyday to be able to execute their campaigns at the scale required for success. Scott Brinker, a leading thinker on marketing technologies, has coined the term “marketing technologists” to describe these marketers who are extremely proficient at leveraging deep, powerful technologies in their everyday work.

Data Quality management has always been an important topic at enterprises, but it was often confined to the business intelligence and IT departments, and marketers tend to be just users of the outputs rather than active participants and managers. It’s time to play a more proactive role, to ensure that the data you are using for your campaigns and measurements are accurate, because bad data can derail a well-thought-out and well-executed process.

Photo by: Alan