Five Standard Marketing Lessons I’ve Learned in My Career

Author: Carolyn Menz Category: B2B, B2C, E-commerce & Retail, Marketing, Nonprofit, Social Media & Digital Date: May 25, 2017

Over the course of my career, marketing has changed quite a bit! While today’s marketing landscape is much more complex than it was over 15 years ago when I first started, the fundamentals haven’t really changed.

Here are five of the standard marketing lessons I’ve learned over the course of my career:

1. Marketing to everyone is ineffective and expensive. It is important to understand who your target audience is and focus on them. You also need to know where your audience is and understand that this may change over time. If they move, you need to move.
2. With new marketing technologies and hundreds of tools available, more than ever before, you really need to make sure that you have a solid marketing strategy to ensure that you are using the appropriate technologies and tools to get to your target audience. With that, I go back to number one above.
3. Content, content, and more content. That is all we hear as marketers. Businesses are producing (and, consumers are consuming) more content than ever. You need to make sure that your content marketing strategy breaks through the noise and is targeted to your audience.
4. You can’t just focus on the traditional marketing tactics. You have to go beyond your website, email, social media posts, advertisements and also think about the customer experience. How are you treating your customers through every step of their journey with you?
5. Results! Almost everything can be measured – the trick is figuring out the metrics that align to your goals and focusing on those. Don’t get distracted by the metrics that don’t matter for your business.

I am sure that over time I will learn new lessons as marketing continues to evolve, but I’m curious – what marketing lessons have you learned in your career?