The experience journey: A formula for revenue marketing success
Once upon a time, the main marketing goal was to drive awareness and generate leads. Today, that goal has shifted towards 'revenue, revenue, revenue'. Following his session at the Mumbrella B2B Marketing Symposium, ON24’s VP of content marketing, Mark Bornstein, explains why marketers need to rethink digital engagement in order to meet their new revenue goals.
“Revenue marketing is a brand new concept,” said Mark Bornstein, VP of content marketing, ON24 at the Mumbrella B2B Marketing Symposium. “When you think about marketing, you think about generating leads, you think about trying to help out your sales team. But things are different now.”
During his session, Bornstein explained how today’s marketing department drives the entire buyer’s journey, and how that journey has changed immensely over the past few years – particularly in the wake of the 2020 pandemic.
“Yes, [marketers] are driving awareness of who we are as a brand… but we also need to close deals. That changes the dynamic for how sales and marketing work together, and it changes the dynamic for what our goals as marketers are.”
The needs of the modern buyer were already changing at a rapid pace, but since the pandemic, things have increased at an even faster rate. Buyers are now living in a predominantly digital world, and marketing needs to adjust to reflect that.
“This idea that everybody follows a specific funnel path – that they take in thought leadership content, that they then go to mid-funnel content, then they take in some bottom-funnel content and make a purchase decision – it doesn’t work that way anymore,” he said.
“Our prospects are pinging around all over the place. They take in content when they want and how they want. It’s their journey, and they’re on a journey of self-education. Some of those touchpoints will be yours, some of those touchpoints will be your competitors, but you don’t control the journey.”
Rethinking digital engagement
Along with this shift in goalposts comes a shift in the goal itself. “All marketers need to be thinking about how to drive revenue,” he said. “We are responsible for the whole thing, which means rethinking how we engage with the buyer and therefore rethinking the buyer’s journey completely.”
Thankfully, this new buyer’s journey doesn’t mean completely overhauling your marketing stack or implementing new technology, it’s simply about reimagining existing tools in a fresh and exciting way.
“Whether it’s redesigning our webpages, creating live and on-demand webinars, curated content hubs, interactive landing pages, virtual trade shows, or virtual environments at digital events; all of these need to be reconsidered,” he said. “In the past, we’ve done them as checkboxes, and they’ve been fairly effective channels. But we can do better.”
In a live webinar, for example, the key is surrounding your audience with “a lot of things to do”.
“You’ve got presentations, you’ve got videos, demos and different types of media integrated into the experience. It’s incredibly interactive, the audience is a part of the experience by asking questions, by chatting with each other, networking with their peers by engaging socially, engaging with the presenters, or downloading lots of content.”
No matter the type of experience, whether they’re in a live webinar, a custom portal or a custom landing page, people should always be given the opportunity to self select their way to the content that they need: “Every experience leads to the next experience. This is how we create a new type of journey, where instead of people coming to you every now and then, you’re driving them onto a journey of experiences.”
As people are engaging in these experiences, marketers are gradually learning more about them. “This is the critical part. Every experience should be designed for your audience to be active in it. Ask them to fill out surveys, respond to polls, chat with peers, and get social. In every experience, you’re encouraging that behaviour.”
Fighting digital fatigue
COVID-19 has undoubtedly meant that more and more marketers are shifting to digital-only experiences. But when it came to the question of whether audiences are getting burnt out from so many digital events, Bornstein’s answer was clear: “People are getting burned out of bad marketing.”
“We all know there’s a lot of bad digital marketing out there – the relentless, horrible spam that nobody puts any time and attention to. In a digital-first world, it can’t be marketing as usual. You need to think about everything you create, and ask yourself: ‘would this be marketing that I would like?’”
Far too many organisations build the same boring Powerpoints and present the same boring webinars, he explained. “You need to think about your audience experience. We’re seeing more experiences that mimic the kinds of things that we like in our personal lives.”
These formats might include talk shows, chat shows, news programs or serialized programs. “You’re audience building, you’ve got an established host, and you’re helping people, not necessarily just selling.”
Digital isn’t an excuse to avoid creativity, and Bornstein invites marketers to think about the kinds of experiences that they might actually want to enjoy themselves, from yoga to coffee classes: “If it’s what people want, people will come back.”
Click here to watch the full session.