How to Be the Most Data-Driven Marketer You Know

By Heike Young

“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” -John Wanamaker

If you’re in marketing or advertising, John Wanamaker’s famous refrain has probably haunted you once or twice. Maybe when you had to pitch a budget increase for your marketing efforts or you faced the painful realization that your spend wasn’t working.

The good news: it’s easier for marketers than ever before to become truly data-driven in their strategies and daily jobs.

On the latest episode of the Marketing Cloudcast, the marketing podcast from Salesforce, Joel Book and I interviewed Damon Waldron, Director of Demand Gen at BrightFunnel about this very topic. You can download the episode for free now.

On this episode of the podcast, we asked Damon a number of questions that data-driven marketers will want to know, including:

• How do we tie every marketing dollar spent back to revenue, to focus efforts where they count the most?
• What’s stopping marketers from becoming more data-driven: is it fear, lack of budget, lack of training, something else?
• How can small marketing teams use data-driven tactics to appear much larger than they are? What would Damon advise for marketers on similarly small teams, where they’re the only person running social, content marketing, website, and more?
• How can email marketers get started with nurture tracks to build a relationship with prospects?

It’s all in this episode of the Marketing Cloudcast. Listen to a preview of our episode with demand gen expert Damon Waldron here, or download the full episode to your laptop, smartphone, iPad, or other device to enjoy whenever you want.

Here are a few key highlights from our talk with Damon:

Before you make a big investment in time or money on a project, do the math. Let’s say you spent $10,000 on a recent event, plus $20,000 promoting it, but you benefited from 10x the pipeline and two important logos closed during it. Reviewing these numbers will show you whether it was worth it. Make it tangible.

The same goes for time investment: You might realize you spent 30 hours making that new e-book but it didn’t have quite the ROI you expected, or that your time would be better spent outsourcing e-book creation and working on something else. Time is as big of an investment as money—if not more.

Email marketing remains critical and will always be critical. Damon argues that email is the best way to get your message across in a complete way vs. other channels. To become more data-driven in B2B marketing, Damon advises measuring marketing-qualified leads and pipeline generated by emails. There’s a lot more to think through vs. open/click rate. A popular email is great, but did it really do anything?

Outsource what you can if you’re on a small marketing team. Whether it’s content creation or marketing ops, managing your time wisely is directly tied to your company’s marketing success.

Don’t default to brochure speak. Damon also says it’s critical for marketers on small teams to have a crystal-clear understanding of their buyers. Be able to create content and messaging that helps them; speak like a human. Too often, marketers default to brochure speak, but on a small team, you actually have a chance to be more human and address people directly.

Know that B2B buyers are researching like crazy. Many B2B marketers are armies of one in their respective organizations. Today’s B2B buyer is much like the expert consumer: they view 3–7 pieces of content before talking to a sales person.

These are just a few highlights from our conversation with Damon Waldron, Director of Demand Gen at BrightFunnel. Get the full episode now on iTunes or Stitcher.

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Tweet @youngheike with marketing questions or topics you’d like to see covered next on the Marketing Cloudcast.