Achieving Top of Mind

What is the number one attribute of a brand? Answer: “Top of Mind”. If this is true, then what steps are needed for a company to produce a brand that achieves Top of Mind? Answer: actionable customer experience. What is actionable customer experience you say?

Today’s answer is founded in marketing automation. If marketing automation = actionable customer experience, then what makes up marketing automation? The answer is not simple but for the purpose of this article let’s keep our thoughts and strategies at the 10,000-foot level.

First, we will have to agree that marketing strategies in the framework of the 5 Ms (Mission, Money, Message, Media, and Measurement) are all automated or should all be automated. The tools and processes vary but the outcomes should be the same. And one more thing, we all have to agree that brand is made of up absolutely everything pertaining to the company’s name and its activities.

Some major strategies involve analytics, websites, publications, cable/tv, billboards, philanthropy, CMS, SMM, SEO, CRM, marketing automation, personalization, product and service offerings, process improvement, machine learning, chat bots, artificial intelligence, life cycle management, and retention. This is not a complete list but suffice it to say there are a host of channels, and how the brand leverages the channels that increase profits and customer satisfaction vary from sector and industry.

The choices made by companies to invest in the 5Ms to achieve top of mind vary a great deal, however, if the C-suite can be honest in its own evaluation of its brand then they can improve every aspect of their success in achieving Top of Mind. This is a good time to define Top of Mind, as it needs to be laser focused and what I categorize as a “customer impression or touch point that will move the customer to action.”

If you accept that a dollar spent is meant to move existing and potential customers to action, then we can evaluate each and every aspect of marketing automation against return on investment and its percentage of the total profit margin. Processes like KPIs, OKRs, Road Maps and other strategic metrics and long-term plans are key to investing in and implementing marketing automation as this element of business technology and is always evolving. This requires open minds and change management on the part of the C-suite.

I consulted with a Fortune 1000 company whose Road Map was halted in year 3 by the CEO as having failed. The simple takeaway was that while the company was incrementally growing the future of the company, its innovation and marketing automation was getting stale and gathering technical debt instead of keeping up with the market innovation as this company competed in banking, insurance and wealth management. So, the reset involved an updated Road Map and an improvement in accountability through actionable, measurable and reportable road map progress. Sounds simple enough, but the failure was in leadership to spot the slippage and lack of response in timely dealing with it.

So, my bottom line is that I have witnessed this failure on the part of the C-suite more than once and the underlying cause is always the same. What companies should do about this is create a vision and road map to achieve both with processes that include marketing automation for the 5Ms, and art and science of retention as a double pronged strategy to position your brand Top of Mind.

Good luck and should questions arise please contact me at 210-618-6566 or [email protected],

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Best regards,

Dave Howell

#okr #kpi #roadmap #marketingautomation #it #5ms #strategyexecution #C-suite #metricsthatmatter #topofmind

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