Unlock the Marketing Trifecta: 3 Strategies to Transform 2024 into a Profitable Paradise

Over the last 18 months, alongside my work with clients (who range from global brands to SMEs and startups) I have interviewed over 60 of the UK’s leading marketers from the biggest brands. I also run my Little Grey Cells breakfast briefing events for the UK’s most senior marketing folk where “warts’n’all” discussion of today’s most pressing marketing issues are candidly explored.

In this article, dear reader, I have collated the marketing trends, shared with me by marketers at the top of their game in the UK: 3 marketing disciplines that they believe had the most impact on their businesses and thus are relevant to any business aiming to consolidate and increase their bottom line this year (spoiler: there’s no mention of AI).

Let’s get stuck in:

To succeed in 2024 you must embrace market research:

Out of all the senior marketers I spoke with, each one explained their reliance on comprehensive market research. Because of its effectiveness in bigger businesses, more businesses of all sizes are seeing the value in embracing research and hypotheses validation before they begin their marketing campaigns. This reliance on informed research is only set to increase in 2024.

Unleashing marketing initiatives without undertaking thorough marketing diagnosis and research is like firing a machine gun while wearing a blind-fold and assuming you’ll still get a bullseye. The odds in your favour are slim at best.

Customer and competitor research has long been part of the big brand marketing playbook. Lately, as businesses (especially startups and SMEs) rush to increase sales by dispensing marketing tactics, the crucial disciplines of diagnosis and research have often ignored - especially when the immediate quick-fix marketing options of SEO, online ads, social media and influencers loom large.

Only the other week I met a COO for a funded startup looking for a head of marketing. He said: “I don’t want someone who is going to hold things up by insisting that we do research and strategy - we don’t need that, we know what we’re doing. I want a B2B marketer who will bash out TikTok and LinkedIn posts and SEO optimised content for blogs.”

Don’t let this be you.

I explained to the COO that everything he had just said was a list of tactics which amounted to around 1/10th of how considered marketing can benefit his business.

Before launching any marketing campaign, take the time to review what has worked, what has not for your business.

Carefully consider your competitors and ‘really get to know’ your customers - (and note: knowing your industry is not the same as understanding your customers). Remember: never assume you know what is going on in your customers’ heads - unless you have asked them.

Typical push backs at this point are “prohibitive cost” and “lack of time” in which to undertake the work. A modest amount of resource and time is required, but it shouldn’t be prohibitive. Keep your eye on the bigger picture: research should save you money in the long term if conducted correctly.

If you’re worried about the cost or time then do this one thing: conduct 15 x 30 minute interviews with key customers. This one exercise alone will provide you with a foundation on which you can build impressive marketing campaigns.

Most importantly, use these interviews to prove that some of your hypotheses are correct. Ask your customers the key questions that you need answered to help your marketing, optimise your services or even improve your products. Make sure your questions tackle the issues that you need to have validated. Once you have the information you require you can build on this information and present this to your leadership team - or share it with the FD, sales, product innovation, R&D or engineering.

Marketing is a science. And as such, it’s a tool you can use to power your business. Don’t ignore the fundamentals and key activities at your disposal. Which brings me on to #2:

Businesses who are going to excel in 2024 will follow the path of marketing diligence, with knowledge of all the levers at their disposal to power their business forward.

In my conversations with some of the UK’s most senior marketers from brands as diverse as Ford, Vodafone, Dominos, Yorkshire Tea, Boots to challenger brands like Lucky Saint and Chilly’s - time after time - the most successful marketers in the UK all revert to what I call ‘marketing diligence’.

Despite the fact that the end result of their marketing may be a creative, humorous, impactful campaign, the big brand marketers I spoke to all adhere to the 4 key stages of marketing - and any good marketer will tell you that these are the key disciplines of research, strategy, tactics and measurement.

2024 will see the smartest businesses embedding marketing diligence in their businesses - if they don’t already. Marketing is increasingly recognised as a science. Applied correctly to any business, great marketing will drive positive outcomes.

Research: as above - get those competitor and customer insights you need to inform your business’ strategic choices. Take time to diagnose your current situation.

A talented marketing director told me that when they took over their new role, they took time to evaluate what had gone before, what was working, what was not. She found astonishing artwork that had been commissioned a few years back, in the company vaults - and this could be re-purposed for the current marketing campaign. Her decision to use this artwork saved the business multiple six figures. You might be sitting on gold, but haven’t taken the time to identify it.

Strategy: form a coherent strategy that is good for the next 12 months and beyond. Set precision, time-bound, laser-focused marketing objectives that explain who you are targeting, why, what you hope to achieve; objectives that promise a specific, predicted financial return based on your planned marketing investment. Your strategy should be easy to convey and boil down to 1-2 pages. No more. Take your time. Run it by colleagues in your company and even colleagues in different industries. Don’t rush this crucial stage.

Tactics: having completed stages 1 and 2 you are in a great position to choose the best marketing tactics. Get this right, and well informed, well chosen tactics that deliver results can be repeated year on year. Coca-Cola haven’t found the need to change their iconic “Holidays are coming” Christmas tv ad for over 20 years. Competent research and strategy will ultimately save you money.

Measurement: Track everything. How effective is your marketing? What effect is it having on your sales, your brand perception and your company bottom line? Only by tracking results, brand perception and sales can you rate effectiveness. Great results will fuel further marketing, and poor results will invite you to revisit your strategy and research, tracing your work back to see what needs to change to enable success in the future.

All of the above neatly segue into #3:

Marketing is the engine that powers business: in 2024 businesses that increase their sales will not silo their marketing team. They will bring marketing front and centre in their business.

In the UK’s biggest brands, the heads of marketing are increasingly brought into the fold and join the C-suite in key decision making. 2024 will see the rise-and-rise of the savvy marketer, and smart leadership teams will welcome these marketers to the table at board meetings and beyond.

For too long marketing has (in many quarters) had a bad name. Only further exacerbated by the abundance of digital marketing agencies and immediate digital solutions who too often skate over research and strategy to deliver fast tactical executions.

If you don’t already, learn to see marketing as the series of systematic processes that will, if their validated findings are implemented correctly:

• reduce your customer acquisition cost
• improve your customer lifetime value
• secure future cash flow through improved brand strength
• drive value through innovation

Agencies that provide tactical marketing solutions rarely attend to the above. If you haven’t already, make 2024 the year you appoint a talented, knowledgeable marketer, schooled in at least MBA-level marketing theory and practical experience to help steer your ship to further success.

Who does your marketing at the moment? Are they ‘in house’ or do you outsource? Whoever they are - do they really “get your business”? Have they understood your goals, your challenges and hot priorities? Have you shared your business finances with them - your more recent sales figures, cashflow, profit and loss? Does their marketing plan take these numbers into account and promise a realistic return on your marketing spend?

A smart marketer will need your financial stats in order to undertake analysis; they’ll be able to offer an opinion on pricing, on sales initiatives, on distribution. They’ll understand your supply chain. They’ll offer insight into potential product innovation based on their market research. A trend we’ve seen this last year is that heads of innovation in newer businesses now report to the Head of Marketing - sometime the roles ‘head of marketing’ and ‘head of innovation’ are combined - you can imagine why.

Crucially, this talented marketer will be able to pull together a marketing and brand management plan for your business - for the next 12 months and the next 4-5 years - if required. Their plan will be short, pithy and hold its own when presented to the CEO or FD.

A big trend for 2024, shared by all of the senior marketers I spoke with, is the belief that business strategy and marketing strategy have converged: both disciplines now focus on ‘the 3 C’s”: your Company’s offer, your Competition and your Customer. Optimise your understanding of all 3 and you unlock the path to increased bottom line. A great marketer will be across this.

A talented marketer will tell you that you need 4-6 months to build a good marketing and brand plan. Their plan will assess the business status quo, observe customer perception of your business, identify who you are targeting this year, define your positioning to these targets and provide clear objectives (with their associated costs).

They will then summarise their plan with a budget sheet, showing predicted sales increase as a result of your marketing campaigns. This then needs sign off so that you hit the ground running, with your teams briefed and ready to go as the financial year begins.

I am often shown marketing plans by colleagues who run their own business and asked to give a second opinion. Whether outsourced or in-house, shockingly, too many marketing plans lack any forecasting as to how sales will be affected if the proposed plan is delivered.

Again: don’t let this be you. Make sure any marketing or brand management plan you agree to includes this crucial information. Without it, your marketing plan is just short of worthless.

I’m sure you’ll agree that an expert marketer like I have described above shouldn’t be siloed in the world of marcomms, they should be at the table for all of your major business decision meetings, because of the value they will bring to the discussion.

Is your business shaping up to tackle 2024 by paying attention to marketing research, diligent application of marketing process and working with a marketer who has a working knowledge of business management and fully understands your business?

No? Then we should have a chat. It’s time that you used marketing to its full potential and start to reap the rewards.

Message me and let's get on a zoom call and put your marketing to rights.