Some organizations can become resistant to change even when the marketing tactics that once brought them success are no longer sufficient. Your marketing team needs to treat unstable or poor performance as a sign that things within your company have to shift. In this article, we explain how to drive transformation in resistant organizations through three key steps.
The first step to driving transformational change is to develop a strategic decision-making framework. New solutions to the same old problems require the right focus, right data, and the right success metrics.
To make the best and most strategic decision, your team needs to have a proactive focus. Many marketing teams (and businesses in general) only ever make reactive decisions, but that is not always efficient or cost-effective. A serious dip in conversion rates or lead counts does not mean that your company should completely abandon existing tactics. It just means that a strategic shift is necessary.
Your team can make proactive choices through the use of predictive analytics. Collect relevant data to track customer engagement, then adopt a new yet consistent approach to meet customer needs. After you have enough info, adjust your strategies accordingly.
Your new decision-making strategy should be driven by data. Senior marketers can use past professional experience and gut feelings to guide their choices, but that should not be the entire foundation of your organizational shift. Obtain quality data and use it to push your business forward.
The best way to establish a data-driven culture at your company is to create key performance indicators (KPIs) that reflect your new or current goals. Use these KPIs to track how close you are to achieving certain milestones, and collect related data to ensure that what works stays and what doesn’t work is abandoned.
Marketing leaders need business-specific success metrics in addition to standard KPIs. Assemble your core staff and define measurable objectives specific to your industry and the goals you are trying to achieve. For example, some businesses will have great leads but low conversion rates, while others have little lead generation but decent conversion rates.
Businesses concerned with lead generation and brand awareness will need specific success metrics, including social media post views and website traffic volume. On the other hand, businesses with high-quality lead generation but poor conversion rates should track metrics such as conversion rates and click-through rates.
Resistance to change is a cultural issue, and your business needs to create a company culture that embraces transformation. You can do so by focusing on customers, encouraging experimentation, continuously refining, and staying consistent across all channels.
The first step to creating a transformative company culture is to focus on the customers. Both current and potential customers need to be fully understood and engaged. Collect relevant data to track customer engagement, and then use a new but consistent approach to meet customer needs.
A customer-focused model will help grow your base, strengthen existing relationships, and build brand loyalty. Satisfied customers are more likely to both make referrals to your business as well as become full brand ambassadors. As a result, improving brand reputation with customers creates better lead generation.
Encouraging experimentation is another crucial part of creating a transformative company culture. Your marketing teams need to embrace and develop new strategies specific to your industry and business, and sometimes that means taking creative risks. The same methods, even when driven by data, will not bring you the best results.
As you encourage experimentation, marketing leaders should also emphasize a balance between what worked in the past and what clearly needs to change. Keep the pieces of your existing model that seem to be driving success while testing out riskier new strategies in pilot programs.
Transformation can also be driven by a culture of continuous refinement. Don’t wait for your success metrics to dip too low to finally make marketing shifts. Continuously track your company’s success and make improvements regularly to ensure maximum audience engagement.
Daily metrics monitoring should be part of your continuous refinement culture, and any signs that your business or the market as a whole is shifting should be taken seriously. Automate this process or conduct it manually and then identify trends early so that new directions can be consistently explored.
Although it might seem counterintuitive, part of your company’s transformative culture should be keeping marketing consistent across all channels. Embracing experimentation and continuous refinement should never mean inconsistent messaging, and the same visuals and language will anchor your brand during times of significant change.
For example, some members of your target audience will only engage with company emails while others interact solely with social media content. Marketing consistency is necessary across all digital platforms, and that involves properly storing and distributing brand-specific digital assets.
The third and final step to driving transformation is to always be adapting. Your company will stay competitive and relevant if you utilize proper feedback loops and embrace emerging technologies.
Part of continuous adaptation is creating external feedback loops. Quantitative data will help make strategic decisions, but marketing leaders also need qualitative external feedback. Collecting information directly from various customers will provide a more comprehensive image of your brand and which parts of it are meeting demands.
One of the simplest ways to start an external feedback loop is to send out feedback surveys using a tool like for example Novella. The questions within should be tailored to the parts of your business that are not seeing the best results, but they should still track other factors to maintain customer satisfaction. Gather the answers together and communicate with each department to address campaign issues.
Embedding emerging technologies into your marketing firm will also help drive transformation. New tools are being developed every day that can improve efficiency and lower costs, especially when it comes to certain AI-enhanced workflows. Your staff will have more free time and better capabilities when friction is reduced.
Emerging tech is often most useful for automating low-value tasks so that your marketing team can focus on more strategic, high-value priorities. They can also be used to provide your business with new audience data as well as thorough summary reports.