It’s hard to find advocates of the hard-sell these days. The rise of the online Marketing is a very different world and the hard-sell broadcast campaigns of the past no longer have much sway. The digital revolution – combined with the sheer number of messages that people have to process each day – means that marketing now has to be smarter. It has to connect with audiences in a more meaningful way and prove the impact it’s having.

On top of these 10 Commandments of Modern Marketing, we’ve come up with five more behaviors that can help marketers stay successful.

1. Story-telling

Today’s marketing communications are all about story-telling; creating a powerful story to support your brand and what you stand for. The modern marketer needs to create content that opens with a snappy headline to attract attention and then engages readers through a well-written and engaging narrative that:

  • builds awareness of an issue;
  • shows the options for resolving it;
  • delivers proof of how it was solved; then
  • details the benefits to the customer.

Statistics are a vital element of the story you tell; they help you prove what you are saying isn’t just opinion. In the B2B world, we all know that the stats that resonate most powerfully are those around time saving, cost efficiency, revenue increases and, if you’re in that kind of business, carbon reductions or environmental performance improvements.

2. Relationship building

What you have always done in person through face-to-face meetings and on the phone you now need to do on social media sites, too. The art of building communities is more important than ever and you have to use your personality to build an online community in an informal but value-adding way. Not just to tell your story; but to learn from your virtual relationships what your customers and peers want and expect from you.

3. Sharing the mission

Involving key stakeholders as you build your marketing plans is imperative; sales and marketing can no longer work in silos, for example. Visualizing your campaigns and sharing their objectives can help improve collaboration to ensure you build campaigns that gain the biggest reach and have the biggest impact. Learn what customers need; then share how you plan to deliver it.

4. Driving engagement

Once you have your customers, prospects and colleagues on board, it’s time to ensure their level of engagement grows. As we all know, it’s not just about how many Facebook friends you have – it’s about how they engage with you! Do this with informative, thought-provoking communications that strengthen your position of authority. Look at the life cycle of the customer, not just getting them engaged, and keep colleagues motivated with updates that show the results to continually drive support for your campaigns.

5. Automating processes

Technology is the name of today’s marketing game. The world of marketing is changing so fast that the modern marketer has to automate processes in order to keep up. This saves them time, removes the tedium of repetitive tasks, provides rich data about what’s working and what’s not, shows exactly how engaged a prospect is and enables them to deliver and prove their value faster than their competitors.

About this Guest Post: This post was written by Tomorrow-People. You can join Tomorrow-People on a journey through the Marketing Cosmos where you’ll find out more about how marketing automation can help you stay successful in the modern world of marketing.