Marketing success depends on having a coherent marketing strategy in place that leverages the key strengths of the company to engage with prospects effectively throughout their customer journey. However, in any increasingly competitive world, merely going through the marketing process is not enough. Marketers need to innovate or differentiate to reach out to their prospects in a better and more effective way than their competitors.
At its core, marketing innovation entails seizing the opportunity to use the most appropriate tools at every stage in the marketing lifecycle. Marketing innovation takes many forms — ranging from something as basic as an infographic to something as complex as creating microsites. It could also be something as simple as sending a short, two-minute preview of a lengthy video, so prospects are not put off by the amount of time and potentially ignore the content altogether.
While the benefits of marketing innovation may sound obvious, adoption is not immediate. A May 2013 report from Forrester: “Benchmark Your Marketing Innovation Culture,” reveals only 11% of marketing organizations allocate a specific centralized budget for innovation efforts, and that only 9% of organizations include marketing innovation in their overall budget. In addition,
- Only 20% of leaders actively monitor marketing innovation programs and only 12% of companies have any program to develop marketing innovation leaders.
- Of the marketers who monitor innovation, only 36% set long-term goals for marketing innovation programs, and only 27% of them actively review such programs.
- This is when 44% of marketers who monitor marketing innovation achieve positive ROI from such innovations.
Marketing innovation is imperative to stand out in the crowd.
Which tools do you use to stand out? Is marketing automation part of your marketing innovation strategy?
