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How to Improve Productivity in Marketing: 15 Experts Share Their Trade Secrets

By Andy Theimer | December 14, 2018

Welcome to the world of instant gratification.

Today’s on-demand economy has brands bending over backward to deliver products, support, and services to consumers at lightning speeds. As consumers, this world is fun to play in — we get what we want when we want it. As marketers, however, keeping up with consumers in real-time and adapting on the fly is nigh impossible. Or, at least it feels like it.

So, what’s a marketer to do? How can you keep up with your audience to deliver the right message at the right time to the right people?

To deliver on consumer needs and meet today’s increasingly high consumer expectations, you need to work smarter, not harder. And marketing automation tools, which offer huge productivity gains, can certainly help. Below, 15 marketing experts share their secrets for maximizing their marketing productivity, strategies, and technology stack without working 24/7 so you can do the same.

Jill Rowley

Member Board of Directors | Affinio

Jill Rowley Headshot

As the former Chief Growth Officer for marketing automation powerhouse, Marketo, Jill has plenty of insight into how marketers can maximize the effectiveness of their campaigns and streamline operations. Today, she serves on the board of directors for marketing intelligence platform, Affinio, to help companies better understand today’s consumers.

What’s Jill’s marketing productivity secret? Collaboration.

“We just need to work together. Nothing, no acronym or fad, will work in a silo.

“Instead of just randomly serving the world, you need to be very strategic about serving a certain set of accounts. ‘You’ means sales and marketing and even customer success. Yes, and also your executive team.”

Read more from Jill with her article: Drunk on Inbound, and the Hangover Is Severe

Follow Jill on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Jenn DiMaria

Senior Director of Client Services | Digital Pi

Jenn Dimaria Headshot Jenn DiMaria is an expert in all things marketing automation, the productivity tool of choice for many marketers. But even marketing automation takes a lot of work to set up. Jenn’s expertise helps marketers set their automation tools up for success, increasing marketing productivity in the long-run.

What’s Jenn’s marketing productivity secret? Always set an objective first.

“Figure out what you want to report on before setting up your programs. Planning ahead adds extra time to the front of your campaign process, but it’s well worth it when your CEO comes to you at the end of a quarter asking for a report on ‘how marketing is doing’ and you can actually present him/her with data.”

Read more from Jenn with her article: It’s Not You, It’s Me: 3 Self-Inflicted Problems That Get Blamed On Marketo (and How to Fix Them)

Follow Jenn on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Joe Reitz

Marketing Automation Trainer | Amazon Web Services

Joe Reitz headshot Working for Amazon Web Services, one of the world’s leading cloud computing platforms, Joe has the task of training AWS’s staff on how to get the most out of their marketing automation tools. In his pastime, Joe has several video tutorials that provide expert advice for other marketing automation users.

What’s Joe’s marketing productivity secret? Automated list management.

“In Marketing Automation, you need to be able to manage your deliverability rates for your marketing emails. Luckily, you can set up an operational program in Marketo that manages bounces, and will mark them as invalid/suspended records in your instance so you don’t keep sending emails to the twisting nether.”

Hear more of Joe’s advice with his video: Building a “Bounce House” Program

Follow Joe on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Caitlin Culbert

Marketo Practice Director | The Pedowitz Group

caitlin culbert headshot Caitlin Culbert is a Marketo expert, instructor, and consultant. In addition to practical marketing automation tips and tricks, Caitlin offers strategies that help get the greatest return from their marketing automation investment. After all, marketing productivity isn’t just about getting more work done in less time. It’s also about producing greater results in less time.

What’s Caitlin’s marketing productivity secret? Get the right integrations.

“Quality marketing automation takes work, and it’s well worth your effort in the end. It’s easy to assume marketing automation is ‘easy’ since you can auto-schedule your content for the future, but quality automation isn’t finished once you send it. You don’t have the ability to sit back and relax because marketing automation is only a small piece of a much larger strategy. How you use your MA software is dependent on the holistic integrations of your multi-channel customer experience.”

Read more from Caitlin with her article: 9 Myths About Marketing Automation

Follow Caitlin on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Jenna Molby

Marketing Operations | ACL

Jenna Molby Headshot Here at FeedOtter, we’re big fans of Jenna Molby. And not just because she has nice things to say about us. Her website is a goldmine of marketing productivity and automation hacks with over 100 helpful blog posts. If that alone doesn’t qualify her as a marketing productivity expert, she’s also lived and breathed both B2B and B2C marketing for over a decade.

What’s Jenna’s marketing productivity secret? Automate RSS emails.

“FeedOtter takes out the manual work of creating blog digests and RSS emails. Simply tell FeedOtter when to send your RSS email, schedule a daily, weekly, or monthly digest or send blog posts and content to subscribers as they are published in real-time. They even have a library of responsive, visually appealing templates to make your RSS email look great or you can choose to upload you own.”

Read more from Jenna with her article: 12 Tools That Every Pardot User Should Know About

Follow Jenna on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Josh Hill

Senior Manager of Marketing Automation | RingCentral

Josh Hill Headshot Josh Hill of RingCentral is a marketing operations and technology leader. To date, he’s helped create and refine the martech stacks for some of the most renowned B2C and B2B brands. His expertise on marketing technology gives him unique insight into how technology can aid productivity — but only when done right.

What’s Josh’s marketing productivity secret? Assess and optimize your martech stack.

“A successful martech stack allows you to automate marketing and sales business processes in a way that you can efficiently report on the funnel and make future decisions on budget allocation. To evaluate if your stack needs help, you need to ask the right questions, add/remove the right tools, and involve the right teams.”

Read more from Josh with his article: Martech Stack Assessment Tips

Follow Josh on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Meagan French

Founder | Lotus Growth

Meagan French Headshot As the Founder and Chief Analyst of her own consulting firm, Lotus Growth, Meagan is an expert in helping companies reach their target accounts through demand generation and account-based marketing campaigns. How does this help with productivity? Meagan’s advice can help you get more out of your demand gen efforts with less work.

What’s Meagan’s marketing productivity secret? Prioritize tactics with attribution.

“Marketers that use marketing technology and attribution see a 2.8x ROI. Marketing attribution allows you to see what’s working and what’s not.”

Read more from Meagan with her presentation: Growth Marketing: Secrets for Fueling Bottom-Line Revenue

Follow Meagan on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Steve Susina

Director of Marketing | RevenueWell

Steve Susina Headshot With an engineer mind, Steve’s marketing is heavily influenced by data and analytics. Adopting a similar, systematic approach to your marketing operations can help you produce more within the same time constraints and tools. He’s also a marketing automation and demand generation expert.

What’s Steve’s marketing productivity secret? Strategy sets you up for success.

“Before getting started with marketing automation, it is important to have a great content strategy already in place. Automation will help you deliver content faster and more efficiently to the right people. That’s awesome if you have great content. If your content sucks, marketing automation will also expose it to more people, more quickly.”

Read more from Steve with his eBook: 18 Content Marketing Innovator Tips

Follow Steve on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Jon Miller

CEO and Co-founder | Engagio

Jon Miller Headshot Engagio is a must-have tool for any marketer hoping to execute an account-based marketing strategy. As the CEO and Co-founder of Engagio, Jon has can’t-miss advice on how to increase your ABM effectiveness through new technologies and strategies. He also helped create marketing automation giant, Marketo.

What’s Jon’s marketing productivity secret? Maximize your return with a targeted account-based marketing strategy.

“Just like mapping out your road trip, your journey to a successful account-based strategy depends on your ability to map out your list of target accounts correctly. After all, the whole point of account-based marketing is to focus your efforts on high-value accounts that have the greatest revenue potential. Get this right, and you’ll maximize your return. Get it wrong, and you’ll either miss major opportunities, waste resources on the wrong account, or both.”

Read more from Jon with his article: How to Select Accounts for Account-Based Everything Success

Follow Jon on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Ian Cleary

CEO | RazorSocial

Ian Cleary Headshot Ian Cleary has been routinely listed as one of the top digital marketers by the likes of Onalytica, Inc., Entrepreneur.com, and others. He’s a master at helping his clients drive more traffic and sales through effective inbound and outbound marketing strategies.

What’s Ian’s marketing productivity secret? Take advantage of Facebook custom audiences.

“Find a tool that supports automatic creation of Facebook custom audiences that you can target. Imagine if you could automatically create an audience of people who visited your checkout page but didn’t buy so you can target them with the right advertisements.”

Read more from Ian with his article: 101 Marketing Tools and Tips

Follow Ian on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Chad Pollitt

VP of Marketing | inPowered

Chad Pollitt Chad Pollitt may be VP of Marketing at inPowered, but his impact goes far beyond any one company. In fact, he’s also an Adjunct Professor at not one, but two world-class universities. He’s also authored three marketing-related books and is a regular contributor to top industry media outlets like the Huffington Post, the Guardian, and Social Media Today.

What’s Chad’s marketing productivity secret? Artificial intelligence.

“Marketers can breakthrough the glutton of noise online by using the latest AI technology to scale amplification across all of the appropriate native and social channels.”

Read more from Chad with his article: Why Content Amplification is Critical for Brands Today and Tomorrow

Follow Chad on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Ned James

Senior Product Marketing Manager | FIS

Ned James Headshot Ned James is a product marketing professional with over a decade of experience in devising strategies that maximize results with effective tactics. Speaking from experience, Ned can help you get the most out of your programs while working within the same scope.

What’s Ned’s marketing productivity secret? Model your current customers.

“Generating quality leads isn’t easy. It’s hard. Yet, there are proven lead gen methodologies that work better than others and are worthy of your time. One of these is modeling your best customers. The premise behind this lead gen strategy is simple; your best leads will look like your best customers. Put another way, those most likely to buy your product in the future look like those who currently buy your product in the present. And the way to identify those leads is to model your current customers.”

Read more from Ned with his article: How To Model Your Best Customers For Lead Generation

Follow Ned on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Oli Gardner

Co-founder | Unbounce

Oli Gardner Oli Gardner knows landing pages — the last-stop before converting for many customers. As the co-founder of Unbounce, a landing page builder, Oli has the knowledge and expertise that can help you create conversion-optimized campaigns that drive more leads and more sales — boosting results without extra effort.

What’s Oli’s marketing productivity secret? Use persuasive design.

“In a perfect world, conversions would flow like fresh spring water. But in real life, you need to guide your visitors toward a single call to action with a combination of persuasive design and psychological triggers. Using the principles of Conversion-Centered Design (CCD), you can create create — and optimize for — delightful, high-converting marketing campaigns.”

Learn more with Oli’s interactive guide: The 7 Principles of Conversion-Centered Design

Follow Oli on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Stewart Rogers

Analyst-at-Large | VentureBeat

Stewart Rogers As the Analyst-at-Large for VentureBeat, Stewart Rogers spends much of his time researching, mastering, and writing about disruptive marketing technologies like AI, blockchain, and more. In addition to knowing which technologies can help make an impact on marketing productivity and results, Stewart is also expert in analytics, email marketing, lead generation, social media management, and more.

What’s Stewart’s marketing productivity secret? Nurture your leads.

“Lead nurturing is a powerful tool that is relevant and necessary for every type of contact made via your lead generation efforts. If you send the right type of information to the right segments of contacts – regularly, consistently and with brand continuity – lead nurturing can be the difference between making your targets and falling well short of the mark.”

Read more from Stewart with his article: B2B Lead Nurturing Tactics and Best Practices

Follow Stewart on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Chad White

Research Director | Litmus.com

Chad White Headshot Email marketing is Chad White’s forte. He’s authored the book “Email Marketing Rules” and written more than 3,000 blog posts and articles covering the latest email marketing trends and best practices. As a result, Chad has become one of the leading email marketing experts who can help you generate greater ROI from all of your email marketing campaigns.

What’s Chad’s marketing productivity secret? Don’t become a campaign workhorse.

“Email marketers send a lot of campaigns. It can seem like that’s the job of an email marketer: to send campaigns and maximize their value. However, looking at it this way can cause us to send campaigns that decrease response in the future and to avoid sending campaigns that increase response in the future.”

Read more from Chad with his article: Don’t Use The Wrong Metrics To Measure Success

Follow Chad on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Do More With Less

Marketing productivity isn’t about producing more campaigns in less time. Productivity is about generating greater results using the same amount of time, effort, and resources. From leveraging the right tools to carefully thinking over your approach, the 15 marketing productivity secrets about can help you maximize your marketing and keep up with your audience in today’s rapidly changing landscape.

And last, but not least, we have a tool that can completely automate your RSS emails from your marketing automation platform and help you create curated content newsletters and blog digests. To learn how this tool can help save you massive amounts of time, schedule your demo of FeedOtter today.

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