Have you ever been a part of a customer community, you hear customers expressing a need and you feel that a campaign should be done to answer that need, however, you wait to act because you do not have the research to back your initiative?
It is time to put the value back into understanding your customer and target audience.
An Entrepreneur, Author, Speaker, Podcast Host, Marketing & Sales Leader, and the VP of Marketing at Outreach, Max Altschuler, encourages marketers to take the time to understand their customers and to know when to act on that knowledge, instead of being held back by insufficient data.



 
Takeaways:
Take the time to get to know your customers. Find out what communities they are involved in and put yourself there.
Build a community with your customers that is tied to your business and branding with a customer advisory board. Listen to what they are saying. If the same recurring topic keeps coming up, run a campaign on that topic. You do not need research to tell you that, it is simply having a pulse on what your customers needs are.
When you are just starting marketing at a new company, do not redo the website right away. Put the time in to get to know the customer base and target audience first.
Every company should have a specific role dedicated to customer development and research. Someone that can listen to what customers are saying, run a poll or survey to your prospects and target audience, and then create a report for your company to turn it into content and thought leadership for your brand.
If you are planning a virtual event, focus on your quality of speakers and sessions rather than the quantity.
Create a space for virtual event attendees to engage with speakers, whether that is through a Slack channel or live Q & A.
“When you try to be everything to everybody you won’t be anything to anybody.” - Max Altschuler
Career advice from Max - Your 20’s are for learning and your 30’s are for earning. Do not worry if you are not making as much money as your friends, if you are just starting out in your career. You are building your knowledge foundation for when you will need it later in your career.




 
Links:
Unleash: https://unleashvirtual.outreach.io/
Outreach: https://www.outreach.io/
Sales Hacker: https://www.saleshacker.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maxaltschuler/
Career Hacking for Millennials: https://www.amazon.com/Career-Hacking-Millennials-How-Built-ebook/dp/B07BTDMYY3




 
Busted Myths:
Everything needs to be measured in marketing and you should not try a new campaign without the data reasoning to back it up. - This is NOT the case. Not everything needs to be measured. The ruling is about 80% should be measured, where the other 20% should come from knowing your customers and having an understanding of the current trends and their needs.
You need a lot of speakers booked to make a virtual event successful. - It is better to have 10 -15 high quality speakers and sessions in which your brand can promote really well, than have 100 speakers with low quality engagement.