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#148 Winfried Schultz on The Struggles of Transitioning Your Digital Marketing Efforts
You may have heard this before, but this year has been unlike any other, and it has forced marketers to boost their digital marketing efforts.
In this episode of AMP Up Your Digital Marketing, Glenn Gaudet speaks with Winfried Schultz, VP of EMEA Marketing at Teradata, a provider of database and analytics software and services. They discuss the transition to stronger virtual and digital marketing efforts from in-person marketing.
What you’ll learn:
* The challenges of transitioning to a strictly digital marketing strategy.
* How to overcome your digital marketing challenges.
* What marketers can do to make their digital presence more engaging.
The marketing team over at Teradata speaks directly to the executive offices and high up decision-makers of prospective buyers. This entails a great deal of high-touch and in-person marketing activities, meaning conferences, face-to-face meetings, etc.
Of course, practicing this type of marketing is frowned upon in 2020 thanks to the coronavirus pandemic. During the past few months, Winfried and his marketing team worked extremely hard at moving away from event marketing and meetings towards stronger digital marketing efforts through virtual interactions.
He quickly learned he needed to adjust his strategy, and it wasn’t as simple as offering your conference sessions through a webinar.
Your Digital Marketing Transition Won’t Be Easy
Early the pandemic, it became apparent that face-to-face interactions were not going to be an option for the foreseeable future.
They tested out webinars and forums in an attempt to recreate the experience of a roundtable in a digital setting. But, it just wasn’t working. Winfried points to the short attention spans that people have with digital content, so your digital marketing efforts have to adhere to cadence, storytelling, and suspense.
“We have to get the point across much, much quicker,” Winfried said.
When people watch YouTube videos, they’ll switch to a new video within 10 seconds if they aren’t entertained yet, so your content needs to grab their attention.
Take a Multilayered Approach
You can’t replace a face-to-face meeting or a networking experience from a conference through any kind of virtual setting.
“The buzz from a live event is different,” Winfried said. “It’s impossible to recreate that. You have to play to other senses and attention spans and interests.”
You need to be a bit more sophisticated and strategic in your digital marketing approach. It needs to be multifaceted with multiple channels.
“Blasting out a list of emails doesn’t really work very well in this environment,” Winfried said. “You have to reach out to people directly and indirectly. You need inbound tactics for thought leadership development. You have to train your organization for social selling a lot more. What was a ‘nice to have’ is a prerequisite for business.”
No matter the channel or format that you use to engage with someone, you need to give them easy opportunities to engage with you to keep them interested. Find ways for them to participate and give them opportunities to raise their hands, like online polls. If doing a webinar, use a moderator to help with interaction. You want to keep calls conversational. Make it a back and forth interaction, much like you’d have if you were in person.
Be Prepared to Meet
When you have a contact willing to get on a call with you, you need to be ready.
You have to do your homework. Who are they? What do they do? How big are they? What problems are they trying to solve? People don’t want to spend their time filling you in on this. They want to get the answers about what you can offer, not give you answers about what they do.
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You may have heard this before, but this year has been unlike any other, and it has forced marketers to boost their digital marketing efforts.
In this episode of AMP Up Your Digital Marketing, Glenn Gaudet speaks with Winfried Schultz, VP of EMEA Marketing at Teradata, a provider of database and analytics software and services. They discuss the transition to stronger virtual and digital marketing efforts from in-person marketing.
What you’ll learn:
* The challenges of transitioning to a strictly digital marketing strategy.
* How to overcome your digital marketing challenges.
* What marketers can do to make their digital presence more engaging.
The marketing team over at Teradata speaks directly to the executive offices and high up decision-makers of prospective buyers. This entails a great deal of high-touch and in-person marketing activities, meaning conferences, face-to-face meetings, etc.
Of course, practicing this type of marketing is frowned upon in 2020 thanks to the coronavirus pandemic. During the past few months, Winfried and his marketing team worked extremely hard at moving away from event marketing and meetings towards stronger digital marketing efforts through virtual interactions.
He quickly learned he needed to adjust his strategy, and it wasn’t as simple as offering your conference sessions through a webinar.
Your Digital Marketing Transition Won’t Be Easy
Early the pandemic, it became apparent that face-to-face interactions were not going to be an option for the foreseeable future.
They tested out webinars and forums in an attempt to recreate the experience of a roundtable in a digital setting. But, it just wasn’t working. Winfried points to the short attention spans that people have with digital content, so your digital marketing efforts have to adhere to cadence, storytelling, and suspense.
“We have to get the point across much, much quicker,” Winfried said.
When people watch YouTube videos, they’ll switch to a new video within 10 seconds if they aren’t entertained yet, so your content needs to grab their attention.
Take a Multilayered Approach
You can’t replace a face-to-face meeting or a networking experience from a conference through any kind of virtual setting.
“The buzz from a live event is different,” Winfried said. “It’s impossible to recreate that. You have to play to other senses and attention spans and interests.”
You need to be a bit more sophisticated and strategic in your digital marketing approach. It needs to be multifaceted with multiple channels.
“Blasting out a list of emails doesn’t really work very well in this environment,” Winfried said. “You have to reach out to people directly and indirectly. You need inbound tactics for thought leadership development. You have to train your organization for social selling a lot more. What was a ‘nice to have’ is a prerequisite for business.”
No matter the channel or format that you use to engage with someone, you need to give them easy opportunities to engage with you to keep them interested. Find ways for them to participate and give them opportunities to raise their hands, like online polls. If doing a webinar, use a moderator to help with interaction. You want to keep calls conversational. Make it a back and forth interaction, much like you’d have if you were in person.
Be Prepared to Meet
When you have a contact willing to get on a call with you, you need to be ready.
You have to do your homework. Who are they? What do they do? How big are they? What problems are they trying to solve? People don’t want to spend their time filling you in on this. They want to get the answers about what you can offer, not give you answers about what they do.