Brands waste too much time and effort chas­ing the next, shiny mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy or buzz­word, think­ing it’s a sil­ver bul­let. Lead­ing with “intent” lets brands put their audi­ence first, and leaves the tac­ti­cal mar­ket­ing imple­men­ta­tion as a detail, not a key focus.

There are a lot of buzz­words in marketing—inbound, out­bound, native and the list goes on. And these buzz­words can lead to con­fu­sion, wast­ed time and even paral­y­sis for brands.

Which meth­ods are “right” for you? When weigh­ing your options, it’s less about the next buzz­word, and more about audi­ence intent and deliv­er­ing what your buy­er per­sona wants, in a way they want it, when they want it.

So essen­tial­ly, it’s real­ly not about you, the brand, at all.

When you look at the mar­ket­ing land­scape today from a bird’s eye view, the method of deliv­ery, the tactics—all of that—those are mere­ly the ves­sel to deliv­er the infor­ma­tion your tar­get audi­ence is look­ing for right now.

Not lead­ing with audi­ence intent can be dan­ger­ous. And so, let’s explore com­mon buzz-wor­thy mar­ket­ing strate­gies, how to strate­gi­cal­ly approach them, and why your strat­e­gy should lead with much more than just the buzz du jour.

Times, They Are A Changin’

There are rad­i­cal changes hap­pen­ing in tech­nol­o­gy right now that are reshap­ing how peo­ple con­sume media and how brands do mar­ket­ing. Amongst these changes is a mind­set shift from tech­nol­o­gy first to peo­ple first.

Research shows that high-per­form­ing mar­keters empha­size peo­ple over data, tech­nol­o­gy and even strat­e­gy.

Con­sumers are demand­ing a per­son­al­ized expe­ri­ence, and that expe­ri­ence can come in any mar­ket­ing cam­paign, in any tech­nol­o­gy or device for all they care.

Not know­ing what your tar­get audi­ence wants can end up in lost rev­enue. Take NBC’s Olympics deba­cle and a pro­jec­tion that fell short and was blamed on Mil­len­ni­als.

When brands start blam­ing cus­tomers instead of bet­ter serv­ing them, they’ve got big­ger prob­lems. (Sor­ry NBC, you don’t have a “Mil­len­ni­al prob­lem.” You just have a 20th-cen­tu­ry busi­ness mod­el and the inter­net is going to eat it for lunch.)

So, What Are Some of These Buzz Marketing Strategies Brands Wrestle with Today?

It’s worth get­ting into some of the big buzz-wor­thy mar­ket­ing strate­gies that a lot of brands think they want or need with­out ful­ly under­stand­ing what it is or how to real­ly be suc­cess­ful.

Again, it’s not real­ly about the thing you choose to do—that’s too sim­plis­tic. You don’t just “do” inbound mar­ket­ing or native adver­tis­ing and expect results. What you do is dis­cov­er where your audi­ence is and what expe­ri­ences they want, then uncov­er the meth­ods to help you facil­i­tate that.

Nonethe­less, a basic under­stand­ing of some of these strate­gies helps frame the con­ver­sa­tion of what tac­tics are at your fin­ger­tips to be where your audi­ence is.

Inbound Marketing

Inbound mar­ket­ing is a blan­ket term for a set of mar­ket­ing strate­gies designed to attract your tar­get audi­ence online. This can include things like hav­ing a thriv­ing blog attached to your web­site, social media mar­ket­ing, search engine optimization—basically any­thing that dri­ves tar­get­ed traf­fic to your web­site.

Many believe that inbound mar­ket­ing shouldn’t stop at just dri­ving traf­fic. Once you get vis­i­tors to your web­site, it has a job to do: con­vert them—whatever a con­ver­sion means to your busi­ness. It can be a form fill, a sale, a phone call or some­thing else.

The one thing all of these activ­i­ties have in com­mon is that they are cen­tered on cre­at­ing use­ful con­tent for your tar­get audi­ence. The dig­i­tal land­scape has shift­ed the way busi­ness­es com­mu­ni­cate with their prospects, and con­tent is king.

Outbound Marketing

Out­bound mar­ket­ing was more pop­u­lar before dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing, though it still has its place. This is a term that com­pris­es some of the more tra­di­tion­al mar­ket­ing activ­i­ties such as trade shows and con­fer­ences, cold call­ing poten­tial leads, direct mail and even tele­vi­sion.

Many com­pa­nies bal­ance both inbound and out­bound mar­ket­ing activ­i­ties, while some indus­tries may be more prone to out­bound mar­ket­ing sim­ply due to the nature of their work—especially those that thrive on face-to-face com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

Native Advertising

On the paid side of things, we have native adver­tis­ing. This type of adver­tis­ing seam­less­ly inte­grates with the expe­ri­ence of the web­site it’s fea­tured on—so much so that it often doesn’t feel like an adver­tise­ment at all.

One exam­ple of this in action is Face­book video ads. Nes­tled in a Face­book user’s News Feed along with all their oth­er updates from friends and fam­i­ly, these type of ads can be engag­ing and feel less dis­rup­tive.

Many adver­tis­ers see this poten­tial and are adopt­ing this for­mat more and more. One Face­book study fore­casts that native ads will make up 63 per­cent of mobile dis­play ad spend by 2020.

Interrupt Marketing/Advertising

The term out­bound mar­ket­ing and inter­rupt mar­ket­ing are often used inter­change­ably. For the pur­pos­es of this con­ver­sa­tion, inter­rupt mar­ket­ing con­sists of the type of mar­ket­ing that stops a per­son from what they are doing, and demands atten­tion.

Exam­ples of this include inter­sti­tial ads, pop-ups, videos set to auto-play with sound, and gen­er­al­ly any­thing that inter­rupts the expe­ri­ence a per­son is hav­ing online.

This type of mar­ket­ing can be annoy­ing to users but it can some­times be effec­tive, too. On one hand, inter­sti­tial pop-ups that com­plete­ly dis­rupt the expe­ri­ence are gen­er­al­ly frowned upon by Google. On the oth­er hand, some do see suc­cess with pop-ups intend­ed to dri­ve con­ver­sions like sign­ing up for a mail­ing list.

Lead the Marketing Strategy with Intent 

OK, now that we’ve got the logis­tics out of the way, let’s talk about how to pick a mar­ket­ing method that’s right for your audi­ence.

All too often, brands get roped into mar­ket­ing strate­gies because of the buzz. They’ve heard the term “inbound mar­ket­ing” or “native adver­tis­ing” so many times that they think it must be the thing they need to do.

As I’ve allud­ed to through­out this piece, there is no “right” mar­ket­ing channel—one that beats out the oth­er. This arti­cle does a nice job of show­ing how they all work together—inbound, out­bound, allbound—it’s real­ly all the same.

In oth­er words, they’re all designed to do a sim­i­lar thing: reach your audi­ence. What sep­a­rates them is the tac­ti­cal imple­men­ta­tion.

That’s why before any deci­sions are made about mar­ket­ing, it’s impor­tant that brands know what they’re get­ting into. This includes the logis­tics of some of the activ­i­ties I men­tioned ear­li­er.

Also, and this is key, know your brand’s intent. What you hope to achieve with “mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy X.” Know what’s involved, how to imple­ment it well and what com­mit­ment lev­el is need­ed to get results. Too many brands waste too much time and mon­ey on half-baked efforts in any giv­en area of mar­ket­ing.

Sec­ond, and more impor­tant­ly, lead with the intent of your audi­ence. Know where they spend their time, how they like to con­sume media today and how they will con­sume it a year from now.

Then, armed with audi­ence intent and types of mar­ket­ing strate­gies, cre­ate the mes­sag­ing, the con­tent and the expe­ri­ence in the for­mat your audi­ence wants it in, and then let your knowl­edge of the var­i­ous tac­ti­cal imple­men­ta­tions deliv­er that expe­ri­ence when they want it. 

Takeaways

To wrap up, here’s what you need to keep in mind as dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing and audi­ence needs evolve:

• While it’s tempt­ing to want to chase after a cer­tain type of mar­ket­ing, always, always under­stand what you’re get­ting your­self into, and how to real­ly be suc­cess­ful with it (mean­ing, what lev­el of com­mit­ment and effort is involved to see results).

• Mar­ket­ing strate­gies and the tech­nol­o­gy that facil­i­tates them are going to con­tin­ue to change, so will audi­ence intent.

• Stay­ing ahead of the curve means under­stand­ing what your audi­ence wants now, what they will want in the near future, and what technology/strategy/device/experience will match that.

In 2017, if we shift our mind­set just a lit­tle to lead with intent, we can shift our tac­tics and our bud­gets to bet­ter serve our audi­ence.