6 Steps to Organizational Buy-In for Digital Marketing
This week we’re joined by Malika Waller: Digital Marketing Manager of Landis+Gyr. The company focuses on energy measurement solutions for utilities, and especially on “enabling the smart grid of the future.”
1. EDUCATE YOURSELF
When Malika first came onboard at Landis+Gyr two years ago, the marketing was very siloed – more by product than by skill set. Now, as they’ve evolved, the teams vary according to their tasks (pr, events, digital outreach, social media, etc.) and do so for all of the different products they offer.
Two years ago, the company had no digital strategy… but they did know that they needed one.
So they looked for an expert, which is why they brought in Malika. Her role morphed as their digital value grew. One of her biggest challenges was the fact that though Landis+Gyr were a utilities-based company, they were also relevant in other fields like software.
Fortunately, thanks to her education in marketing, Malika was able to recognize what they needed to improve upon.
The company had a website and an email newsletter; but there was no nurturing or measurement of engagement. The potential for data was there… it just needed to be utilized.
2. EDUCATE YOUR COMPANY
Trying to wedge oneself in the door of digital marketing takes a lot of education… and out of habit, people tend of call back on what they know. In the case of the aging utilities industry, what they know is traditional marketing.
One of the first things Malika did to push them towards digital was present the management team with hard facts, numbers, and data.
A big aid in this conquest was the Martech 2017 infographic about the rapid growth of digital marketing.
Just like marketers need to speak the language of prospects, Malika had to speak the language of engineering-minded, industrial executives. To this day, she holds a monthly meeting to show the companies latest data, what it means, and where marketing will likely go from there.
3. EVANGELIZE
Malika didn’t just stop with her executives, either. She took every opportunity she could to speak with her peers about digital marketing.
It wasn’t about making a sales pitch; it was genuinely being excited about something new in her field.
Marketers should be able to (and want to) gush about their work to anyone who’s listening. It should be natural, but also intentional. Let your coworkers know where you are, and what baby steps the company is taking at present to adapt to how people interact nowadays.
Any movement forward is better than none. Movement is where momentum comes from.
4. GAIN ADVOCATES
Once you start educating others, that makes things a lot easier if you’re starting with a marketing team that don’t yet have the skill sets they need to handle new technologies. You can help build their know-how if imparting marketing information is already second-nature to you.
The more you naturally gush about new marketing technologies, the more you’ll find and build a network of coworkers who believe in the value of those technologies.
Marketing is considered a major spend nowadays. If you want to convince upper management to investigate new techniques, sometimes having more than one person at the table who’s supporting your claims can be a huge advantage.
5. CELEBRATE SUCCESSES
Part of the reason why adapting to digital is difficult… is because it’s not yet well-understood. If you’re not setting expectations or letting people know what’s worth getting excited about, they’ll assume nothing good is coming of their investment in your techniques.
Take moments to stop people and tell them about the little wins, or about goals that you met!
For Malika, she recommends waiting 6 months or so after starting to wade into digital techniques. That’s when the data generally starts to show blips on the radar. After that, it’s all about building longevity.
Talk about success when it happens so that the higher-ups will let you continue exploring.
6. START SMALL
The first technique that Landis+Gyr dipped their toes into was creating landing pages for events they visited. It was “piggybacking” on their traditional techniques.
Instead of paper flyers to follow up after an event, they sent out links to a single page with more information.
Not only was it helpful to build their web presence, but it was a great resource for customers who were curious about Landis+Gyr but unable to investigate during normal business hours.
The website saw great upticks in traffic, and the sales department also loved being able to refer buyers to those pages.
Once Landis+Gyr started to realize that digital marketing was going to be a worthwhile effort, one of their first tasks was to figure out how to overhaul their own website without overwhelming themselves. Their content and press-releases weren’t very easy to find, and the navigation itself wasn’t intuitive. Soon Malika figured out why.
The site was very terminology-heavy, using “internal speak” that was native to the sales team or the industry experts, yet not to the buyers.
Malika and her team started using BrightEdge to find out the terms their personas were likely searching for, as well as what similar websites were doing to improve their own strategies.
Another tool that “doubled the marketing department without adding actual people,” was Hubspot. Both programs helped the company change their online presence enormously, without necessarily needing to create anything strictly new.
“Changing the language was huge.”
Landis+Gyr customers may not always search for the terms “smart meter,” “smart meter tech,” or “smart meter analytics,” which is why it was important to change. Those words were something that the company could (and still can) continuously refine and improve.
Their webpages and content started showing up faster and solving customer problems once they edited the copy to include relevant words and phrases.
The key, Malika maintains, was working with what the company already had… then simply asking, “How can we make this better?”
Now Landis+Gyr is building a social media presence and is growing their brand with pay-per-click as well; showing their customers by example that just as their services are “future-proof,” as Malika puts it.
It’s all in the name of every marketer’s number-one goal: getting on Page 1 in Google Search.
So, to Recap…
If you’re a marketer struggling to get funding for digital techniques, there are six steps to getting organizational buy-in.
It is possible; because – as her Twitter handle says… @Malikadidit.
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