“Don’t Buy Any Of The Bullsh*t Being Sold To You”: Xero CMO Andy Lark
Marketing is in a state of flux at the moment, and marketers can either take note and shape up or flail about and get left behind.
At least this is the sentiment of Xero CMO Andy Lark, who spoke at the Forrester CX Marketing Summit in Sydney this morning. Sharing his insights into the world of marketing, Lark offered some sage advice on how to streamline and simplify the process in order to better prop up businesses.
“You need a burning platform,” Lark said, citing urgency as a way to put some fire under a team in order to seek out change.
“There’s been a shift away from how we think about marketing in a business. The very best marketers out there are simply going to challenge how everything functions.”
“The real problem is that most marketing teams today are swimming in their swim lane, the technology team are swimming in their swim lane, and the brand team is swimming in their swim lane.
“You’ve got to break those lanes and intersect them to build success.”
Another tip Lark had was not to get swamped under all the different fads people try and market to you.
“Don’t buy any of the bullshit being sold to you buy anybody,” he said. “Don’t get bought into digital media or social media anymore – it’s just media.”
“It costs me less to do a regional TV ad in America than it does a Facebook campaign in the same market.”
“You have to measure engagement. Become absolutely fanatical not about reach but about engagement,” Lark added.
“If your only point of engagement is at point of sale, then you’re on the inevitable death slide of irrelevancy with the customer.”
When it comes to content marketing, Lark said we’ve been “doing this all our lives” and just calling it something different.
“It’s about taking the signals that content provides and making action out of signals. This whole notion of content marketing is just garbage. Get passionate about it because content services data that predicts next customer action.”
“Go get passionate about moments of doubt, dissatisfaction and desire in your business, look for the breakpoints in your business, surface them and become the most aggressive advocate in solving these problems,” Lark stressed, using Uber as an example.
In terms of doubt, he said the doubt came about by the fact that a high ratio of both taxis and customers don’t show up, and dissatisfaction, well, “taxis suck”, he stated.
In terms of desire, users want elegance and reliability – but they’re all hacks, according to Lark – and give customers exactly what they want, such as the little car icons that let you watch your driver on a map.
“You have to change the customer experience, and shift from the attention economy to the intention economy.”
“Marketing has been this black box for years where money goes in and you’re not sure if you get anything out of it. That’s changed.”
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