Slow and steady wins the marketing channel race (Marketing playbook by Datadog’s CMO Alex Rosemblat)

Build Your Marketing Channel Like You Build a Product

• Product team operates with a series of iterations, cycles, and feedback. Same for a marketing channel;
• Main difference is the feedback loop;
• The main feedback you’re looking for is whether your leads are converting, clicking, or completing desired actions based on your campaign efforts;
• Need tons of cycles to get everything right to build a marketing channel.

Narrow Your Focus and Set Your Goals Realistically

• To master a marketing channel, work on one at a time:
  1. Choose one marketing channel;
  2. Choose one campaign or campaign type within that channel;
  3. Then, allow the campaign to meet its goals.
• You do this until certain criteria (determine based on your business needs) are met.

Data Collection

• Data collection should always remain your guiding light as you build your channel;
• Good quality data will be your currency as you navigate campaigns and channel mastery;
  • Marketing data can be imprecise, but it will ultimately prove to be directionally correct.
• So be sure that you trust your data and collect the right kind to help your case.

Embarking on a hypothesis-driven approach

• Someone has an idea for a campaign. The right questions to ask:
  • ls it clearly thought out how this campaign will work - mechanism, time limits, budget limits, expertise on team or vendor, and who knows what else?
  • ls it clear what the minimum result is to declare this (somewhat) successful - are there actuals from other campaigns to compare to?
  • ls the team/vendor actually equipped to run this campaign as needed to achieve and measure that initial result?
  • Has anyone not involved in setting up the campaign played “devil's advocate”?
  • Are you able to capture the data to make the assessment of the campaign'ssuccess?

Concentric circles of channel experimentation

• Once the campaign passes the examination, try it out with the concentric circles of channel experimentation approach:
  1. The Pilot;
  2. Repeat & Enlarge Pilot;
  3. Real Money Spend;
  4. The Ceiling.
• This second step is necessary to ensure success is repeatable, scalable, and dependable.

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Ref:

• Datadog’s CMO Alex Rosemblat on Building Marketing Channels Slowly to Achieve Massive Scale (Pod and Video)