 Everyone is talking about 2020 being the year of clear vision. Welcome to the We Are Slam Show where we share marketing agency insights, best practices, and ideas to help your business grow. My name is Tyler Kelly. I'm a co-founder and chief strategist here at Slam Agency and we're about three weeks into the new year and everyone is talking about 2020 being the year of clear vision. So if we want to accomplish that as marketing directors, as business owners, as startup founders, how do we do that? Well, I say it's through focus and so today I'm going to share with you the five ways that you can focus in order to have clear vision in 2020. So if you're like most marketing directors, you probably have like an email list, probably like in a mail champ or a constant contact. You might be dabbling with a hub spot or sales force. You may also have like an offline list of mailing addresses. You might have, you know, a list of customers in one database and a list of prospects in the other. But here's the thing, in order to do the things that you want to do as a marketing director, I'm talking about segmenting, targeting, you know, increasing online and offline revenue. In order to do this, you have to unify customer data. First step, obviously, is getting as much data into one system as you can. The second step is to begin to think about, you know, how do we describe and label the different types of data? Because what has to happen is in order to unify it, sales has to begin labeling certain fields or certain data points the exact same way as marketing does, the same way as, you know, your C level does. And everyone needs to be using that shared language. Now, once you have unified customer data, what you're able to do then is as a marketing director, you're able to double down on your audiences. This is super important in 2020. I want you to double down on customer audiences in Facebook. This is a huge year for Facebook friends. This is an election year. It's an Olympic year. What that means is that there's going to be a ton of advertising pushed out of traditional mediums like television and radio because of the election, because of the volume and the prices that go up with the Olympics. Because of that, what you're going to see is you're going to see a lot of the smaller brands are going to go away from television and cable television and they're going to go to OTT. They're going to go to Facebook. It's going to be a huge year for Facebook. If you follow the stock market, you've noticed that regardless of what, you know, negative news or potentially threatening, you know, legislation might happen with Facebook, it's continuing to increase. And the reason it increases, the reason why that stock is increasing daily and has been regardless of the news is because everybody that's in the know knows and now you do that Facebook is going to have a huge year. So this is your year to double down on customer audiences. You have your data together and now I want you to begin segmenting those audiences and building out custom audiences in order to take advantage of Facebook's advertising features. Do this now. Don't wait. If you wait, you'll be too late. The third way to focus in order to have clear vision this year is by slimming your marketing technology stack, your MarTech stack. You know, I've been doing the budget and just working through some of 2019 numbers here at SLAM. And what I have found is that we have historically spent a lot of money on marketing technology. What is this? These are the types of things that, you know, it's like a $50 per month, $99 per month, $199 per month. It's these programs that allow us to do things that are really cool, but these monthly fees, they add up. And as a business owner, I'm talking to business owners now, pick the ones that work for you and make sure that you're on top of the things that don't work and you're canceling those subscriptions. But here's the thing. Outside of budgeting, slimming your MarTech stack allows you to focus. It allows you to put more time and energy into the ones that you're investing in, the ones that are going to do the things that you need it to do. Some of my favorites would be HubSpot. You know, that's a keeper for me. HubSpot sells and marketing CRM. Huge for me, HubSpot. Another one that we like to use is Sprout Social, but I'll tell you, you know, we're starting to look to see, you know, at our level of monthly spend with Sprout, like what's next for us? What is the next software that's going to take us from here to here in that social and social monitoring and posting space? And, you know, another thing to think about when you think about marketing technology is, what's out there that's available that is free, that if you just invest in the time in it, it would give you everything that a paid software would give you. First place to look is Google, right? Google Search Console, analytics, AdWords. These are things that if you actually dig in and start to learn this marketing technology and how to use it, you're going to be much further along than if you, you know, paid for a third-party application to do this for you. Facebook's another great example. Use the software that's provided, and I'm talking about the Ad Manager. Use what's available and master that before you go outside to buy tools to help make those things easier, because a lot of times what they do is make it more confusing. And by slimming your marketing technology stack, you're able to gain focus and see things more clearly in 2020. Number four, I want you to ignore the shiny object. What does this mean? It means whatever that thing is that distracts you from doing what you need to do right here and right now. For me yesterday, no joke yesterday, I get an email through our inbound lead processing through HubSpot and so basically somebody came onto the site and they fill out a form and they said, listen, we want to work with you, but I'm behind, you know, I'm behind in my planning for 2020. I literally need you to do this, this, this, and this, and I need it all by 10 a.m. tomorrow, which would be today. And, you know, I thought about it and this was a, this is a pretty big name and I was like, it would be really cool to work with these people. It would be really amazing to make a difference for them, you know, to take them from what has traditionally been for them traditional marketing and introduce them to the power of digital in terms of like building new audiences. But here's the thing, for me in my role as business development, that right there was a shiny object. And what did I have to do? I had to say, no, I can't do this. We don't have the bandwidth to get you what you need in less than 24 hours and, you know, I wish you well. And for me, what that does is it allows me to focus on the things that are right in front of me and not get distracted by the shiny object. So ignore whatever that is for you. Ignore the shiny object. And number five, and I, you know, I preach this all the time, but you have to know your customer. This is the best way to focus, the best way to gain clarity, the best way to see clearly. Use your customer as your filter and filter your decisions through your customer. Now your customer is not this made up persona of somebody that you envision that they might be. When I say know your customer, I want you to actually know the people that are actually buying from you. If you don't know your customer, if you don't know where they are online, if you don't know what they're searching for, if you don't know the types of problems that they have that would lead them to you and how they would go about searching for the solutions that would lead them to your brand and to your product, then guess what? You don't know your customer. So in 2020, I want you to do the work. I want you to do the work to figure out who is my customer and how can I get deeper into the way that they think so I can have more focus and more clarity and I can win the race in 2020. All right. So if you've enjoyed this podcast, do me a favor. If you're watching somewhere where you can leave a comment, do so. Leave me a comment in the comments. I want to know who you are and what you got out of this show. I want to know how you're going to focus in 2020. Also, rate, review, and if you haven't already, please subscribe. When you subscribe, you help us to get in front of more people just like you so that we can help them. And if you're having trouble focusing, if you have a vision that you just don't know how to execute on or you just need help, you just don't have the bandwidth to execute on all the things that you need to do this year in 2020, call me. Go to slamagency.com. Click the button that says free consultation in the upper right. And that when you fill out that form, it comes directly to me and I'll reach out to you and we'll connect and we'll see if we can help you this year. Thank you for tuning in. We'll see you next week. Then hit that bell. You'll be the first to be notified when new content goes live. After that, you can watch more videos from slamagency. We've picked something we think you'll love.