I remember the day vividly, I had attended my first business conference and the keynote speaker of the day spent almost 45 minutes talking about purpose. Very similar to Simon Sinek he reiterated time and time again, “why is that you do what you do?” To be honest it caught me by surprise because I had never really thought about it. The path I had taken up until this point was one that was manufactured for me; go to school, get good grades, finish year 12, select a course at university which you find the most appealing with the score your received, finish the course and find a job. At no point in time did I get asked “why”, so when this conference was over I was left utterly confused. From that day forward I was set on a wild goose chase to find my why.
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I am lucky enough to have worked in some amazing business’s such as tech giant Salesforce & creative powerhouse TBWA. My career has had some extremely memorable moments, I have designed award winning work and made life-long friends, however I always had this glowing neon question mark hovering over my head.

The answer appeared on the 25th of May 2017 when my son was born. I realised that I had been living life by the wrong set of values, you can say I had an epiphany. I got so much enjoyment by the small things in life again; a smile, a cry, a laugh, a word, a clap….I didn’t get much enjoyment from changing nappies but it was part of the package. I realised that not everything I did day-to-day had to revolve around trying to change the world, it can start by just improving one persons world at a time. I realised through the journey of being a father the happiness and completeness comes from being selfless. I also realised that instead of trying to mask my creativity I should embrace it, bring 100% of me to the workforce everyday.

Since the age of 18 I have been writing and producing music however never shared it with many people. A few months after my son was born I decided to write a story for him called Baby On The Moon. The story was about a little boy who sets off on a space adventure to the moon with his best friend, a little black dog. The story ended up turning into a song and I am actually really proud of the end result, watch below.
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​My greatest achievement in life is undoubtably becoming a father. It has helped me in every facet of my life, including my career by realigning my values and belief system to rediscovering my creative confidence. To all the other hard working dad’s out there who are balancing a demanding job and have a family at home, hats off to you. It’s not an easy gig and someday’s it’s extremely hard walking out the front door, especially when your little one is crawling behind you screaming “dada.” There is a silver lining though, having children gives you the confidence to step outside your comfort zone and pushes you mentally and physically in ways that you never thought were possible.

2. Customer Journey Management
Enabling organisations to effectively segment customers and build behaviour-driven journeys through the creation of automated activities prompted by real-time events. These activities send the right message, through the right channel, at the right time, to the right individual, based on their behaviour. The key to doing this successfully is researching and understanding the journeys your customers go through when interacting with your company; whether it be for a product, service, issue, delivery etc.

3. Marketing Automation
There are plenty of technologies designed for marketing departments and organisations to more effectively communicate on multiple channels (such as email, social media, print, websites, etc.) Marketing automation technologies also create operational efficiencies as they can automate repetitive tasks such as data imports.

Here are few marketing automation tools:

- Salesforce Marketing Cloud
- Adobe Marketing Cloud
- Marketo
- Silverpop
- Autopilot

4. Technology Understanding
​A marketer’s job is no longer about just managing the advertising agency. They now need to understand the functionality of multiple cloud based platforms and systems. I like to call it understanding your businesses 'Marketecture'; which includes everything from CRM, e-commerce, social listening, marketing automation, business intelligence and analytics.

5. SEO & SEM
Thanks to smart phones and the quick accessibility we have to the internet, according to Google it has forever changed the way we live - It has fractured the customer journey into hundreds of real-time, intent-driven micro-moments. SEO and SEM has never been more important as you fight to identify search terms that will give your website higher ranking. Optimise your content, website, and blog for organic earned search.

6. Data Analysis
​Yes...unfortunately you need to understand data, but you don't have to be a Data Scientist. Data holds you accountable, it highlights where you are successful and where there are areas for improvement. Basic data visualisation tools can help you read the data and benchmark it against previous campaigns or even industry statistics. For example Google Analytics is a great tool to analyse:

- Where leads are coming from
- Average time on site
- Bounce rate
- Average transaction value
- Most viewed products etc.

See below for an overview of how data and creativity intersect:

7. Collaborative Consumption
Marketers need to understand and recognise the new business models which are disrupting industries. Collaborative consumption describes the shift in consumer values from ownership to access. Together, entire communities and cities around the world are using network technologies to do more with less by renting, lending, swapping, bartering, gifting and sharing products on a scale never before possible.

From Airbnb to Uber to Taskrabbit, collaborative consumption is transforming business, consumerism and the way we live for a more fulfilling and sustainable quality of life.

8. Targeted Online Advertising
A recent study from Salesforce & Facebook showed that sending an email and a social ad about the same campaign to the same group resulted in 22 per cent uplift in conversion and 77 per cent uplift in reach. Salesforce's new Advertising Studio allows businesses to send targeted ads to a customers based on their CRM data.

9. Email Marketing
For every $1 invested, email marketing generates an average return of $38. Email still generates on average around a 21% open rate and 3.5% click through rate. Consumers today receive more emails than ever before and claim to have inbox fatigue - however marketers have to become better at mastering the art of timely and targeted emails.

10. Mobile Marketing
With over 50% of emails now being opened on mobiles and the boom of the app world - we now need to think mobile first. Many brands still have a website that is not mobile responsive and have no apps to make it easy for customers to engage with you. Think about the potential of geo-location push messages from a service perspective; for example you have entered the airport ready for your flight interstate and receive a real-time alert about the flight delay, followed by an offer to head into the Qantas lounge for free. 

11. Social Listening & Engagement
A brand is the sum of the conversations being had about them. Since the launch of social media, customers have found it easier to praise or call out brands about their experiences. A smart marketer would have their finger on the pulse and be listening to online behaviour to identify areas of concern or competitive advantage. Take a look at Salesforce's new Social Studio product for an overview.

12. User Experience
Pixel perfection and eye for detail is important. Design isn't just how something looks and feels, it's also about how it works. It's important to understand the different devices that consumers use like a desktop, tablet and mobile; but also how they use them. 

13. Content Creation
Content is the foundation for all marketing according to Joe Pulizzi. You need to start blogging, creating engaging images, infographics, free eBooks, and much more. Content is the main driver to generating leads.

14. Business Savvy
While I don't expect all marketers to have an MBA - they need to understand some simple metrics such as average transaction value (ATV), customer lifetime value (CLV), net promoter score (NPS) and return on investment (ROI). The list could go one but I thought I would keep it short. The line between service, sales and marketing is blending and every campaign you send needs to have a clear measurable goal. If there is no goal, then ask yourself why are you sending it in the first place?  

15. Prototyping Mindset
With the adoption of Design Thinking it has allowed employees to take their ideas and make them reality in a cost effective way that doesn't impact the business. Anyone can have an idea - it's the critical process of making that idea a tangible prototype that drives innovation. A prototype can be interacted with and reveal to the creator some valuable learnings to refine over time. We need to embrace that everything in life needs continuous improvement.

The questions we should be asking; Is creative marketing or advertising more effective in inspiring people to buy products? Numerous experiments have found that creative messages get more attention and lead to positive attitudes about the products being marketed, but there’s no firm evidence that shows how those messages influence purchase behaviour. Similarly, there is remarkably little empirical research that ties creative messaging to actual sales revenues. Reason being product and brand managers—and the agencies pitching to them—have lacked a systematic way to assess the effectiveness of their ads or marketing campaigns, it has been a crapshoot.

The Formula:
DATA (Insights + Analytics) * CREATIVE (Design Thinking + Experience) = Business and Marketing Brilliance

Today’s marketer and every brand I come in contact with are focusing on putting the customer at the centre of their world. This is great news…but hasn’t this always been the case? Well in short the answer is yes, the difference now is we have technology that allows us to interact with our customers wherever they are, whenever they want. This technology like Salesforce Marketing Cloud gives marketers real time reporting and allows you to map your strategies across multiple channels and digital touch points. Prepare yourselves to hear this phrase a lot in the next 12 months; but this is the year of the customer journey.

Most designers would agree with me that the customer has always been the main focus. However for years companies have focused on trying to stay relevant by using the latest technology, creating a social identity and chasing the customer around the Internet using display advertising. Issue being that the ROI was never measurable, it was expensive and they never understood why they were doing any of these things in the first place. Steve Jobs was well known for how he pioneered the personal computer revolution and disrupted the music industry, but at the core was his design-driven customer approach. “You have got to start with the customer experience and work back to the technology – not the other way around” Jobs said. Design is not just about how something looks and feels but its about how it works, and the most successful designers like Tim Brown (CEO of IDEO) will tell you that most of their time is spent in the inspiration and ideation stages of their projects, where it is heavily focused on customer research and user experience.

As marketers, we need to harness the power of these tools available to us, we now have access to more data then ever before and the technical tools to engage with our customers in sophisticated 1:1 journeys. The customer journey has now become even more complex so in order to do this successfully we must stay true to the customer and our brand; here are some key things to think about when mapping out your customer journeys:

• Use research: Deep qualitative research is the secret to discovering unmet customer needs. Start by understanding your customer, the market and even your direct competitors. Use the data you have available to you to make some clear actionable decisions, for example your online browse behaviour, purchase data, social data, in store transactional data and call centre data. Knowing how to tap into technology to uncover how individuals and groups really think and act is an essential part of innovation. Involve a broader team in the research phase also as everyone can provide different insights throughout the company like Sales, I.T, Customer Service and Marketing. It's also a good idea to send out surveys, conduct customer interviews and ethnographies to create powerful experiences.
  
  
• Focus on the emotions: Every customer interaction is driven by an emotional decision. Understanding what the customer is going through at every stage of the buying or selling cycle with your brand will help you tailor content to make them feel comfortable and reassured. For example while shopping for property the customer is extremely happy, confident and optimistic. The moment they make a formal offer a sense of doubt, fear and anxiety comes over them as the decision they are making comes hammering down on them. Emotions are critical to any experience, whether B2B or B2C, and a great customer journey needs to communicate them.
  
  
• Understand the lifecycle stages: Customer journeys and lifecycle marketing are not that dissimilar. It is still important to understand the different stages that a customer can go through with your brand. If I use my property example like before then here are six stages a homebuyer will go through when looking for a house:
  1. Identify: We have out grown our home or looking to downsize
  2. Discover: What suburb and what sort of home are we after
  3. Select: Narrowing down the selection and visiting open for inspections
  4. Transact: Making the offer or visiting the auction, succeed or keep looking
  5. Move: Between the transaction and the big move
  6. Post-Move: After you have settled into your new home
  By understanding these stages, multiple journeys can be a mapped to help the customer through making their tough decisions and content strategies can be put in place to provide relevant information before they seek it.
  
  
• Think about the different touch points: A customer that is engaging with your brand online compared to a customer that is engaging with your bricks and mortar store have similar needs, yet both require different attention. With access to email, social, web and now mobile a brand can provide assistance and experiences in many different ways. We want our online presence to have a 1:1 approach with a high level of service that most customers only get in store, and we want our in store presence to be as exciting and interactive as our online store. I call this blurring the lines between the physical and digital worlds…PHY-GITAL. Every customer has a preferred channel, however with technology like iBeacons, Geo location based messages and real-time data the power is in the hands of the brand to do some smart cross channel marketing that creates life changing customer experiences. Check this awesome mobile marketing concept from Meat Pack a shoe store in Guatemala.
  
  
• Highlight the moments of truth and think about the red journeys: There are key moments in a customer’s lifetime where we have the opportunity to provide a service above and beyond. What happens when something goes wrong? A parcel never reaches it’s destination, or if it does it's broken, a flight is delayed or canceled, and your dinner reservation was accidentally double booked. Identify some of these critical stages (I like to call them red journeys) and find a way to make it up to the customer. “There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the Chairman down, simple by spending his money somewhere else!” –Sam Walton, Walmart Founder.
  
  
• Have a clear goal and stay true to your brand promise: Every journey or interaction whether small or large needs to have a clear measurable goal. This is the underlying strategy of why we are sending these communications and mapping out these journeys. Staying true to your brand promise will allow customer journeys to be the focal point for your entire business not just your marketing department. The customer touches every part of an organisation, learn from it and never stop testing or pushing the boundaries. Use tools like A/B testing and reporting to see how you are tracking against the goals you have set.
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In 2015, marketing will mean delighting every customer — and building true brand loyalty across the entire organisation. Sharing a vision that touches every employee from the C-Suite down. 86% of senior-level marketers say that it’s absolutely critical to create a cohesive customer journey (source Salesforce: 2015 State of Marketing Report.) Don’t be scared to try something that has never been done before, learn from your mistakes as the only risk is standing still and doing nothing at all.