Ryan Draving
Principal and Head of Strategy at Muhlenhaupt + Company
Website Address: movingcompaniesforward.com
“More 2 Know” is a show made for people in the world of marketing and media who want to grow their advertising knowledge. Interviewing experts around the country, “More 2 Know” is the place to go for tips, tricks and entertaining quips to take your business to the next level.
This week our host interviews Ryan Draving from Muhlenhaupt + Company. To learn more, check out http://www.movingcompaniesforward.com.
What is the biggest change in marketing that you see coming in the next 2 years?
Scientific decisions on every aspect of marketing and branding. Our agency has been leading a new style of decision making on brand messaging for our clients, and we expect to begin to see it adopted en masse in the years to come by marketing teams and agencies. Instead of using sales feedback and gut instinct, we leverage the readily available scientific testing of hundreds of message alternatives to the hyper-targeted decision makers for each of our clients. The end result is that instinct, sales conversations, and client feedback is becoming the seed for identifying winning marketing messaging and product feature development – instead of the final decision. That seed is used by marketing in campaigns to scientifically test and identify the optimal messaging for everything from email to ads to content assets to website copy to sales materials and conversations. It’s changing the role of marketing in spearheading company growth.
What are the major challenges that you (and/or other advertisers) face today?
Increasing privacy controls limit the ability to track everything effectively. This is good for people, but bad for business analytics. As a result, marketing needs to shift the methods we use to measure effective cross-channel attribution.
How is the trend towards streaming television (CTV) impacting your advertising strategies?
It’s impactful in B2C, but our agency is primarily focused on B2B.
What tactics do you find to be the most effective in getting your message or your customers’ message heard?
Because we typically help companies grow from $2M+/year to half a billion a year, we engage frequently with B2B startups. With them, we need to identify exactly what words and content causes their targeted decision makers to perk up and LISTEN – because it connects with their pain. We do this scientifically, and quickly. Then we leverage a cross-channel digital strategy mix of direct lead generation and brand awareness “air cover” for establishing credibility – bridging social, search, content syndication, email automation, conversion optimization, and a variety of secondary tactics.
