What Is
Momentum Marketing?

You know those times when a major industry shift happens, and it triggers a rush of customers buying a specific set of products. (think the case with Zoom during the Covid-19 pandemic as businesses transitioned to remote work) That driving force behind such a surge is market momentum at play.

Now, picture if you could systematically and repeatably harness momentums, marketing to your audience with a perfectly timed message during a moment that's at the top of their minds. More so, imagine if you could do this more frequently - perhaps two or three times each quarter - driving not just increased demand but exponential pipeline growth. This is precisely where Momentum Marketing comes in!

Momentum Marketing is a methodology that enables you to systematically identify, capture and capitalize on these high-congregation, strategically significant momentums. Using this approach, you can construct robust marketing campaigns - whether they're inbound, outbound, or Account-Based Marketing (ABM) - that consistently deliver 2-3 times higher results.

Forget about struggles like low inbound volume, stagnant pipeline, or non-scalable marketing channels. Momentum Marketing empowers you to seize the opportunities that each momentum presents, driving continuous, predictable, and scalable marketing success.

Why Momentum Marketing?

The evolving B2B buyer behavior and increased competition in the tech industry have made demand generation more challenging. Buyers now rely on digital channels and third-party information sources, and decision-making involves much bigger buying committees (11 decision-makers for a 500-employee company, according to Gartner). Additionally, heightened competition has put pressure on businesses to innovate quickly.

While Inbound, Account-Based Marketing (ABM), and Outbound methods should still meet new buyer expectations, the competitive market has diminished their effectiveness, leading to lower demand, thinner sales pipelines, and reduced ARR. Businesses must explore alternative solutions alongside traditional marketing methods.

Momentum marketing helps tech companies break through the noise and increase demand for their products or services. This strategic method involves leveraging the power of trends, events, and emerging market developments to create targeted, high-impact marketing campaigns. By embracing momentum marketing, tech companies can achieve better results, higher engagement, and a larger sales pipeline, ultimately leading to accelerated ARR growth.

How Does Momentum Marketing Work?

Momentum marketing is a methodology that empowers businesses to identify and capitalize on emerging trends, events, and technologies that have strategic importance, longevity, and high buyer congregation in the market.

While momentum marketing supports both inbound and outbound methodologies, it addresses the demand shortage issue that these methods often struggle with, especially during seasonality, economic difficulties, or when startups try to disrupt markets with low demand for their new solutions.

By aligning marketing efforts with high-momentum opportunities, businesses can significantly increase their reach, engagement, and conversions, ultimately driving growth and revenue.

Unlike focusing on short-lived trends, momentum marketing emphasizes the importance of tapping into events and developments that are not only gaining traction but also have enduring relevance to the target market.

Momentum marketing is an intentional, proactive, and consistent methodology that distinguishes itself from merely following trends. While trends can be short-lived and lack substantial impact on the target audience, momentum marketing emphasizes the strategic alignment of marketing efforts with long-lasting, high-impact opportunities that have enduring relevance to the target market.

By adopting a focused and persistent approach, momentum marketing ensures businesses can maximize their reach, engagement, and conversions, ultimately driving sustainable growth and revenue generation.

How to Systematically Capture Momentums

To identify momentums, consider a quadrant. The Y-axis represents the strategic importance of the event (low to high), while the X-axis represents the level of buyer congregation (low to high, left to right).

Bottom-left quadrant (Low strategic importance, low congregation): Events in this category are not worth pursuing, as they offer little value in terms of market relevance or audience engagement.

Top-left quadrant (High strategic importance, low congregation): Events with high strategic importance but low congregation may not be worth pursuing, as the potential audience is limited, and the impact may be minimal.

Top-right quadrant (High strategic importance, medium or high congregation): Events that are both high in strategic importance and show medium or high congregation are worth pursuing. In the case of medium congregation, it's especially worth considering if major publications or organizations are responding to the event.

Bottom-right quadrant (Low strategic importance, high congregation): These events may be trends, and while they generate high levels of interest, they could be short-lived. Be cautious, and only pursue these events if there are signs of longevity.

Momentum Marketing: Example

Momentum marketing opportunities can come in various scales and frequencies, depending on the industry and the specific target audience. Here are examples of typical momentum marketing events that can occur within different industries: 

Fashion Tech: Influencer Marketing Platforms

When fashion trends or fashion weeks take place, a tech company offering influencer marketing platforms can capitalize on this momentum by creating campaigns that showcase their platform's ability to connect fashion brands with influencers and help drive brand awareness during this peak interest period.

Health Tech: Telemedicine Platforms

When new medical research or guidelines are published, a tech company offering telemedicine platforms can create marketing campaigns that highlight their platform's ability to adapt to the new guidelines and provide remote healthcare services, in line with the latest research.

Finance Tech: Digital Banking Solutions

When regulatory changes or significant economic events occur, a fintech company offering digital banking solutions can leverage this momentum by creating marketing campaigns that emphasize their platform's ability to navigate these changes and provide secure, compliant services to businesses and consumers.

Education Tech: Online Learning Platforms

When curriculum changes or new learning technologies are introduced, an ed-tech company providing online learning platforms can capitalize on this momentum by creating marketing campaigns that demonstrate their platform's ability to adapt to the new curriculum and offer innovative learning solutions that improve learning outcomes.

Retail Tech: AI-powered Chatbot Solutions

When Instagram announces a new feature like DM automation for brands, a tech company offering AI-powered chatbot solutions for retail brands can use this momentum by creating marketing campaigns that showcase their chatbot's ability to automate Instagram conversations and improve customer engagement.

To identify momentums, analyze each event based on its strategic importance and level of buyer congregation. Use the quadrant system to determine which events are worth pursuing for momentum marketing. Keep an eye on industry publications, organizational responses, and market trends to identify other potential momentums for your business. By leveraging these momentums, solution providers can showcase the growing need for their solutions and emphasize the timeliness and relevance of their offerings.

Learn More: How to Identify High-Impact Momentums: A Step-by-Step Guide

How is Momentum Marketing Different from Traditional Marketing

Momentum marketing is an innovative methodology that focuses on proactively identifying and capitalizing on high-potential market opportunities, events, and trends. This approach differs from traditional marketing in several key ways, making it a compelling choice for tech companies looking to drive growth and improve demand generation. Here's how momentum marketing stands out:

• Proactivity and intentionality: Momentum marketing is a proactive and intentional approach to marketing, as opposed to simply reacting to market changes or chasing trends. It requires organizations to actively seek out and leverage emerging opportunities with high potential for success.
• Alignment with market dynamics: Momentum marketing emphasizes staying in tune with market shifts, technological advancements, and emerging trends. This allows tech companies to create marketing strategies that are closely aligned with the needs and interests of their target audience, driving greater engagement and conversions.
• Focus on demand generation: While traditional marketing methods may struggle with generating demand, especially during economic difficulties or for early-stage startups, momentum marketing aims to solve the problem of demand shortage. By targeting high-momentum opportunities, it helps tech companies scale and boosts the performance of their inbound and outbound marketing efforts.
• Consistency: Momentum marketing is consistent and persistent in its approach, ensuring that organizations maintain a steady focus on high-potential opportunities. This helps create sustained growth and improved demand generation over time.
• Agility and adaptability: Tech companies that embrace momentum marketing are better equipped to adapt to market changes and pivot their strategies quickly. This agility allows them to stay ahead of the competition and capitalize on new opportunities as they emerge.

Let's consider the example of a tech company offering a project management software solution. Here's how traditional marketing methods (including inbound and outbound) might look compared to a momentum marketing approach:

Traditional Marketing:

Inbound: The company creates content like blog articles, eBooks, and whitepapers on topics related to project management, aiming to attract organic traffic, generate leads, and convert them into customers.

Outbound: The company runs targeted advertising campaigns, attends industry trade shows, and employs cold emailing/calling strategies to reach out to potential customers directly.

Momentum Marketing:

• Proactivity and intentionality: The company identifies an upcoming shift in data privacy regulations (i.e., the implementation of the GDPR in Europe) and anticipates an increased need for project management tools that cater to compliance and data protection requirements. Simultaneously, the company also identifies another momentum, such as the rising popularity of remote work, and plans marketing campaigns around both topics.
• Alignment with market dynamics: The company adjusts its marketing messages to emphasize the benefits of its software for meeting data privacy requirements, highlighting features like built-in data encryption, customizable access controls, and audit trail capabilities (i.e., tracking user activities to ensure compliance). In parallel, it also creates marketing messages highlighting the advantages of using its project management solution for remote teams, such as seamless collaboration and communication features.
• Consistent core positioning: Despite adjusting its marketing messages to address various events and trends, the company maintains its core positioning as a powerful project management software solution. Momentum marketing allows the company to relate its positioning to different events that are top of mind for key buyers, ensuring that it stays relevant, timely, and top of mind. 
• Focus on demand generation: Rather than solely relying on traditional inbound and outbound marketing efforts, the company leverages the momentum around data privacy regulations and remote work trends by partnering with data protection experts, hosting webinars on managing compliance in project management, and sponsoring events or conferences that cater to these trends.
• Consistency: The company consistently tracks and measures the impact of its momentum marketing initiatives, refining its approach and maintaining a focus on high-potential opportunities in both the data privacy and remote work spaces.
• Agility and adaptability: As the data privacy and remote work landscapes evolve, the company stays agile and adapts its momentum marketing strategies. For instance, when new regulations emerge or existing regulations are updated, it starts emphasizing features that cater to the latest requirements, such as enhanced data minimization capabilities or improved consent management tools. Similarly, it adapts its remote work campaign to address the changing needs of distributed teams, like providing better virtual collaboration tools or supporting flexible work schedules. 

By incorporating the consistency of core positioning and running marketing campaigns on multiple momentums, the tech company can create marketing strategies that are closely aligned with the evolving needs and interests of its target audience. This approach ensures that the company remains relevant, timely, and top of mind for its key buyers across various topics, ultimately driving greater engagement, demand generation, and growth.

The Benefits of Momentum Marketing

Momentum marketing offers several key advantages over traditional marketing approaches, making it distinct from short-lived trends:

• Higher engagement rates: By tapping into high-potential momentums and events that resonate with your audience, momentum marketing campaigns typically generate higher engagement levels compared to traditional campaigns. For example, a telemedicine software provider can create content and campaigns around new telemedicine regulations, capturing the attention of healthcare professionals who are actively seeking information and solutions in this area.
• Bigger sales pipeline: Momentum marketing helps create a larger sales pipeline by attracting more high-quality leads and improving conversion rates. Aligning your marketing message with the interests and concerns of your target audience, as seen with the ecommerce sales tax regulations example, allows you to present your solution as timely and relevant, increasing the likelihood of prospects considering your offering.
• Faster results: Since momentum marketing relies on the power of high-potential market opportunities and events, campaigns can yield results more quickly than traditional marketing efforts. By capitalizing on events like the adoption of electric vehicles by ride-hailing companies, EV manufacturers and charging infrastructure providers can experience faster growth in their sales pipeline and market share. 
• Enhanced brand reputation: Aligning your brand with strategically important market trends and events can help build credibility and authority in your industry. Rather than merely following short-lived fads, momentum marketing focuses on events with higher longevity, strategic importance, and high buyer congregation, such as regulatory changes or industry-wide shifts. This approach allows your brand to be seen as knowledgeable, forward-thinking, and relevant, enhancing your overall reputation in your industry.