Managing marketing operations is now an essential core competency for larger business enterprises. Today’s marketing environment is more complex than ever, and marketers remain under constant pressure to achieve more results with the same or fewer resources. After focusing initially on improving the effectiveness of individual campaigns and programs, marketing leaders are now turning their attention to increasing the efficiency and productivity of marketing operations.

Marketing operations can be defined as the activities and processes that are required to perform the marketing function and manage the marketing organization effectively and efficiently. The growing importance of marketing operations is evidenced by the fact that many companies now have marketing executives and managers who are dedicated to marketing operations management. Recent research by IDC revealed that the marketing operations role represents about 6% of the total marketing staff, and it is the fourth largest job category for a large marketing department. Read More

Many major companies believe their digital marketing schemes are still exploratory or random, and few have engaged in-house experts to enhance their strategy, a study has revealed. The CMO Council, the trade body, and Acceleration, the consultancy, interviewed 200 senior executives. It discovered that a third of marketers described their digital portfolio as a random collection of solutions.

A further 44% saw this activity as exploratory. However, only 32% are working with their IT colleagues to assess their future needs and requirements, and a modest 26% had built multi-disciplinary teams to do so.

Roger Menz, VP, global marketing, at Sony Music Entertainment, said:

While enthusiasm and excitement over new and shiny platforms is exceedingly high, the level of real understanding and expertise is just not fully developed. Read More

Weve analyzed the brain of the marketer before, concluding that marketing is both an art and a science. Creating great campaigns and ads requires the creativity and inventiveness that the right brain half harbors, while marketers also need the analytical skills that reside in the left brain for the operational and data side of marketing.

But what about the consumer? This infographic picks the brain of the social shopper it identifies the six psychological principles that underlie online buying behaviour: social proof, authority, scarcity, like, consistency and reciprocity. Some of these principles apply to marketing in general, others are specific to the new, social, form of marketing. Click the image to explore the mind of the social consumer.

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Direxxis introduces their marketing solution dmEDGE. Direxxis provides off the shelf direct marketing solutions, designed to support the marketing process.

The system features different modules, including Marketing Asset Management, Relationship Management, Marketing Performance Management, which, according to Direxxis, help you centralize your content data and business rules and enable you to accurately implement and track field marketing programs. .

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With the increased pressure on business leaders to be more personally accountable for the performance and conduct of their organizations, the emphasis on performance management has trickled down and across the organization, including marketing. Performance management focuses on optimizing individual or group performance in order to achieve the organization’s key initiatives and objectives. Performance management includes the metrics and the data, measurement, alignment and analytical processes, methodologies, capabilities and systems needed to manage the performance of an organization. A sound marketing performance management process is essential for enabling marketing professionals to demonstrate and communicate marketing’s impact on and contributions to the organization.

How capable are your digital asset management systems and processes? If you’re a senior marketing leader in a large enterprise, answering this question is essential to evaluating the productivity of your marketing efforts. It is not, however, an easy question to answer. What elements of the DAM system/process should be evaluated? What criteria should be used to measure the capability of each system component? What capability levels should be used?

The good news is that a new tool can help make this job a little easier. A few weeks ago, four DAM industry leaders published the Enterprise Content Management Maturity Model that was first published about three years ago. Read More

Vitrue, a provider of cloud-based marketing tools for centrally planning and running campaigns of any size and scale on sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Vitrue manages more than 1.3bn social interactions for over 500 brands, with customers including AT&T, the telco, McDonalds, the fast food chain, Procter & Gamble, the FMCG group, and BBDO, the agency. Thomas Kurian, EVP, Oracle Development, said:

The proliferation of social media and an increased demand by consumers to engage with brands across multiple social channels is driving chief marketing officers to look for an integrated social marketing platform. Read More