Marketing Governance

Kudos to the makers of this commercial. UK deodorant brand Lynx (Axe to the rest of the world), usually known for its sweaty ads featuring bewildered boys who become irresistible after using the stuff, has made an inventive video to celebrate their one millionth Facebook fan.

The clip shows an inventive Rube Goldberg machine, featuring references to previous ads and campaigns. It took three weeks to build and 58 takes to get the sequence right. (For the uninitiated: Goldberg machines are those things where you drop a marble, which knocks over a set of dominoes, which knocks a billiard ball in a fishbowl, and in the end it sets off some fireworks Yes, those things.) And ok, the payoff off the machine features a boy who becomes irresistible after using the deodorant, but there has to be some brand consistency. .

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Marketing needs to be faster, more relevant and tied directly to revenue goals. These demands must be met with limited resources and in an environment thats constantly changing. How do best in class marketing organizations ovecome this challenge?

Marcom Central is a customizable marketing technology application that promises to make sure you to make the most of your marketing efforts. Its a cloud-based tool, one of the Software as a Service solutions on the market. It can be used to create both digital (email and web) or print (brochures, ads, flyers) marketing material. With an online digital asset library and templates for marketing materials, the software vendor aims to reduce costs in marketing and ensure global brand consistency, claiming a 40% decrease of operational marketing costs with their users. It also offers a reporting tool, and is compatible with other systems used, such as ERP and CRM. .

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Today’s marketers are under relentless pressure to obtain data, prove ROI and justify decisions. Marketers even have to go so far as to justify choices that haven’t been made yet, hence the momentum behind predictive analytics. It would seem we are in the the singular pursuit of measurement. So far this year, at every conference, event and customer meeting I’ve attended the question of How do we show ROI? has surfaced.

Many marketers we work with have functional responsibilities and therefore their measures often reflect their role. As a result, the measures are frequently independent of each other and it’s difficult for marketing to truly demonstrate its impact and value. For example, social media marketers may be measuring mentions, sentiment, or traffic back to the website (hopefully you have moved beyond likes, and followers as your core metrics of success). Website/content marketers may be measuring the most popular pages or content downloads (hopefully you have moved beyond number of new items posted to the site in some period). SEO marketers may be measuring traffic and search engine ranking (hopefully you have moved beyond pages indexed or the number of backlinks). Email marketers may be measuring open and delivery rates (hopefully you have moved beyond counting the number of campaigns deployed). Asking the question, How to measure the ROI of these tactics? is the wrong question. Read More

Australian organizations are expected to spend almost A$63 million on business process management suites (BPMS) in 2012, an increase of 9.3 percent over 2011, according to Gartner. Worldwide spending on BPMS is expected to reach US$2.6 billion, up 6.9 percent compared to 2011.

Gartner managing vice president John Dixon said the continued growth in the BPMS market worldwide was an indicator of BPM adoption among end users and showed a commitment to BPM as a strategic tool for improving business performance. However, despite overall growth, BPM maturity remains low:

As BPM adoption grows, it is not surprising that the influx of organizations newly exploring BPM will have an impact on overall BPM maturity levels. In last years Gartner survey data we saw maturity levels increase, and we continue to see this trend, however, these levels are still relatively low. Much work remains to be done to deliver the performance improvements that that BPM promises. Read More

Global Marketing Index. Based on data from a panel of 1,225 executives, the monthly reading for marketing spend reached 46.1 points in August, on a scale where scores over 50 points show conditions are improving, and those below this benchmark reflect the opposite.

In reflection of the increasing pressure weighing on the sector, investment rates have dropped in eight of the 11 months since the first edition of the GMI was published. The figure for August also constituted a decrease of 1.4 points compared with July, and was mainly driven by a downward trend across Asia Pacific, where totals fell by 4.7 points, to 46 points. Read More

Business innovation is key to a countrys development. But which country has the most inventive inhabitants? The chart below (click on the image for a larger view) compares the countries of the world based on the success rate of patent applications, the scope of the patent portfolio, the influence and the number of inventions that stem from a country.

A surprising discovery here is that the top 100 innovative businesses are divided over just nine countries. The areas where the most innovation takes place are semiconductors, computer hardware, and machinery manufacturing. The US is doing pretty well, with 40% of the top-100 of businesses based there.  Its followed by of course Japan, with 27%.  And to prove that size doesnt always matter, tiny Liechtenstein holds its own at a ninth place. The only pity from this chart is that it doesnt show any reasons for the countries respective successes. ,

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Marketing Automation technology lets you integrate all of your technology resources into one interaged toolkit. But where do you start?

Never worry, Act On software are here to tell you how to get the most out of a Marketing Automation system once its up and running. In this video the process is broken down into five easy steps:

1. Pick a system that is easy to handle and covers your needs.
2. Deploy the system by using it to run your existing marketing material, and to create new output.
3. Make improvements such as list segmentation, landing pages and reporting.
4. Measure results and see if youre more efficient than before.
5. Review and refine the processes and see if you can make more improvements. (Really, step 3 and 4 should be an ongoing process in our opinion.)
6. Look ahead and integrate the Marketing Automation solution into the marketing planning process. .

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Marketing is dead. Now you know. Sorry. We had fun. We have done some great things together, but the party is over. Now get your stuff from your desk. Leave the iPad.

About once every month I see a new blog post somewhere titled Marketing is dead. Just Google the phrase and you get 355.000 hits, right between the eyes. This month its Bill Lee declaring in his Harvard Business Review blog post that it is all history.

Ironically, Bill just used a very old marketing trick and said something is dead to attract the reader with the goal to raise Awareness about his knowledge and business to hopefully create Interest, Desire and, who knows, Action. Blog posts with appealing titles can be useful marketing tools to have prospects paying attention to your services. Read More

On 14 September, join Aprimos Marketing VIP Lounge XL at the Hermitage in Amsterdam. Meet your peers at the breakout sessions and share best practices, learn from client case studies, product roadmap presentations and demos.

The Aprimo Marketing VIP Lounge XL brings together leaders in integrated marketing management to collaborate, connect, and inspire. There will be proven best practices and how to’s, client case studies, product roadmap presentations, demos as well as plenty of networking opportunities. The speakers include Bob Boehnlein, president of Aprimo, and Steve Kemish, chairman of IDM and Romek Jansen, founder of MRMLOGIQ.

From the program:

The Marketing VIP Lounge XL is an action-oriented learning experience. Through an interactive dialogue with peers you will hear how others are adapting to and conquering today’s toughest marketing challenges and how marketing automation can help you. Read More

Brand owners such as Unilever, Ford and Coca-Cola are still attempting to fully prove the payback from using Facebook, but remain confident in the potential it provides to engage consumers. Recent research by Facebook covering 63 ad campaigns found a majority yielded three times the original expenditure, whereas only a single case delivered a return below one times the initial outlay.

A campaign run on behalf of Suave, the beauty range manufactured by fast-moving consumer goods group Unilever, generated $8.41 for every dollar spent, according to these figures. Keith Weed, chief marketing and communications officer at Unilever, told the Wall Street Journal this return on investment (ROI) was impressive, but warned Facebooks journey had just begun:

As a businessman and marketer, ultimately, you care about ROI. At the end of the day, you will get the early adopters of the large companies who can see [Facebook] as a big trend but you wont get sustained businesses without people understanding how ROI is concerned. Read More