Marketing Governance

 “The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well that the product or service fits him and sells itself” Peter Drucker.  For 99% of businesses, achieving this goal (a requirement for surviving in today’s hyper-competitive environment) requires the right investment in Marketing Technology. If you want to optimize the performance of your Marketing organization and become more efficient and successful, you must know how to identify which technologies are need, in which order, and how to effectively implement and use the tools.

There are over 300 companies in 45 categories in the marketing technology space. So, it’s hard to keep up! As the number of tools and solutions for marketing has grown, the marketing technology landscape has evolved.  Today, we need to know both the types of technologies available, as well as how to implement and leverage them as a holistic system.

Marketing Technology and the Work of Marketing

The marketing landscape can be confusing, and the acronym alphabet soup used to describe these technologies only adds to the conundrum: DAM/MAM (digital asset or marketing asset management), MOM (marketing operations management), MAP (marketing automation platforms), and MRM (marketing resource management). In their study, “Realizing the Promise of Marketing Technology,” ITSMA defined marketing technology as “the software for improving marketing and sales processes to achieve business objectives.” This definition provides a way to frame the marketing technology landscape, which currently consists of a very large and growing list of players.

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 TDC) has released the results of its pan-European marketing study, “The Data Driven Marketing Survey 2013, Europe”. The study reveals that a shift to digital channels and the increasing importance of data have led to a “class structure” in marketing technology investments among companies using these solutions. Telco and IT companies invest almost 20% of their marketing budget on improving their marketing infrastructure, whilst retail (17%) and finance (13%) are close followers. Overall, however, 50% of marketing departments across all industries surveyed spend less than 5% to improve their marketing with technology investments.

In creating the report, Teradata eCircle surveyed more than 1,100 marketing professionals ranging from CMOs and key decision makers to marketing managers and technology users, from 19 European countries and across nine major industries, to uncover the challenges and trends in data-driven marketing adoption by European businesses and how marketers use technology to master them.

The study shows that despite the current, uncertain economic climate, the shift to digital is significant. Marketers still plan to increase their spending in digital channels, especially in social media (79%), mobile marketing (79%) and online display advertising (70%) within the next 12 months. What’s more, the first seven channels marketers plan to invest in are digital, with call centers being the first non-digital investment priority in 8th place.

The research also highlighted marketers’ desire to embrace data, citing it as a key driver of marketing success, with data-driven marketers more than twice as satisfied with their marketing programs than their counterparts who are not basing their decisions on data.

With two-thirds of marketers claiming a lack of simple metrics and the short-term view of their marketing departments as their biggest obstacles to success, the findings provide an eye-opening insight into the struggles facing the modern multi-channel marketer. In fact, the single biggest challenge facing marketers in 2013 was revealed to be the pressure to increase revenue.

Out of the more than 50% of marketers utilizing seven or more channels, the research also found that only 33% currently have Campaign Management technology to monitor their activity, whilst a mere 17% use a Marketing Resource Management solution. Notably only 10% use both.

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Saepio Technologies, in  the whitepaper ‘MAM, Making Assets Actionable and Engaging’.

And why is that?

As a vital part of the advertising process, MAM combines digital asset management, collateral customization and marketing automation technologies into a single, seamless process that:

• improves brand compliance;
• advances measurable return on marketing investment (ROMI);
• eliminates repetitive tasks;
• enables speed-to-market; and
• engages distributed marketers.

In the white paper Thomson first defines where MAM fits in the Enterprise Marketing Management strategy. “There are many models that depict the component of an EMM system”, according to Thompson.”But this document focuses on CRM, business intelligence/analytics, MRM, MAM and customer nurturing as key components.”

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Matt Jauchius, CMO of Nationwide, discusses how he brought speed and agility to his marketing organization. The first step was to focus on changing parts of the organization rather than the entire organization. He hired new talent and made process changes. For decision making to be fast, a set of capabilities needs to be centralized while still empowering edge units that interact with customers.

Perhaps your marketing organization, like so many we work with have a marketing dashboard. At two recent conferences where the topic was marketing dashboards we asked attendees whether  their dashboard enables them to the following:

1. Inform the leadership team of the contribution and impact marketing is making on acquiring, keeping, and growing the value of customers?
2. Provide a direct link between your marketing programs and investments and business results?
3. Enable you to make strategic decisions?

Most every participant indicated that their dashboard is not addressing these three questions.  If this situation sounds familiar, then it may be time to do some fine tuning.  Below are three attributes we use to evaluate a dashboard’s ability to facilitate decisions, improve marketing, and prove marketing’s contribution.

Alignment

One of the first things we look for when reviewing a dashboard is the degree of connection between marketing activities and investments and business outcomes.  This signals how well marketing is aligned with the business needles the company is trying to move and whether marketing will be able to communicate its impact and contribution.  For example, let’s say one of the metrics on the dashboard is brand awareness.  That might or might not be a good metric.  And even if it is a good metric for the organization, if the relationship between brand awareness and the outcome it is expected to impact is unclear, then the dashboard needs adjustment.   Members of the C-Suite are invest in marketing initiatives that will help the company acquire more of something, faster, less expensively, for example, more customers, more market share, more business with existing customer; faster conversion rates, and faster product adoption.  Does your marketing dashboard show marketing value, contribution and impact on find, keep and grow, and answer the questions of more, faster, and at what cost?

Outcome-based Metrics

The next thing we examine is the metrics themselves.  Most of the time what we see is data around marketing activity and leads.  Rarely are the metrics actionable.  If the metric isn’t helping you make course adjustments or strategic recommendations it might be interesting and you may want to track it, but it probably isn’t one you want to send up the flagpole. Think about the dashboard in your car.  There are just a very few indicators you are monitoring such as level of fuel, engine temperature, air pressure, and speed.   Each of these indicators are tied to some very important outcomes, such as not getting stuck because the tank is dry or the tire is flat or the engine overheated, or not  getting a speeding ticket.  Each of us uses the dashboard in our cars as a way to make decisions to help manage or mitigate risk.  Some of us are willing to push the risk envelope a bit more and keep the pedal to the metal or keep driving even though the gas gauge needle says the car is running on fumes.  But we have the metrics we need to decide whether to stop and fuel up or not.

Performance Targets

Lastly, we look to see whether the dashboard compares targets to actual.  Many dashboards are missing this critical element.  Monitoring, measuring, and reporting results need to be within the context of the target and the commitment made.  There are two parts to this dimension:

1. Performance Context:  If you report that you ran a 5K race at a 10 minute per mile pace how can we determine whether that was success or failure?  If you typically run at an 8 minute per mile pace for a 5K then this information tells us something was off and we can begin to do a diagnostic – were you sick, did you lack fuel, were you over-trained, did you have a cramp, fall down?  But if you typically run at a 12 minute per mile pace, then this is a huge improvement.  We have performance context for your results.
2. Performance Commitment.  What performance commitment did you make?  Was your commitment to place in the top five in your age group? Or was it to surpass your personal record? Or, something else?  The point is that your dashboard should enable you and anyone who to evaluate the results within the performance context and commitment.

Summary

If you have a dashboard that makes the connection between marketing activities, investment and results, is comprised of metrics that foster decision and action, and reports performance within context and commitment you are on your way to having a dashboard that will enable you to improve and prove the value of marketing.

New Media Forecasts report, ZenithOptimedia found that the leading country in 2012 terms of new media adoption was Norway, with an average penetration rate of 38.8% across three key digital technologies – smartphones, tablets and IPTV.

It was followed by France on 35.7%, the Netherlands on 35.1%, Sweden on 31.3% and Denmark on 31.2%. However, balance will shift a little towards 2015. ZenithOptimedia expects the Netherlands to be on top in 2015 with a penetration of 65.1%, followed by France 60.8% and Ireland 50.2%.

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Managing a marketing campaign means juggling budgets, ad agencies, distributors, translators, production houses without even thinking about your own team.

Marketing software vendorAdnovate offers a solution for keeping all these different balls in the air. Their online service platform promises instant control over all you marketing campaigns and an overview of campaign essentials such as budget, staff, and planing. This can help speed up time-to-market, and ensure brand consistency. The vendor offers seven different packages, each suited to a specific need. From Brand Asset Management to localization, to all-round campaign management. .

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The situation: a cruise line has 5000 cabins left to fill and 120 days to fill them in, before the season starts. What to do?

Marketing Resource Management vendorSproutLoud tackles this case study and shows how their MRM system works in practice. The cruise liner sets up a large discount campaign and needs to get the word out to holidaymakers around the world. Via the central marketing calendar, travel agent partners are informed about the offer. The cruise line makes marketing material available to the travel agencies, who in their turn can send it to their clients in the medium of their choice, reaching a combined audience of 200.000 people.

This case study shows in a nutshell how an MRM system can support such a complicated operation, involving multiple marketing materials in multiple languages across the globe. The rest is clear sailing.

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DAM, or Digital Asset Management, is an important part of Marketing Resource Management, as our guest columnist Jan Dejosse from ADAM Software frequently stresses.

While marketers produce huge amounts of assets, ranging from images, logos, to video, copy and templates for new campaigns, they tend to focus on the production process, and forget about the end results. Grant Halloran of Orbis Global, an MRM vendor, explains why its so important to manage and file digital assets carefully they are assets in the literal sense of the word: they represent value for the company. Often, assets are scattered in different locations, and difficult to get hold of. A well-organized DAM system can help to regain control of the digital asset library and make using (and, more importantly, re-using!) assets significantly easier.

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