|
|
Marketing Automation PlatformsPublished by: Bloor Research Published: May. 1, 2006 - 61 Pages Table of Contents
AbstractMarketing is perceived by most observers to be one of the more ‘fluffy’ ‘arty’ and ‘imprecise’ parts of an enterprise. However, in the global market of the twenty-first century, in which consumers are increasingly discerning, products are increasingly commoditised, markets are increasingly open to competition and the velocity of change is increasing all of the time, the skills of marketing are no longer marginal, they are vital.In building and protecting Brand, the success, or otherwise, of marketing is key to corporate profitability. In a commoditised market if, through marketing, a distinction can be made so that a product can be seen as ‘cool’ and desirable, the result translates as rapidly to the bottom-line as any cost saving or rationalisation programme. But as margins tighten everyone is looking more closely at return on investment (ROI). This dictates that marketing must become a more measured discipline. The days of running multi-million pound awareness campaigns with no tracking of the outcomes are becoming a thing of the past. Today, marketers are expected to take decisive actions, with the results being supported with facts. Today, quantification is replacing intuition.
Having undertaken research into the market in terms of customers, products, and competitors, the second stage is to facilitate the design of a campaign. The campaign uses those discoveries to influence behaviour, to impact the market and achieve the desired aims. This is the creative part. Campaigns take place in two ways; firstly there are those which are outbound. Targets are identified and the company seeks to communicate with them via any of a number of channels to make an offer. Secondly there are inbound, where the customer has contacted the enterprise (often through a call centre, making Marketing Automation and CRM close bedfellows). With this, there is historic and contextual data about the customer and what has just occurred is used to make them an offer. Very often with inbound campaigns the opportunity is taken to be even more sophisticated and to respond to the customer reaction to the initial offer with a next best offer. The third element of campaign management concerns the execution of the campaigns, which involves assembling all of the required artefacts, from creatives and so forth, and then deploying them, which again may take place within the context of a CRM solution. With the campaign being enacted in the customerfacing channels, with the channels being co-ordinated and the contacts optimised, this is a very time consuming piece. This element of a Marketing Automation solution is concerned with managing the resources being employed. For those coming from an IT background it is often difficult to realise the scale and complexity of the resources that need to be deployed in a marketing campaign. So Marketing Resource Management is a vital area; managing, co-ordinating and reporting on a diverse and dispersed set of resources being used to achieve goals. Those resources are likely to be geographically dispersed and will often be augmented by specialists outside of the company itself. This is the area in which some of the biggest impacts can be made as automation replaces manual tasks and frees resource to higher value-adding activity. The fourth element of a Marketing Automation solution is concerned with closing the loop and capturing outcomes. As the customers respond to the offers their reactions, both positive and negative, need to be captured to enable both in-flight adjustment and accurate reporting to be made. This is the piece that is often given scant regard. This is a far-reaching business context to support and it is therefore inevitable that there are many solutions being offered. Those solutions take on many different characteristics according to the background and focus of the provider. When assessing the solutions it is important to recognise the background of the provider, to look at the functionality and technical capability they are offering. It is also significant to look at the impact of fashion on how the products are perceived. This market, perhaps even more than is true with IT in general, is highly influenced by perception. Capability and market perception of capability are not always closely correlated. Get Full Details About This Report >> |
|
|||
|
About MarketResearch.com
|
||||