Marketing 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.
The demand is for:
Increased marketing velocity—with better visibility and control, allied to
enhanced collaboration within and beyond the enterprise.
Increased accountability—with budgetary control and full tracking of all
that is being spent.
Increased ROI—with results being commensurate with the sums expended.
Increased success—ultimately measured by increased share of the wallet
from the targets.
Currently, Global 2000 companies are spending more than $600billion a year
on marketing, most of it in an uncontrolled ad-hoc manner. It is against this
background that Marketing Automation exists. Firstly, it must offer the marketer
support in the analysis of data. This enables the identification and understanding
of what is important and relevant. This is the analytical part of marketing.
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.
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