Are We Really Conducting Integrated Marketing?

I was thinking about the structure of marketing organizations today.  Maybe it was because of Forrester’s point of view on how marketing organizations need to change to serve brands better.  Or maybe it was because it struck me as odd the disconnect between online and offline marketing efforts.  Regardless, there is something drastically wrong with the way we organize our marketing efforts.

In the end, if we have silos in our marketing organizations of online and offline, how is that really serving the better good of driving awareness, engagement, revenue, and customer value?

This divide between online and offline is now becoming more fractured as companies search for ways to transform into social media marketing initiatives.  Digital marketing is now being divided.  There is also the fracture of offline between communications and direct marketing.  We seem to be creating organizations around tactics rather than organizations around strategy.  Having centers of excellence with subject matter experts is certainly important.  Flawless execution in the end gets you to your goals.  Although, why start with the ‘what can be done’ if you don’t know what you are driving to do? This organizational divide of marketing enhances and exposes the weakness in our strategic ability.

Companies that have gotten it right and have leading marketing groups have program offices responsible for marketing and campaign strategies.  They leverage field, creative, and internet marketing organizations as internal agencies and services.  Program offices are the glue managing the value proposition, message, and coordinating the tactical strategies of subject matter experts.  Those companies that market in silos tend to stay in secondary market positions and languish chasing their competition.  One silo gets all the attention and creates a lopsided marketing approach.

It is necessary to grow our organizations and shift to take advantage of new technologies and approaches.  I’m just not convinced that creating organizational silos are the right way to make marketing efforts successful.  It may be the easiest way to get things started and track success.  Yet, in the end, a cohesive marketing organization will get you further.

Filed under: CMO seat, marketing operations, marketing/advertising, marketing best practices, marketing management, marketing organization

Driving Marketing Effectiveness and Efficiency from Within using Social Media

I wonder if the real value of social media for B2B marketing is not the external use to drive sales and customer relationships, but to improve marketing capabilities and become more efficient.

In 2007, the company I worked for set up a social network and everyone was commanded to create a profile and connect with our fellow marketers.  The reason behind it was that we were expanding the team to China and it was a way that our new collogues could feel integrated with the marketing groups in the US and Europe.  It was all very ‘friendly’.  To be honest, I groaned and only created my profile because I was required.  For me, personal life is not what I wanted my marketing leadership to see or the people that worked for me.  My profile was tame to the point of boring.

It goes to show that they didn’t really get the value.  Outside of the fact that it was a requirement to share you personal self, there was a real missed opportunity to drive marketing effectiveness and efficiencies.  

Improve Effectiveness through Sharing

Each quarter regional and program teams were required to review campaigns and programs.  For several weeks marketers prepared their slides to show what was working, what didn’t, and next steps.  These were long conference call sessions where people presented and we all listened in.  Mostly, unless you were involved in the program or campaign, your phone would broadcast the meeting while you worked on what ever it was you had to do.  Not a lot of value there.

Social media would have provided the perfect platform to post presentations and create forums for questions and discussions on how to apply what was learned to other sectors of marketing.  Discussions on the calls were limited to those that were involved which was required for time sake.  But, using Twitter or micro-blogging on a social network would have provided key points to marketers to read as well as offer the ability to shoot over questions.  Reviews didn’t have to merely operate within the allotted time slot and webcast, they could be extended, shared, and saved for all to learn from later.

Create Efficiencies in Project Management

Any major project conducted was stored within an internal project management and knowledge management solution called ProjectLink.  All documents and images were posted there along with managing the change/revision process.  These project environments were huge, messy, and primarily acted as a glorified shared folder.  You had to dive into files to truly understand the project and there was no conversational stream to provide insight or background on why something was decided upon.

Setting up a project group using social media could alleviate workflow, sharing, and archiving problems by containing project management.  Instead of using email and IM, forums and micro-blogging could provide the communication streams.  Content could still be stored, but it would also have notes and comments attached for review and reference of other team members or other marketers.  A big benefit is that it could also provide a platform to share assets and content across marketing projects and groups to re-use and re-purpose allowing for reduction of duplicative work.

Efficient Workflow with Other Organizations

Marketing was a pretty silo’d organization.  While there was a significant amount of conversation with sales and product management, the reality is that in the end, marketing would go off and do their work.  Even in the hand-off process at the lead management stage, the CRM system controlled the process and created a wall of sorts between marketing and sales.

Opening up the door between marketing and key stake holders in other organizations is what social media is made for.  As marketing might share amongst themselves in a social network, they could invite others to their groups or set up new groups to facilitate relationships.  In the sales process, key accounts could be manages through a joint relationship between marketing and sales through asset and content sharing and communication support.  Hooked in with conversations that marketing is having with customers would add significant value to closing business with social media.

Efficient and Effective Marketing Operations

Marketing needs to consider how social media from an internal perspective can help them be effective and efficient internally.  Today, too many forms of communication, and silos within the organization drag down ROI. Implementing social media capabilities will spread knowledge, drive operational efficiency, and break down walls between marketing and other organizations.

Filed under: crm, marketing operations, performance management, marketing effectiveness, marketing efficiency, marketing management, marketing operations, social CRM, social media, social networks

Time to Aggregate Social Media

Let’s take a step back.  We are into the second quarter of 2009 and witnessing some of the highest adoption of social media tools ever.  For companies, it is time to start looking if social media is panning out like expected.  This could be a blog post on metrics and results, but I’m thinking that it may be time to look at how easy it is to manage social media across the vast number of tools and properties.  After all, isn’t part of marketing effectiveness efficiency?

Even in my own small and limited experience I have management problems.  There are a variety of tools and properties I utilize to connect with you: blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn, blog communities, and a variety of analytic tools to track progress.  To be honest, it is a lot of work to manage all these tools.  No single venue provides everything and each offers a different twist on reaching and connecting with others.  The best way for me to manage everything is a big toolbar folder on my browser where I keep bookmarks for all the social media tools and communities I participate in.  Then I have other ways to manage content and connections within each community. In addition, I’m reusing content across multiple platforms duplicating steps.

This is all very inefficient.

Back in the day (wasn’t that only 3 years ago?) the best marketing solution out there was the CRM system.  Today that solution seems ancient and out dated.  Funny that a solution that is all about managing customer relationships is now almost a dinosaur in our social media marketing world.  Regardless, what is great about our CRM systems is that it can be a one stop shop for our customers lists, campaign activities, communication platform, and analytics platform.  In addition, it allows marketers to share program and campaign assets, communications and results with each other.  The biggest frustration is that after standardizing on CRM, I now have little use for it other than traditional marketing which is becoming less and less.  CRM has turned into more of a storage site than an solution.

However, I don’t think CRM is dead.  I think it offers a starting point to aggregate our social media marketing efforts.  Where it created efficiency in process, cataloguing, and communication, it can do the same to streamline our social media activities.  Salesforce.com has already integrated Twitter into its customer service platform.  Having the same ability to push blogs, microblogs, and participate in community discussions and forums would be a great next step.  Having the ability to also post interactive content like presentations and podcasts from a single point would also be better than having to go to YouTube, iTunes, and Slideshare as well as posting to my own website and corporate social network.

Maybe the answer isn’t completely held within the realm of CRM, but as a mainstay of marking, it certainly is a great starting point to help marketers participate socially with customers effectively and efficiently.  If it could consolidate participation and management of social media, reduction in redundancy and improvement in consolidated analytics would greatly improve ROI.

Filed under: b2b, customer relationship, marketing operations, marketing technology, social media, crm, marketing effectiveness, marketing efficiency, marketing management, marketing operations, marketing technology, social media, social media marketing