The Marketing Consortium

Good night and good luck!

Today is my last day as the moderator of The Marketers’ Consortium. Beginning Monday, Don Peppers, my esteemed colleague in the pursuit of marketing excellence, will take the reins as moderator and lead a dialog focused on the theme of precision marketing. Don is truly a luminary on this topic so I expect the content will be rich and the dialog invaluable.

   

I want to express my appreciation to Unica for initiating this forum and for inviting me to participate. I plan to stay tuned in and continue to contribute but you can also continue to follow my thoughts, and those of my Forrester colleagues, on Forrester’s Marketing Blog. And, as always, you can reach me directly at [email protected].

   

ttfn

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Technology Is Just An Enabler

I want to pick up on Graham Hill’s comment to a prior post. That is, “technology is an enabler, not a driver of CRM success.” Again, I agree wholeheartedly. I’ve been preaching on this topic for so long it almost feels trite to say. As a former big consulting firm grad, I also love the comment Graham credited to PWC: “OO + NT = EOO (Old Organization + New Technology = Expensive Old Organization)."

    

This comment made me look back to some of the first reports that I wrote when I joined Forrester back in 2002. Here’s what I had to say then, “Too often, CRM initiatives are technology focused and lack the essential vision, strategy and tactical plan for success.” In early 2003, I published our ideas about how to develop what we called a CRM Value Plan.

   

My research moved on, but Graham is right. I still talk to far too many firms that allow technology to hijack their business efforts. Technology can be a potent enabler for marketing differentiation, but marketing strategy and business objectives must drive technology decisions, not the reverse. And when new technologies are required to enable marketing strategies, marketing must drive the business process.

Tags: Marketing Technology, Enterprise Marketing Management, Marketing Automation ::

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Get Beyond Old Style Campaign Thinking

Hi – I am back from vacation, the kids are off to school and I’m ready to blog. My thanks to Peter Kim for keeping the fire burning while I was away.

I wanted to pick on a comment that was made to a prior post. Specifically, “old style campaign thinking will not adequately support the real time needs-based marketing.” I agree with this sentiment wholeheartedly. The very term “campaign” conjures up the image of a bullhorn – marketers shouting out what they want their audience to hear. With the control and choice that consumers have today, marketing must be more flexible -- more agile.    

Many of us have been talking about this for years, but the time has come. Firms must shift communications strategies away from one size fits all push marketing – to one that is responsive to individual customer behaviors. These strategies go beyond traditional outbound channels like direct mail and telemarketing – they focus on customer interactions. Firms I work with in the financial, telecommunications, and travel industries are blending marketing into customer centers, Web sites, branches, and even ATM's. In fact, in a study we published last fall, more than 58% of marketers we surveyed said their firm already targets marketing offers in one or more inbound channels. Another 27% said they planned to in the next year.

               

But, I believe the strategy will fail if we approach customer interactions with the traditional campaign mindset – let’s tell customers what we want him to hear – rather than view each interaction as an opportunity to deepen the emotional bond with the customer, build trust, and, only possibly, deepen the financial relationship.

    

So, I ask, is it time to blow up that age old term, “campaign”? My take (she hedges…)? Traditional campaigns still serve a purpose, but they’re no longer the most important tool in the marketer toolbox. Thoughts?

Tags: Interaction Management, Enterprise Marketing Management, Campaign Management, Real Time Marketing :: Add to del.icio.us

Should B2B marketers blog?

I spent a great day down in Manhattan as part of Xerox's 2006 Industry Analyst Briefing.  I'd love to blog about it, but sometimes it's tough to separate what's OTR and what's not - so I'll talk about some of the ideas that I got from being there.

Xerox is moving aggressively beyond their roots as a copier company.  As a marketing analyst, it was interesting to hear about the steps Xerox is taking to connect with its customers - mostly B2B enterprises.  One step was to launch a blog, called "Big I, little t".  I think Unica's taking a nice step forward here as well to engage their customers in a more direct conversation.

But do emerging social computing technologies like blogs and podcasting have a place in the B2B marketing world?  Aren't they really tools to connect with individuals in the MySpace generation, rather than the players in a procurement process?

Some data to consider:  last month, Forrester's B2B analyst Laura Ramos published data about B2B marketing challenges - 54% of survey respondents cited "reaching decision-makers" as their most common challenge.  The most often used marketing tactic?  Trade shows, at 91%.

Seems like a disconnect - and missed opportunity - to me...what do you think?

Domain names: defense vs. offense

How do you think about the domain names you own?

Many marketers see domain names as a necessary evil - something that gets in the way of the rest of a creative layout.  Others see using domains as part of a defensive strategy - necessary to combat typosquatting and other forms of DNS trickery (e.g. amazom.com or untied.com).

Sometimes the offense is limited - a vanity URL is purchased to support an ad campaign, then dropped once the season is over and the registration expires.  The problem - social computing technologies enable consumers to publish and drive traffic to sites long after a campaign expires - and search results will persist as well.  For example, consider Burger King's buzzed-about Coq Roq campaign - still being blogged about, but the site itself is defunct.  Think about the missed opportunity!

Are you using domains for both defense and offense?

Should CMOs blog?

Hello - I'm interrupting your regularly scheduled blogger to deliver some guest posts this week.  This is Peter Kim from Forrester's Marketing research team - Elana's on vacation and I'm filling in.  You will be returned to your original blogger shortly, but in the meantime...

A few weeks ago, Roy Young posed an interesting question on Marketing Profs Daily Fix: "should CMOs blog?"  The two sides of opinion were roughly:

1. No - CMOs should focus on the bottom line and blogs detract from that focus.
2. Yes - Blogs are a communication channel that allow CMOs to connect directly to consumers.

The line of reasoning behind #1 could be extended to all marketers and employees - everyone should be more focused on their own job.  Yet if #2 were widely accepted fact, we'd see more marketing executives like Eric Kintz or executives in general like Jonathan Schwartz blogging.  So the answer must lie somewhere in the middle.

My take?  Blogs are certainly conversations.  These conversations are the start of new relationships between marketers and customers.  Over time, they will evolve into deeper levels of engagement - consideration, purchases, and loyalty.  CMOs may not be blogging now, but they should certainly start by listening...

Enough from this blogger - what do you think?  Is this a grey area for you or is the answer easy to see?

Technology is both vital and evil

I recently ran a study in which we wanted to better understand how brand marketers view technology (note: the study was commissioned by Unica). All respondents to the study are director level and up and represent firms with greater than $1 billion in annual revenue. Some data points about what respondents had to say about technology:

• 89% said “I am comfortable with technology.”
• 87% said “My marketing staff is comfortable with technology.”
• 85% said “Technology plays a vital role in the measurement of the results of our advertising and brand marketing activities.”
• 83% said “We are always actively looking for ways technology could enhance our marketing effectiveness”
• 82% said “Technology helps us better manage our advertising and brand marketing activities.”
• 78% said “Technology is vital to the success of our marketing, branding, and advertising efforts.”

The findings here correlate closely with Forrester’s own internal studies in years past. It’s clear, marketers think technology is critical to their success and they are on the lookout for technologies that can improve results and differentiate their services. Yet, at the same time fully half of marketers also say that technology “is a necessary evil.” What’s up with that?

                  

Well I think the issue that marketers have with marketing software is that it requires them to spend too much time thinking about the technology and causes them to lose focus on the task at hand – marketing. I can corroborate this with some results from a recent research series – Marketing Technology Adoption 2006 -- I published. In this research, we found that 57% of the 371 marketing executives we surveyed said they seek marketing technologies that limit IT’s involvement in marketing affairs. 91% of this same survey set say they prefer to work with service providers like database marketing service providers and ASPs.

               

Clearly there’s opportunity for marketing service providers. But, that said, I think that it’s imperative that marketing and IT figure out how to work out their differences. Otherwise, marketing integration is simply not possible.

Tags: Marketing Technology, Enterprise Marketing Management:: Add to del.icio.us

Customer centricity requires technology investment

To continue my plug for the work of my colleague Peter Kim… In his report, “Reinventing the Marketing Organization,” Pete makes a key – and somewhat controversial – recommendation. That is: firms need to shift hard $$ from media to technology in order to build a platform that supports delivery, monitoring and management of the comprehensive customer experience. Although I never had the guts to come right out and say that marketers should shift media dollars to technology in order to build the platform, my own research has long centered on the development of such a platform that we call the Marketing Technology Backbone (here’s a link to a free reprint). In short, we define the Marketing Technology Backbone as:

   

A technology infrastructure that supports an integrated approach to marketing strategy, development, delivery, and measurement across the marketing mix.

   

Not a bad ideal, but certainly easier said than done! I’ve worked with many companies to develop this vision – both while with Forrester and in my prior life as a consultant – and I have to admit the path is full of mine fields. But, from my perspective, the biggest mines are rarely the technology itself. More often, I think it’s the organizational barriers that create the biggest stumbling blocks.

Tags: Marketing Technology, Enterprise Marketing Management, Campaign Management, Marketing Resource Management :: Add to del.icio.us

Is customer centricity a realistic goal?

The idea of customer centricity is not new – I’ve been on the bandwagon since 1995 (yikes!), but few firms have successfully made the transition. Why? Well, I think those that have tried and failed either made changes that were so dramatic the organization couldn’t digest them or failed to make changes that were dramatic enough. Easy for me to say!

      

First off, the move towards customer centricity has to be led from the top, grass roots efforts don’t work. But, even so, the right approach will vary for different companies. A few examples:

    

• Most aggressive: Best Buy reorganized around key customer segments. The company created five key personas and focused its efforts – everything from merchandising to the channel (both store and Web) experience around those personas.

• Medium aggressive: Starwood created customer centric brands. Starwood was the first hotel group to break from the traditional price-point segmentation model and adopt a lifestyle segmentation scheme. Each brand is positioned around the emotion and experience that the customers it serves crave. I’m not sure what this says about me but I have to admit I’ll take the Heavenly Bed at the Westin any day over the chic trendiness of the W.

• Least aggressive: P&G layered customer initiatives on top of its existing structure. Changing the product-centric legacy of the consumer goods industry will surely be no easy task. But, Proctor & Gamble’s innovative approach was to create a marketing program called Home Made Simple that enables the firm to market across its brands to customers with common needs.

Tags: Marketing Organization, Customer Centricity, Customer-Centric Marketing :: Add to del.icio.us

Is today’s marketing organization broken?

That’s the premise that my colleague Peter Kim takes in his recent report, “Reinventing The Marketing Organization.” His key arguments:

• Marketing groups are in a constant state of reorganization
• Marketing has lost control over the four P’s which historically defined it
• Skills that used to be held in utmost esteem are waning in importance
• In 60% of firms marketing doesn’t hold a seat in the executive suite

What has led to this state of marketing disrepair? The predominance of product- and channel-centric organization structures. These structures result in silos of communication, inhibit marketing integration – and encourage competition – and generally make it really difficult to put the customer first.

    

So, what do you think? Is marketing broken and what are the key imperatives required to fix it?

Tags: Marketing Organization, Four P's :: Add to del.icio.us