Pulling together: centralising your marketing

Pulling together Centralising your marketing teams to increase marketing effectiveness

2

The problems of disparate data and discrete strategies

Over recent years, many global enterprises have seen the need to centralise key marketing functions.

This trend has coincided with increased

specialism of marketing practitioners over

the broadening array of functional elements,

channels and activities. Historically, these

organisations have had distinct functions

within the marketing department, and

therefore parameters, including Brand, PR,

Advertising, Events, Products and Direct.

Evolving platforms and potentials have led to

the need for extra dimensions. Database

Management, Email and Digital, Search, Social

Media and Insight have appeared to cover off

various requirements, some marketing-

orientated, some coming from a sales

perspective, some more technical angle or

IT-dependent, some a heady mix of all three.

The digital environment has experienced

the largest and most diverse growth,

simply because it is the most fertile area

where customer conversations are taking

place. The challenges are around taking

what has gone before and incorporating

what is possible and practical today, looking

to optimise those conversations and have

the greatest influence, ultimately, on the

buying decision.

From an organisational and leadership

perspective, the challenges are not that

of better ROI and more sales opportunities.

So, what are the biggest headaches inherent

in the marketing process as we face it now?

This book aims to explain the changing

world of modern marketing, and explain

the techniques and tools you will need to

adapt to it.

Introduction

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The solution: Clarify the big picture

You commonly hear the phrase ‘Where do you want to go, and how will you get there?’ Here is a perfect fit for its use. This should be followed by ‘How will team and individual contribute towards this?’ Without clear direction, each silo will remain focused on its own agenda and goals, which cannot deliver optimal value in the long-term.

By defining a single, common organisational goal and strategy, everyone knows where they stand, and can contribute on that basis. Each team will have its own specific lead measures, but the overall end goal will be known to all and the same to all. This includes clarity on an organisational blueprint, an overall demand generation strategy that they need to align to.

Self-generated, inconsistent goalsThe increasing fragmentation and diversification of channels, has led to the spectrum of activity that marketing is responsible for being broader than ever.

As a result, teams grow more specialised. Fruitful integration becomes harder to manage as goals become unclear, data fractured and messaging potentially diluted. The ability to balance and prioritise resource, and communicate from a single perspective to individual prospects, which is a realistic possibility, becomes impractical and inefficient. Each function chases its own KPIs, with its own strategies and initiatives. Synergy is lost resulting in a loss of productivity, efficiency, performance and value. The whole is muddled by the sum

of its parts.

Challenge

1

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The solution: An integrated inbound marketing strategy

Key to reducing the silo effect of specialist teams is having a definable, referenced inbound marketing strategy. With this in place, each team can act independently, but with the aim of contributing most effectively to overall direction and goal. This drives synergy but also empowers each team to own responsibility for its actions for the greater good of the enterprise and its balance sheet.

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Digital silos

While this is a challenge to all functional and operational teams, digital teams are more prone to siloed behaviour.

Traditional marketing functions have grown

accustomed to integration and collaboration.

The emergent nature of digital marketing and

the technical skills involved have contributed to

the disparity of new digital channels and roles.

SEO, website, social media, online media and

pay-per-click become necessary but difficult

to control and co-ordinate. As challenge #1

highlights on a broader level, overall ownership

of strategy can be difficult resulting in each

digital silo putting its own strategy together

in isolation.

So a social media and community

management team could be running a

competition, the IT team could be conducting

a keyword audit, while the PR agency have

been focusing on media coverage to enhance

authority but without keyword awareness or

utility. At the same time a vertical team may

be about to launch a paid search campaign in

isolation and a regional team could be running

a new product webinar. Integrating enterprise

stakeholders becomes impossibly hard, but it

has to be the goal. When activity happens in

collaboration, enhancing the cross-pollination

of activity, deeper audience engagement and

value is the result. The whole becomes greater

than the sum of its parts.

Challenge

2

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The solution: A content marketing framework and strategy

The role of centralised teams has evolved to be a central spoke and hub of activity. Whilst historically activity could be seen as more production orientated, this has evolved to facilitate best practice, along with providing support and consultancy for other stakeholders. A key to overcoming the challenges of dispersed content production is to evolve the wider organisational culture, and to give individuals from broad

backgrounds the support and guidance they need to carry out their content marketing activity. The priority should be to make tools available to all that maintain brand and encourage collaboration, along with a focus on educating and driving best practice throughout the business. Where possible, seek to standardise and simplify processes which help to minimise inconsistencies.

Content quality

With the rapid rise of the importance of content marketing, production management becomes essential.

There’s the need to manage dispersed production, coordination

with required subject matter experts, regional development,

languages and localisation, control over quality, skills shortages

and culture change. And this isn’t an exhaustive list. Across

business units, sectors, functions, departments and regions, it

would seem to be too much for an individual, and unpractical

for a team, to be expected to manage all communications and

content creation whilst maintain consistency in brand, quality in

output and value to its audience.

3Challenge

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The solution: A unified marketing automation strategy

In order to effectively deliver dynamic communications, with the right content and message at the right time, a marketing automation platform is key. This provides the infrastructure that unifies inputs and data points in a single, usable environment. In turn, this drives communication of the most relevant and timely information to your audience, dependent on where they are in the buying cycle.

Disparate data

In the era of ‘big data’, organisations can access as much information as they need on their audience, and gather more as a part of the dialogue with this audience.

However, many companies lack the people and the knowledge

to analyse the data in the best way, more do not know how

to use the insights gained on analysis, and many more do not

have the time to do either. Even taking these challenges into

consideration, the biggest problem remains that the data

is held across a variety of systems, in a variety of formats,

each one containing different fields or types of data.

The result is an inability to be as relevant to their audience

as they could be with the use of personalised, customised

and triggered communications. Cut-through, engagement

and relevance are undermined, and the power of targeted

communications diluted. This is only compounded as a generic

‘batch’n’blast’ communications approach becomes the default

that speaks to the largest proportion of prospects in the least

personalised way.

4Challenge

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7

Hands-on, little and often.

Historically, campaign strategy and implementation have

been built on the perceived need and agreed solution by

committee, usually a compromise, and inflexible

implementation where the plan is executed irrespective of

customer response or take-up. The plan is the plan and we

do it this way because this is what’s been agreed – we don’t

necessarily care what our customers think because we don’t

think about what our customers need.

It can all be so different. Of course there needs to be a plan

in place, but how much more effectively is that plan

implemented when we’re able to take a little-tweaking-but-

often approach, grounded in tactical responses to specific,

known customer needs. An open-minded strategy facilitates

ongoing, personalised customer conversations based on where

they are in the sales cycle, not on what our key messages

are. Goals are common to the business irrespective of what

area they come from – in terms of synergy, the whole

becomes greater than the sum of its parts.

Covering your customers’ needs, not your sales pitch aspirations.

Content is key to enhanced customer relationships, but has

to be grounded in the new truth, that customers define their

product needs and expectations, and then seek out

information, on their terms, to meet those needs. Your new

product features that you’ve invested millions in developing?

They’re irrelevant if they don’t sound like something your

prospect could do with. And they won’t know that until

they’ve searched the market themselves. You’re best

strategy is to be there with the information they need when

they need it, not trying to force yourself or your product story

on them. Content, then, becomes fluid. Your bank of it, your

‘content cupboard’, will grow over time so that it is capable

of supplying directions at appropriate points as prospects

journey through the buying cycle.

Shepherding data from diverse, disconnected sources.

The tools and data used to communicate span a tangle of

platforms including online, offline and social. Don’t forget that

traditional media still has a bearing on where prospects are in

their journey. So a conversation between a prospective

customer and a member of your team at a trade event may

well have registered more nods of approval and mental notes

than any amount of targeted (poorly or not) email activity.

How do you factor this into your customer journey?

Having a central hub of data is becoming more of a reality.

This key tool enables you to gather, manage, use and

update customer insight whatever the platform they’ve

used. Perhaps more crucial than having the data is being

able to use it. Talented analysts will support the most

efficient, cost-effective and impactful use of the information

you have to target the right prospects, at the right time,

with the right messaging as a part of a unified marketing

automation strategy.

Summary actions

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Marketing Automation 101 Guide

10 Steps to Content Marketing Success

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About Ledger Bennett DGA

We are a B2B Demand Generation agency that uses sales and marketing know-how to help customers increase revenue by deploying Inbound Marketing, Content Marketing and Marketing Automation strategies. Our highly focused Demand Generation programmes drive our customers’ business performance, helping them to:

n Generate more opportunity

n Convert that opportunity into sales

n Retain customers and grow their value

Using more measurable and cost effective techniques than traditional full service marketing agencies we are able to maximise business revenue in the modern world where the internet has fundamentally changed the behaviour of the buyer.

www.lbDGa.com

Telephone: +44 (0)8458 383883 Email: [email protected]

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