Marketing Transformation? It’s Messy

Lately I’ve been struck by the messy, unin­tended con­se­quences of the wrench­ing changes that the prac­tice of mar­ket­ing is going through. One such con­se­quence is how hard it has become to get a big pic­ture view of what’s going on in the mar­ket­place, where your best oppor­tu­ni­ties might lie — what­ever mar­ket your busi­ness or brand hap­pens to serve.

We’re blessed with many choices, “bright shiny toys” to help us engage with cus­tomers, track and ana­lyze online behav­iors, tune up our rev­enue engines, tweak key­word strate­gies, mon­i­tor brand sen­ti­ment, lis­ten in on cus­tomer con­ver­sa­tions, opti­mize dis­play adver­tis­ing so it res­onates with the best audi­ences. Etc., etc.

We’re inun­dated with ana­lyt­ics and data – but we’re con­fused by all the dis­parate piece parts, chal­lenged by the techno-priests who pull the levers of the new magic black boxes. Each would have us believe that their black box is the one most impor­tant for mar­ket fore­sight or cus­tomer under­stand­ing. How do we make sense of all these com­pli­cated silos of mar­ket­ing tech­nol­ogy that com­pete for our time, resources and pri­or­i­ties, but were never designed to inter­op­er­ate? Where are the peo­ple who can look across all these silos and help us develop action­able insights and pro­grams from an inte­grated per­spec­tive? Where are the sense makers?

We’ve hol­lowed out the agen­cies, their top-notch intel­lec­tual tal­ent is leav­ing for bou­tique firms. The eco­nomic down­turn has sav­aged mar­ket­ing bud­gets, and forced many tal­ented, expe­ri­enced peo­ple into unem­ploy­ment or under-employment. We’re left with tech­nocrats and spe­cial­ists, peo­ple with deep but nar­row insights. It’s hard to find peo­ple who can dis­cern the pat­terns that cut across tac­ti­cal silos and unre­lated data streams, the golden oppor­tu­ni­ties to achieve last­ing ben­e­fits for the busi­ness and its customers.

With all the “bright shiny new toys” that mar­keters and agen­cies now have our dis­posal, it’s all too easy to get lost in the weeds, and lose sight of what’s really impor­tant. Acquir­ing the right cus­tomers, engag­ing them in what­ever ways are mean­ing­ful to them, and retain­ing them for as long as the rela­tion­ship is prof­itable and ben­e­fi­cial to both par­ties. That’s what it’s all about.

Tagged as: marketing automation, marketing transformation

Revised on June 4, 2010