How can we achieve optimal marketing orchestration?

How can we achieve optimal marketing orchestration?

Underworks Associate Manager, Richard recently gave a keynote speech at the Martech Summit 2023 in Singapore. The theme of the address was “Navigating the MarTech Landscape” wherein he discussed the background, challenges we face and how we can solve each for optimal marketing optimization. This article is a report based on the content of the speech.

 

What is the MarTech Landscape?

The MarTech Landscape is a bird’s-eye view of marketing technology, vendors, and tools available to marketers, including those that help improve customer relationships, including website development, advertising, and security.

In recent years, the number of vendors has grown to more than 10,000 worldwide, creating a dizzying array of choices, each promising to revolutionize how businesses engage with their customers or solve local data problems. The abundance of MarTech vendors has led to a highly competitive and innovative market, but it has also made the selection process for businesses more challenging than ever. With so many vendors offering similar products, it can be difficult to distinguish between them and determine which solution best fits your organization.

In Japan, the number of vendors and solutions available is growing rapidly. Each year Underworks releases a Japan-based MarTech landscape showing that Japan has seen a considerable increase in technological innovations, with a 120% increase from 1,317 vendors in 2021 to 1,566 in 2022.

This growing number of vendors and technology available means that companies interact with customers in more ways than ever before, and the importance of customer data in shaping these interactions cannot be overstated.

There are increasingly more digital touchpoints, from social media platforms to chatbots and mobile apps, and companies can now gather more customer data than ever before. 

According to a report from MuleSoft, an IT platform provider, a staggering 70% of customer interactions are now digital. This underscores the importance of effectively managing and utilizing customer data to stay competitive in today’s marketplace. Companies that can effectively harness this data will be better equipped to deliver personalized customer experiences, improve customer satisfaction, and drive growth.

 

Marketing Data Management

With this many entry points for data, we now have access to enormous amounts of information about our customers from various touchpoints at our fingertips. This means that without proper Marketing Data Management, the process of collecting, organizing, analyzing, and applying the data you have collected for your business. Our research has shown that almost 90% of Enterprises believe that Marketing Data Management is crucial for improving their marketing results. 

The increasing importance of Marketing Data Management is reflected in the fact that just under 70% of enterprises are either actively working on it or planning to start soon. This shows that more and more organizations are recognizing data’s crucial role in driving marketing success.

 

Problems in Planning for Marketing Data Management

However, cross-organizational collaboration is one of the biggest problems we have discovered in initiating a marketing data management strategy. There can be a lack of understanding about these initiatives’ importance, making it challenging to secure the necessary budget and create effective implementation systems. This often results in a Silo Mentality, where each department is focused on its work and does not properly communicate with the rest of the organization.

This entire problem can occur incredibly quickly as companies grow organically, with departments growing and changing at different paces.  

Companies need to foster a culture of collaboration and communication to overcome a silo mentality and achieve successful marketing orchestration. This means breaking down barriers between departments, encouraging cross-functional teams, and ensuring everyone is working towards the same goals. With the right mindset, tools, and processes, companies can achieve marketing orchestration that drives growth, improves customer engagement, and delivers measurable results.

 

Building a Marketing Technology Stack

There are two main ways to manage this data and cover digital marketing needs.

First, the all-in-one solution (Suite solution) is a one-stop shop for all marketing needs. The advantage of an all-in-one solution is that the solution is integrated by the vendor, simplifying the process and saving time and resources. While convenient, they may not provide the depth and expertise that individual technologies offer or contain features that are not used because they are bundled with other parts. 

On the other hand, building a best-of-breed stack offers more customization and flexibility by allowing you to choose the specific technology that best fits your needs but requires slightly more resources initially.

When we utilize a best-of-breed approach, data integration is essential to combine and dashboard the data from multiple sources, allowing you to understand your customers and target audiences and make marketing strategy decisions based on more data. 

Yet, according to our research, only about 23% of companies integrate their data. Without data integration, companies face efficiency improvement issues and lost opportunities. The lack of a unified view of customer data can lead to duplication and errors that can be costly and time-consuming to correct.

 

How to get the most out of your marketing technology stack

Even if you have created a marketing data management plan, overcome a silo mentality, chosen a best-of-breed approach, and integrated the data, several key elements from a consulting perspective must be in place to get the most out of the marketing technology stack.

Proper evaluation of vendors

Properly evaluating vendors will help you select the right technology to meet your objectives. For example, a transportation company needs the right tools to implement an account-based marketing strategy; however, no matter how good the tool is, it would be meaningless to them if they did not have the necessary targets.

Investment in People (Importance of Understanding Technology)

It is also essential for marketers to understand the technology before they can make any decisions. For example, in some of the projects we support, the client has a set goal but does not know or understand how to get there. In such cases, we conduct mini-workshops to explain the trends in digital marketing and what CRM, CMS, and CMP are and present and share our understanding of technology and the reasons for implementing it. 

Organize and execute processes based on strategy

Even if you understand the issues, you need to solve and have created a unique marketing technology stack to solve those issues, that alone will not solve the problems. Without data-driven decision-making, it is also meaningless. At the start of a project, it is vital first to develop an overall strategy, organize the next execution process and action plan, and then acquire and adequately utilize data in line with the strategy.

 

Written By

Richard Goodger

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