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Marketers need wings: Removing the IT shackles!

One of the main differences in the way that marketing and IT work is agility. In a marketer’s fast-paced world, the number and types of customer touch points are expanding constantly. Mobile marketing brings geo-location into play. New channels and new media need to be integrated and coordinated. Consumer response to marketing and advertising is evolving and their expectations are higher. This leaves marketers in the midst of the chaos trying to keep up and influence customer behavior across multiple channels.

Add to that a fierce competitive landscape where not only does the marketer need to design and implement customer acquisition, conversion and retention strategies, they must monitor and react quickly to their main competitors’ strategies and tactics, and they must be on guard for new players with new distinctive competences.

No wonder a marketer needs the agility to turn on a dime. Imagine launching your Christmas promotion with an innovative new campaign two days after your competitor just launched theirs with a very similar concept. All of a sudden you’re a me-too promotion. The marketer is able to change the offer, the content and the art work very quickly and save the day; however this is only possible within the limitations of what IT can do, that is to say, what works right now.

In the IT world it is all about structure and specifications. IT‘s concerns focus around the nature of the work they do and the cost implications if not done properly (i.e. rework). Practices and procedures are used to ensure reliable and (hopefully) affordable software that fits the user’s needs. Development methods such as Agile help improve the fit between software development and marketing needs, however there still is a very cyclical nature to IT practices that prohibit quick change and rapid problem resolution. As a result IT is unable to react very quickly to marketing emergencies.

This mismatch is a major constraint for marketers forcing them to settle for strategies and tactics that are practical and that, to the greatest extent possible, require minimal IT involvement. In essence, marketers are restricted to choosing the best from a slate of lower ROI projects that are possible.

Whatsnexx breaks the shackles by putting the ability and the power to make software changes directly into the marketer’s hands. The marketer can now control most aspects of cross-channel marketing campaigns and relationship marketing practices with very minimal IT involvement. It is possible to make last minute changes without incurring weeks and months of development. As I move into the final days of implementation for one of our clients, I am amazed at how many last minute changes they want. Instead of it taking weeks or even months if the IT department was involved, I implement the changes directly in Whatsnexx in less than an hour. Now that is what I call agility!

The New Digital Agency: Advertising in the Age of Cloud Computing

In the age of digital marketing advertising agencies must compete in a multimedia cross-channel ecosystem for client marketing budget. In order to be successful the agency must not only come up with creative strategies to capture consumer awareness, they must also cope with their client’s need to track consumer information that is uncoordinated, fragmented, and comes in a wide variety of formats.

In addition to the strategic and creative services that an agency must offer to win accounts, they must also offer the technical infrastructure and expertise required for coordinated cross-channel campaigns that use customer profile data.

The result is that cross-channel advertising agencies must devote a growing portion of the project budget to IT services rather than creative talent and market coverage. There is a delicate balance to be maintained between hiring creative talent, maintaining a competent IT infrastructure team to execute relationship marketing strategies and campaigns, and the number of people you can reach with any budget that is left over.

The reality is that with the emergence of digital technologies the landscape is in a state of constant evolution and reinvention, and IT infrastructures is not easily adaptable to changing client needs and client advertising portfolios. IT works with square corners, so to speak, whereas advertising works in color. IT is a different discipline and set of rules. Making changes once the IT development machine is put in gear is costly. This slows an agency’s speed to market, resulting in missed opportunities to deliver relevant and timely communications, because the IT specifications process is long and detailed.

Existing agencies and start-ups need a way to eliminate, or at least greatly simplify dealing with IT. This would free a tremendous amount of interactive budget that could now be spent on creative talent and cross-channel market coverage.

Cloud computing removes the barriers to entry into the digital marketing world! It is now possible for two guys, one very creative talent, and one digitally competent marketer, to combine forces and build custom-made relationship marketing strategies and interactive cross-channel marketing campaigns.

Rather than spend 9 months building a centralized database and only then starting your marketing campaigns, you could start building a customer state marketing database in a few weeks’ time. You would then be acquiring valuable customer profile and behavior information immediately. Think of how much data you would have access to in 9 months’ time and what you could be doing then. It’s a new world for advertising agencies!