Marketing Clique

These days, marketing is increasingly accountable for sales and operational efficiency. Management is measuring the success of marketing using metrics that could just as well be out of the sales group's weekly report. What's more, marketing is required to show return on investment (ROI) each step of the way. With these mounting pressures, flat or decreasing budgets, and a seemingly endless list of daunting tasks, marketing understandably turns to technology.

What are some of the most high-impact technology-related marketing issues?

Sales force automation - Is the sales database connected to the same database marketing uses? How and when are prospects handed off to sales? In an upcoming blog post I will introduce more on this topic, including lead scoring and marketing automation, and which vendors are the most visible thought leaders: Marketo, Eloqua.

Forecasting - Marketing can earn more clout by contributing to an accurate revenue forecast. Make the forecast funnel make sense for your organization. Align marketing activities that are directly related to sales, and measure the success. That way marketing is seen as having a direct-line impact on revenue. Furthermore, marketing can justify increased marketing spend in areas that can be accurately attributed to revenue growth.

Website copy - Traditionally, website content has been positioned with two types of visitors in mind: 1) The website visitor who is in the introductory phase of the buying process and 2) The website visitor who is "low in the funnel" and on the verge of making a buying decision. The reality is that it's often a long and winding road. Depending on the complexity, or risk, of the product or service, website visitors may be hitting a site for a variety of reasons during the buying process. What's more, there is often more than one person involved in the consideration process, which can span many months, if not years. Make sure website copy is speaking to the appropriate personas, is written with search engine optimization (SEO) in mind, and contains easy-to-identify areas for the different types of visitors.

By coordinating the consumer's end-to-end experience, companies could enjoy revenue increases of 10-20 percent. -McKinsey report, March 2010

Social Media - What are the best ways to effectively use Twitter, Facebook fan page, video? Each brings technology issues, input from sales, marketing, and customer service. Then there is the requirement of authenticity, and ensuring the company brand is accurately portrayed. This is a simultaneous recipe for success and horror.

Content Management System (CMS) - Here is a perfect example of something that used to be "owned" by IT. Now it's common to see it owned by marketing. Work closely with IT to ensure the right website content is getting to the right visitors at the right time. There are plenty of search marketing implications to selecting and implementing a new CMS, like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal.

Conference Calls - Conference calls and web-based meetings with conference calls have become regular marketing events. Knowing the features and benefits of the different webcasting and conference call technologies is now a must for marketing. Ensure that links to archived webcasts and conference calls can be automatically updated on the website, and integrated into online sales and marketing collateral. What used to be solely an IT issue, conference calls and webcasts are regularly overseen by marketing.

"The Deck" - Endless PowerPoint presentations are created for endless reasons by an endless number of people on any given day. Chances are great that marketing ought to be policing how the company's brand is being portrayed (adherence to style guide) especially when these presentations will be viewed outside of the organization. The best way to collaborate on slide decks, to use common graphics, to collaborate on content, and to keep numbers up-to-date is to use a relatively new application called SlideRocket. SlideRocket is scalable, enterprise-class, software as a service (SaaS) presentation system that saves organizations from the hellish and all-too-common scenario of disparate file folder in multiple departments on multiple computer hard drives. Get relief. Check out SlideRocket.

Digital Advertising - Search and display advertising can now be closely measured and adjusted by marketing. Optimizing website landing pages has become a must. Test, test, test.

The list goes on. Technology continually wiggles its way into the daily activities of the modern marketer.