Marketers understand that in order to drive better engagement, higher ROI and increased revenue, they need to optimize, using accurate, data-driven insights. Now, brands are undertaking a marketing transformation—abandoning siloed measurement strategies and technology and harnessing the power of a unified marketing measurement strategy.
While this transition gives marketers the omnichannel marketing insights needed for campaign success, there are numerous pitfalls that can lead to a loss in efficiency and impact during transformation periods. In order to ensure marketing teams can successfully update capabilities without negative consequences, it’s crucial that marketing transformation strategies account for several crucial areas of focus.
Marketing Technology
The technology found within an organization’s marketing stack is the backbone of modern marketing. That’s why updating marketing technology is often the fastest way to improve — or impede — measurement capability. To do this effectively, organizations need to include two crucial steps in the transformation strategy:
Plan Your MarTech Migration
When planned beforehand, migrations can be successfully implemented without affecting the day-to-day operations of an organization. Accomplishing this requires identifying areas across the marketing stack that can be isolated from the rest of martech critical to campaign efforts. Marketers can then identify which technology to migrate, as well as the ideal timing to avoid lapses in campaign performance.
Establish a Cadence to Prevent Holes in Data
Once the critical elements within the marketing stack are identified, it’s crucial to create an implementation cadence that addresses the most crucial martech, like CRM and analytics first. This prevents teams from shifting too much technology too fast, which has the potential to seriously limit marketing capabilities.
Marketing Analytics and Data
The role of data in today’s marketing landscape is undoubtedly one of the dominant components of marketing success. During transformation initiatives, marketers still need insights backed by actionable data in order to coordinate their marketing efforts and drive engagements. With this in mind, there are several questions marketers need to ask when developing their transformation strategy:
Where is Data Being Held Across the Marketing Stack?
In order to develop a transformation strategy that doesn’t compromise the collection, interpretation and impact of data, marketers need to understand where crucial data lives across the marketing stack. This way, when it comes time to plan a migration cadence, marketers can either supplement data to fill in the blanks, or align efforts to focus elsewhere until data is available again.
Where is Data Transferred Across the Marketing Stack?
In the same vein, it’s paramount to understand how data transfers to and from the various teams and technologies within an organization. For example, if a CRM is offline for a set period of time during transformation, that data is most likely used by both the marketing and sales teams. By understanding where data is being transferred across the organization, a transformation strategy can more effectively address this and mitigate any potential negative impacts.
What Marketing Efforts Will be Affected by Data Loss?
A successful marketing transformation strategy needs to take into account the impact of data loss on campaign efforts while technology is being updated across the marketing stack. This will better prepare teams to address the issue before data holes have a chance to negatively influence campaigns and ROI. For example, if marketers know beforehand that access to attribution models will be unavailable, they can patch this data hole with a separate analytics platform while the new technology is implemented.
Team Members
Marketing transformation is a complex initiative that requires cooperation in and outside of the marketing team. Consider these key elements to gain cooperation across teams:
Assign an Ambassador to Head Transformation Efforts
Ensuring that your marketing technology, data collection and marketing analytics are modernized for the demands of today’s marketing landscape is no easy feat. That’s why many successful marketing transformation strategies assign an ambassador to lead the process and ensure implementation efforts are optimized across the organization. Marketing transformations are typically headed by C-suite leaders that have in-depth knowledge of both marketing processes and the technology needed for campaign optimization.
Identify Necessary Team Members and Stakeholders
Marketing transformation efforts aren’t limited to team members within the marketing department. Instead, successful transformation involves cooperation from finance, IT, marketing and more. With this in mind, marketing transformation strategies need to identify the team members in and out of the marketing department that are crucial to successfully transforming marketing technology. By incorporating team members and stakeholders, and the roles they play in the marketing transformation strategy, organizations can optimize across teams and departments.
Final Thoughts
In order to meet the modern demands of consumers, marketing capabilities and technology must also evolve. Successfully updating existing marketing technology, measurements and strategies requires an informed marketing transformation strategy that can guide efforts toward better campaign capability. By understanding the crucial areas of focus, brands can optimize their transformation and set the stage for better ROI and increased campaign impact.
