Marketing stack proficiency
As more brands integrate customer analytics into their marketing strategies, proficiency across the many tools that support data-driven marketing is increasingly important. That means that a methodical approach should be taken in order to get the most out of these tools to best serve the needs of the business.
To begin this approach, a list of technologies needed to support your business initiatives should be evaluated. These could include a new or existing CRM, Data Warehouse, Customer Data Platform, ERP, digital analytics tools, social listening tools, or other marketing tools. Once a suite of tools are identified, the challenge is to implement the tools in order to get the most out of them.
We recommend working with vendors and experts who have experience with:
Optimizing the setup of marketing tools
Integration of these tools into current systems and workflows
Establishing reporting systems to monitor key business metrics
Design your approach
Adoption of the tools you implement is important. In order to maximize adoption, take an audit of user expectations, goals, and needs. If your marketing stack isn’t suited to your end user goals and capabilities, adoption of the tools will be difficult to maintain.
Create a list of key requirements and dependencies to make sure your marketing stack works seamlessly with existing data and reporting software. These key requirements should have specific metrics to help evaluate performance and launch readiness. In addition, a list of required integrations should be created.
Implementing your solutions
When implementing your marketing stack a series of steps should be taken to ensure that the technology works correctly and as expected.
The first step is to consider configuring back-end inputs, user experience flow, and system outputs to the needs of your business. Next build a plan for iterative review and testing with a cross-functional team. If key stakeholder concerns need to be addressed, the process is repeated until the solution fully meets requirements and user expectations.
Additionally, create detailed process documentation to illustrate how the tools should be utilized for your specific business. Each tool's purpose as a whole should be illustrated to show how it solves specific use cases. This is a key link to effective training for end-users.
The impact of the marketing stack is typically far-reaching on a business’ systems and processes. A phased roll-out helps to identify gaps in expected functionality, training, or software integrations.
As with any introduction of new tools, lack of familiarity can disrupt end-users' normal workflow. Create a specific change management plan for employees so that they understand the value of the new tools in context of their specific role and objectives. Providing specific examples of how to best integrate new technology into users' work processes will also help with adoption retention.
Measuring results
Once the software is implemented, we need to set up ways to measure the results of our efforts. Metrics should be determined and tracked based on important business benchmarks and goals.
Ideally, these metrics will be delivered through automated reporting systems that allow for high-level overviews, drill-down reporting, and threshold-triggered alerts. Review these metrics and reports with end-users to ensure they are delivered to stakeholders in a format and at a cadence that aligns with their decision-making processes.
Optimization
Lastly, as your marketing stack functions throughout the year, gather feedback from users, customers, and decision makers in order to further optimize processes. Feedback can be based on usability, effectiveness, and contribution to business performance and insights. Based on this feedback, determine if the marketing stack still delivers the features you require.
Gartner research suggests that the average CMO reports only using 42% of their marketing stacks functionality. Often this is due to a lack of awareness of new features. Conduct annual vendor reviews to explore new functionality, audit the value provided and make sure current functionality still aligns with business requirements.
Once feedback has been gathered from both users and stakeholders via formal vendor reviews, prioritize this information to create an annual plan for improvement. Remember that as changes take place, prioritize documenting all changes and updates so that additional training can be provided to users.
Moving forward
Managing a data-driven marketing stack can be complicated, but when done right, it can dramatically impact the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. At Petram, we’re passionate about helping brands build the right foundation for their marketing performance contact us to learn more.