True – isn’t it? When you need to coordinate between various vendors who handle digital production, digital marketing, marketing automation, campaign management, and analytics for you, I’ll bet you wished there was a simpler way!
Marketing Integration – What Is It And Why You Should Be Doing It Right Now
But you never consolidated or integrated all the fragmented marketing efforts, gave it to one single vendor, or moved it in-house to do it all on your own.
There are many reasons for that –
- How do you build a convincing business case for integration for management to approve?
- Who do you outsource the whole process too? None of your existing partners can manage the entire marketing operations
- Trepidation to try new partners – what kind of business impact will it have?
- How do you do it on your own? You lack the experience in setting up a marketing organization from scratch
- Aren’t there huge costs involved in getting a consulting firm to streamline operations for you?
So why is marketing integration so important? You may have worked with several agencies `over the years – you embrace a new vendor each time you stumble upon a new trend or technology you want to adopt. Over time, you found that coordinating between multiple agencies, and getting them to work together to achieve your goals, hasn’t been easy!
The pandemic has underscored the fact that the time to consolidate your marketing efforts is now than ever. We are in a time, where there is
The pressure to “reduce spends but produce results”
Canceling/postponing customer-facing offline marketing events is inevitable as social distancing has become the norm and people think twice before venturing out. Putting long-term projects on hold without canceling them, can also help cut costs.
But the others may largely be counterproductive:
- Delaying campaigns will reduce customer engagement and take you further away from your customers
- Reducing headcounts can affect marketing velocity and your ability to quickly alter any communications across all your channels
- Canceling media buys will inhibit customer acquisition, which is already tough
This is why we recommend that you reduce spends and consolidate your marketing efforts.
- Instead of postponing the execution of campaigns targeted at existing customers, integration of marketing will help you zero in on the most important ones that can keep your customers engaged. This way, they will continue doing business with you and offset potential losses that you may encounter because of low acquisition numbers.
- Instead of reducing headcount randomly, integration of marketing will help you spot skills that are redundant, obsolete or unnecessary. Cutting those out will cut costs without impacting marketing velocity and outcomes. You can use this to hire new skills that are currently lacking to achieve overall objectives.
Canceling media buys will only hurt acquisition and resultant revenues. When you consolidate your marketing efforts, you can spot important campaigns and run those, saving money and precisely targeting your audience with a range of affinity and demographic parameters.
Pressure To Leverage Existing Martech Investments To The Fullest
The underutilization of MarTech platforms is an ongoing challenge and the pandemic is forcing marketers to take a long, hard look at the investments they have made.
Marketers are caught in a Catch-22 situation. They cannot scrap the whole thing, as they have spent a bomb buying them in the first place. But it is tough for them to get their teams to quickly up-skill themselves and start using the platforms to the fullest.
Marketing integration can help by showing you if you need the tool or not. And if a platform is useful but under-utilized, you can just step things up and use it better. In any case, when it comes to marketing technology, no one is really cutting budgets!
The shift in inAttention to Existing Customers. [A Blessing in Disguise]
Brands need to focus on their existing customers. The pandemic has only reiterated the importance of that. In an age where customers think twice before spending every penny, it puts immense pressure on marketers focusing on acquisition.
But the good thing is that brands can reach out to their existing customers whenever they want, and make sure they don’t switch brands during these times.
Conclusion | Marketing Integration
Marketers that are heavily focused on acquisition need to quickly consolidate their marketing efforts to include skills, tech, tools, and processes that embrace engagement, retention, growth, loyalty, and satisfaction. Metrics such as product holding ratios, average revenue per customer, annual run rate, NPS score, CSAT score, profitability, etc. should be considered.