Top 10 ways to add value across marketing ecosystem.

Today’s increasingly complex, distributed and digitally driven marketing ecosystem is challenging global marketers to better integrate and manage data, best of breed solutions, creative resources, brand assets and go-to-market functions. A new strategic brief published by the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council identifies the top 10 ways marketers can add value across the marketing ecosystem by embracing real-time, adaptive marketing models and practices.

The CMO Council study – dubbed “Unify to Multiply Marketing Ecosystem Effectiveness” – finds marketers are seeking continuous decision support in every facet of the go-to-market process. Product life cycles are shorter and more tenuous. Consumer audiences are more connected, opinionated and virally influential. Supply chains and customer markets more complex and distributed globally. And demand side marketing and sell-through requirements are now more resource intensive and channel-driven, requiring greater integration and alignment with the field.

“Embracing the need for real-time, adaptive marketing practices and process improvement platforms and solutions is a strategic priority for brands,” notes Donovan Neale-May, CMO Council executive director. “Having greater visibility into market dynamics, better knowledge of customer behavior and intentions, as well as more effective competitive tracking systems is heightening the requirement for new levels of ‘Market Sense-Ability’ across the organization,” he adds.

According to the white paper report sponsored by Webtrends, marketing process improvement, efficiency and yield are directly tied to more effective use of tools, platforms, analytics and intelligence that improve rich media content creation, relevancy, delivery, access, control, workflow, partner collaboration, market engagement and sales lead provisioning, as well as campaign measurement and tracking.

In the report, the CMO Council identifies the top 10 ways to create marketing ecosystem value. This includes the need to:

* Break down functional silos
* Institutionalize the use of data analytics
* Provide market insights + intelligence on-demand
* Transfer best practice knowledge worldwide
* Synchronize supply and demand side operations
* Add discipline and rigor to campaign design, development, testing and delivery
* Ensure brand consistency, compliance and digital asset control
* Power the pipeline across acquisition, cultivation and closure cycles
* Maximize customer value – relationships, revenue and rapport
* Institute closed-loop performance measurement systems

We’re finding the most successful enterprise marketers encourage a culture of data-driven decision-making not by building an ivory tower of customer information. But rather, they’re unlocking results and making it simple for anyone — not just a data wonk — to get useful answers in real-time, on the fly, from any source. These companies inspire genius™ across the organization, allowing collaboration and correlation across multiple channels,” said Hope Frank, CMO of Webtrends.

During 2010, dozens of CMO Council members and Marketing Supply Chain Institute contributors gave insights, perspectives and experiences in a series of co-innovation discussions and interactive roundtables in New York, Silicon Valley and London. Small, intimate groups – drawn from the packaged goods, financial services, consumer electronics, information technology, apparel, consumer durables, automotive sectors – were assembled for two-hour invention sessions to gain feedback on the specifications and requirements for a robust, flexible, and adaptable digital marketing platform that can drive marketing ecosystem effectiveness.

In addition to roundtable discussions, more than 25 senior marketers were interviewed one-on-one to gather qualitative perspectives. These included Allstate, BASF, Clorox, Colgate-Palmolive, Del Monte Foods, FedEx, GSK, Harris Bank (BMO Group), Heineken USA, Heinz, The Hershey Company, HP, Golfsmith, OfficeMax, Redken (L’Oreal), The Ritz-Carlton Carlton Group, SanDISK, SaraLee, Subway, Tweezerman International, UniLever, Victoria’s Secret, Viking Range, Wendy’s International, and Zappos.com.

The facilitated discussions covered: 1) critical marketing automation drivers; 2) nature and range of analytics needs (market research, customer behavior, website, market listening and feedback, campaign performance, predictive modeling); 3) level of alignment and cooperation with IT groups; 4) value and integration of current applications and point solutions; 5) issues and challenges with go-to-market processes; 6) operational marketing and digital campaign management requirements; 7) areas for marketing supply chain and ecosystem improvement, integration and control.

Participants in the Unify to Multiply Marketing Ecosystem Effectiveness study are all struggling with the heightened pace of technology change and the demand for greater insight and innovation across rapidly evolving global markets. Centralizing market/customer data and extracting meaningful intelligence from vast volumes of transactional, behavioral and attitudinal information is pressing many to form tighter linkages with IT groups. In addition, many marketers are tapping third-party sources for supplemental profiling of current customers and prospective buyers.

Despite these pressing requirements, most marketers are hamstrung with antiquated legacy systems, an inability to “talk tech” with IT groups, and lack of resources to implement marketing automation projects that improve the quality and outcome of marketing decisions, as well as the effectiveness and performance of marketing teams and partners. While some marketers have teamed with IT in complex and successful data integration projects, most are still at very basic levels of point solution adoption. A rare few have worked independently to configure and build their own marketing execution systems in contrast to others who have turned to Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offerings or off-the-shelf marketing packages that are quick and easy to deploy on a workgroup level.

Exploring the use of the Internet-based social media channels and customer communities to enable brands to engage more intimately and continuously with their audiences has become a priority. While many have yet to verify the value and return of these investments, online tracking and analysis of market conversations and postings is clearly improving the ability of marketers to listen, respond, and deliver better products, services and customer experiences, particularly when it comes to customer self-care and after-market support.

For more information at http://www.cmocouncil.org>