As a cheesy song from an eighties film says “The Heat Is On.” ROI is the number one concern of anxious marketers right now, especially in the BtB environments. Whether it is a commodity product or a wider and more complex set of solutions, proving worth is the essence of most of the marketing briefs we are seeing day in and day out.
By now you must have seen or heard about Jon Stewart’s beat down of James Cramer (Mad Money and CNBC fame) last Thursday. This was the culmination of a week of chastising the money maven and his less than frank advice and energy about financial recommendations - recommendations that many citizens took in good faith from a TV channel supposedly known for its expert advice. Though this sounds bizarre, in our opinion it is a symbol for how people want to consume information (honestly and connected to their journey). A large number of the comments on the site talk about trust that was betrayed or expectations being consistently damaged by Cramer, clearly proving that delivering against promises is a big thing right now.
Integration is especially difficult to do, but is particularly tough when budgets are tight. The pressure to cut often forces us to shrink – and almost robotically - we reduce money so that the programs actually become less and less integrated and increasingly devolve into isolated activities, only tied together in name and not action. There are two simple areas where we get too robotic: content and journeys.
(Fortune) -- There was a time when the geeks who keep a company's tech systems running could get by without knowing the finer details of corporate strategy. You called the chief information officer when you needed a server upgrade, not a strategic plan. As Paris Hilton might say, “really?” If this is news to you, then your marketing is going to be really out of whack with the new realities we face. The article argues that the CIO now needs to put their business skills into place. Some of this is driven by the need to “tighten belts” and the remainder is a key learning lesson we must think hard about in terms of how we structure our marketing:
OK, so I abused a very long poem, but as a comment it crystallizes exactly the marketing communications dilemma you should be thinking about going forward. As customers (both BtB and BtC) have increasingly gained the upper hand in information sorting and receiving, we have to recognize that content is everything. There is a lot of it (types and suppliers) that the targets can use, and there is a lot of it we have to decide prioritization about (who supplies it, what do they supply, and where is it supplied). Content, content everywhere but not the "right stuff" to drink is an absolute problem we should all be recognizing if we are to correctly plan around customer needs.