“Marketing’s not rocket science – is it?”
In the past 3 – 5 years some “early-adopting” marketing groups have adopted new technology and have led the way for the rest. Over the past few months, I have been the beneficiary of meeting with a variety of these “early-adopting” CMO and CTO industry leaders. I have also had the privilege of partnering with leading companies like Adobe to better understand the customer needs from the software vendor perspective. I want to share some of what I have learned!
I have noticed that not many companies have a similar approach, meaning the tools companies use to succeed and the processes marketing groups use are not the same. As successful strategies start to become more well defined, forward-looking companies start to standardize the efficient process, and software technology proves working methodologies, it is time to INVEST in people and technology with the right balance if you have not already. If you already have, you need to ensure both balance and approach.
As both the software vendors provide the best forward thinking in the technology to their clients, and CMO’s & CTO’s offer the best conversion rates. The teams they are providing software and process for must keep up with a rapidly changing environment. The pressure to perform is on and the demand is focused on results.
A few things have become apparent through these conversations. First is that data speaks loudest to make educated decisions about what to do next or where to invest money. Second, to run successful marketing campaigns, a variety of tools and skill sets to utilize those tools are necessary for success. Third is that marketing groups are becoming a large mix of developers and creative professionals.
Marketing professionals want the metrics to prove the success, yet not everyone has good or relevant ROI data as results of their work. There is sufficient data within the walls of companies, but the skills to accurately compile and distribute relevant data proves hard to find. For marketing leaders to make right decisions, their employees need to be able to get useful data, and for those employees to get useful data they need to know how to use the tools to get it. Marketing leaders need to INVEST in their employees to train them on how to pull data and decipher how to present it back to them.
Leaders are buying many marketing tools as an easy button to fix problems, but the reality is “the tool is only as good as the user.” If someone only uses 5% of the functionality of Adobe Analytics or only knows how to utilize a portion of Adobe Experience Manager, both the user and the company are being directly limited in their abilities to reach their potential. If you use a hammer upside down, it is going to take much longer to accomplish the success of hammering in a nail, and if you are in a race to beat that nail down, you will lose! You need to train your teams on how to use the tools to maximize your company’s potential. Once again leaders need to INVEST in training their employees.
A mix of skilled technology developers and digital designers is an essential winning team formula no matter what tools you use. However, just like in any relationship, each party should understand each other’s needs. The developers need to understand the creative design needs and process, and the designer needs to understand development at some level to reach faster success. If teams can never collaborate, the chance of achievement is slim to none. These are very different people with very different skill sets. In a very rare case you end up with an individual who has both skills, and when this happens it is magical! This world demands more of that magic, and we can help that happen. Once again through INVESTING in these teams to cross train designers on digital design and development, and training developers on creative design tools, companies can become focused on a balance of technology and design to facilitate growth at much faster paces.
Only those that INVEST in their team’s success will win, and at Pluralsight we are creating training for both parties. We provide technical development enablement, and we provide design technology enablement for creative technologists. Your ability to invest in your team’s success is up to you as a leader. Pluralsight is delivering tools to enable your teams with the most cutting edge training in the market, all you need to do is INVEST!
Learn some of what we do here… www.Pluralsight.com/Adobe
