Building a Scalable and Efficient Marketing Infrastructure
Kim Lawton
Founder at Enthuse Marketing Group | Innovative Brand Strategy | Team Development | Management Solutions That Deliver Measurable Results
Marketing infrastructures are important to establish to ensure your?marketing efforts?have a solid foundation to grow upon, but they’re especially beneficial when they’re built with scalability and efficiency in mind. This blog will tell you everything you need to know to scale up your?marketing operations?and get the maximum return for minimal costs.
Marketing infrastructure is the established foundation that your marketing and advertising efforts are built upon and includes details on the processes used to make your business run effectively.
Having a solid, reliable marketing infrastructure can play a critical role in your business’s success, as it’s what allows you to nurture leads, collect useful data points and guide those leads through the marketing funnel, thus turning them into customers.
It’s important to build a marketing infrastructure that is robust and scalable. In marketing, scalability is your company’s ability to meet increased?marketing operation?demands. To ensure your success and efficiency, you want your infrastructure to be able to grow and evolve to meet your business’s changing needs.
If you want to create a maximum return for minimal cost and build a marketing infrastructure that can grow with your business, this blog will lay out everything you need to know.
Understanding Marketing Infrastructure
Marketing infrastructure is the framework your marketing and advertising campaigns are built upon. A well-developed marketing infrastructure is a tool that guides leads through the marketing funnel. Without it, your company could lose customers and business to competitors.
Marketing infrastructure is a vast term, and there are several important components to include when building a solid marketing infrastructure, including:
#1. Data Management Systems
Collecting data is one of the most important parts of building a strong marketing infrastructure. The data you collect can allow you to better understand your customers, how certain products are selling, and how people are engaging with your business on socials. When collecting data, it’s important to employ data management systems to keep your datasets organized and usable.
#2. Customer Relationship Management Software
Like data management systems, customer relationship management software (CRM) is also an important tool. A CRM lets you store customer data, like purchase records, interactions, contact information, and other useful information that can be used to optimize marketing efforts.
#3. Marketing Automation Tools
Marketing automation tools, especially in digital marketing, allows for more efficiency in your marketing efforts. You can employ software that automates almost all your marketing processes, which not only increases efficiency but can also reduce costs.
#4. Content Management Systems
Content Management Systems (CMS) are extremely useful in digital marketing as it’s used to help businesses manage their digital content. These systems allow marketing team members to create, edit, organize, and publish content on websites. It’s a very cost-effective solution for content management and makes it easy for team members to collaborate in one space.
#5. Analytics and Reporting Tools
When using these different systems and software options, it’s important to have analytics and reporting tools to track performance. Tracking analytics of your marketing efforts can show you what’s working and what isn’t, providing insights on how you can adjust and improve your effectiveness.
The Benefits of Scalable and Efficient Marketing Infrastructure
When building your company’s marketing infrastructure, you should strive for scalability and efficiency. Scalability ensures your business can rise to the occasion and handle increased demand without sacrificing profit margins. Efficiency is about finding ways to make your marketing cost less in terms of both time and money. More efficient marketing is capable of the maximum return for the lowest possible costs.
There are?countless benefits?to be had from building a marketing infrastructure that is both scalable and efficient, including:
#1. Improved Productivity and Resource Allocation
Building a marketing infrastructure that is scalable and efficient can help you improve productivity and resource allocation within your business. When working with a solid foundation, you’ll be able to allocate resources more effectively, putting them towards initiatives that are strategically planned to increase growth and profits.
All around, this can increase productivity, ensuring your marketing team isn’t wasting time and resources on efforts that may not have a worthwhile payout.
#2. Enhanced Customer Experience
Customers are essentially at the heart of every marketing campaign as they are the ones the marketing is really for. Employing scalable data solutions in your marketing infrastructure can allow you to enhance the customer experience and provide more personalization as you’ll be able to review insights into customer behavior, preferences, needs, and the overall consumer experience.
#3. Better Decision-Making
With a scalable, efficient marketing infrastructure, you’ll likely be investing more in data collection and management. This allows for?better decision-making?as your business decisions will now be driven by data. The information you gather on customers and the general market can be used to inform your decisions, thus driving more effective business operations.
#4. Increased Adaptability
Building a scalable, efficient marketing infrastructure can make your business more agile, meaning you’ll be able to quickly adapt to changing market conditions, make informed, data-driven decisions, and maintain a competitive edge.
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Key Considerations for Building a Scalable and Efficient Marketing Infrastructure
When building a scalable, efficient marketing infrastructure, you should be mindful of what you’re building to ensure your infrastructure aligns with your overall business goals. Also, there are numerous considerations to be aware of — regarding both scalability and efficiency — including:
#1. Scalability Factor: Data Storage and Processing Capabilities
A scalable marketing infrastructure will work with data, which is important to consider, especially if your business hasn’t had much experience working with data in the past.
You’ll need to ensure you have the means to store the data safely and effectively. You’ll also need to ensure you have the processing capabilities to handle working with data. Whether you need to hire a professional, train your current employees or invest in new software, you should be sure you can process the data before creating a plan to collect it.
#2. Scalability Factor: Integration with Existing Systems
When building your marketing infrastructure, you should ensure it will be able to easily integrate with your existing systems. In some cases, integration can be difficult and time-consuming. This is why it’s important to evaluate the new tools you’re considering and your business’s capabilities to see how well your marketing infrastructure can integrate with your current operations.
#3. Scalability Factor: Capacity to Handle Increasing Workloads
Scalability ensures that your business can handle increasing workloads — like higher customer demand — without making sacrifices to performance, profits, or the customer experience. While scalability is important, it’s equally as important to ensure your business, existing systems, and the infrastructure you’re looking to build have the capability to handle these increasing workloads. This means you’ll need to regularly monitor performance to ensure there aren’t any slip-ups.
#4. Efficiency Factor: Streamlining Processes and Workflows
Building a marketing infrastructure doesn’t have to result in more work for your business to handle. You should consider streamlining processes and workflows, especially where manual intervention by a human isn’t required.
#5. Efficiency Factor: Automating Repetitive Tasks
To make your marketing infrastructure as efficient — and effective — as possible, you may look to automating repetitive tasks, which goes together with streamlining processes and workflows. Automation technology frees up your employees’ time, allowing them to focus on other tasks and reducing costs.
#6. Efficiency Factor: Ensuring Data Accuracy and Consistency
If your marketing infrastructure is going to be efficient, you need to ensure the data you’re collecting and using is accurate and consistent. You’ll need to clean and prepare data to ensure it’s accurate and high quality. Ensuring data consistency across platforms is equally important.
Steps to Building a Scalable and Efficient Marketing Infrastructure
Building a scalable and efficient marketing infrastructure is possible for virtually any company that wants to do it, and the process can be made easier by?following these steps:
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#1. Assessing Current Infrastructure and Identifying Gaps
Before developing a new marketing infrastructure, you should assess your current one and identify any gaps or weaknesses and strengths to help inform your new infrastructure. It’s important to take the time to gather these insights to ensure you’re creating something that will effectively serve your business.
#2. Setting Goals and Objectives
Early in the process, you should also set the goals and objectives for your new marketing infrastructure. What do you want to achieve? Asking questions like this and completing a marketing plan will help you form a solid foundation to build your marketing infrastructure upon.
#3. Researching and Selecting Appropriate Tools
Next, you should conduct thorough market research, as well as research on the appropriate tools and methods that would best serve your business. Gathering information about your target audience and competition can help ensure you are creating something that makes sense for your business. It’s also important to make sure you have the correct tools for the job.
For example, if your marketing infrastructure requires you to begin working with data more, you’ll want to make sure you have the proper training and skills, as well as tools like database management software.
#4. Designing an Architecture that Supports Scalability and Efficiency
To have a successful marketing infrastructure, you need to ensure you’re designing an architecture that supports scalability and efficiency and doesn’t work against you. Oftentimes a company’s architecture may be too stiff and isn’t able to handle sudden changes or growth, like increased customer demand.
This is why it’s important to evaluate your business’s architecture before creating and launching a new marketing infrastructure. If your business is too rigid, your new marketing infrastructure won’t have the benefits you may have hoped it would, no matter how scalable or efficient it may be.
#5. Implementing the Infrastructure in a Phased Approach
Launching a new marketing infrastructure can be a complex process, especially if it’s a major change to your existing operations. This is why it’s helpful to implement the new infrastructure in a phased approach. You can break down the process of implementing the infrastructure into simpler steps, allowing for smoother integration. You can also test each step or phase, of the integration to ensure everything is running properly before moving on to the next stage.
#6. Testing, Monitoring, and Optimizing the Infrastructure
Once you’ve created and launched your new marketing infrastructure, it’s important to regularly test and monitor its progress to make sure it’s hitting the goals you defined earlier in the process. You can also regularly optimize the infrastructure by annually reviewing your marketing plan, checking up on campaigns, and exploring trying new technology as innovative tools emerge.
Overcoming Challenges in Building a Scalable, Efficient Marketing Infrastructure
While there are many benefits to building a scalable, efficient marketing infrastructure, that’s?not to say it’s without challenges. Some of which may include:
#1. Budget Constraints
When looking to scale up operations, the cost must be a major consideration, which can also make it a major challenge. When creating a marketing infrastructure, you’ll likely be investing money into new software, hardware, and labor. This all costs money, and if you don’t work closely with your finance and accounting department, these budget constraints could stifle your capabilities.
#2. Resistance to Change
Change is hard for a lot of people, and it’s possible that when you introduce a new marketing infrastructure, some of your employees — and stakeholders — may be resistant to the change. It’s important to make sure the entire business is on the same page when it comes to introducing the new infrastructure and all the benefits that can be had.
#3. Integration Challenges
You may also face challenges when trying to integrate the new infrastructure with your company’s legacy systems. You can attempt to remedy this by conducting thorough research before integrating the new infrastructure, and during the integration period, you can opt for a phased approach to make integration more manageable and seamless.
#4. Ensuring Data Security and Compliance
As with any digital marketing effort working with data, data security, and compliance are top concerns. When gathering customer data, you need to ensure it’s safe and secure to prevent leaks or breaches. Maintaining data compliance and assuring your consumers you’re operating ethically is also important.
Best Practices for Maintaining a Scalable, Efficient Marketing Infrastructure
Building a scalable, efficient marketing infrastructure can have significant benefits for your business and lead to?enhanced marketing efforts?that help you churn new leads and drive profits.
While the benefits certainly make this venture worthwhile, it’s important to be wary of the challenges throughout the process and the fact that creating a new marketing infrastructure isn’t just a one-and-done operation.
If you want your marketing infrastructure to remain scalable and efficient, you’ll need to perform regular maintenance. Some best practices for maintaining a scalable, efficient marketing infrastructure include:
Case Studies: Successful Examples of Scalable and Efficient Marketing Infrastructures
If you’re considering the benefits of building a scalable, efficient marketing infrastructure, you’re not alone. Several businesses — from startups to major corporations — have opted to build scalability and efficiency into their operations and have seen great success in doing so.
If you need inspiration during the process of building your new marketing infrastructure, check out the successes of businesses that have already done it. Two of these include:
#1. Netflix
At this point, almost everyone is familiar with Netflix and likely uses the streaming platform regularly. In terms of scalable business models, Netflix provides a great example.
The Netflix business model requires a monthly fee from subscribers. While the price changes from time to time as the platform adds more content and new features, the current price is?$15.49 for the standard plan?and goes up to $20 for the premium. It’s a fairly reasonable cost for most people to afford, creating a loyal customer base for the company.
In terms of scalable infrastructure, Netflix’s business model sets them up for great success. That’s because costs for Netflix don’t increase as they get more subscribers. This means they can increase profits without increasing costs to meet changing market demands. So Netflix can gladly take on its current?232.5 million subscribers?around the world and continue gaining more at no extra cost.
From marketing to general operations, scalability is baked into Netflix’s business, allowing the company to see regular revenue increases, as it just saw a?4.98% increase?year-over-year for the twelve-month period ending March 31, 2023.
#2. Coca-Cola
Billions of dollars are spent on digital advertising and marketing each year, and that number is only expected to continue growing. But despite all that spending, several marketers estimate that they’ve wasted about 26% of their marketing budget by using the wrong marketing strategies or pursuing the wrong platforms.
Part of developing a scalable and efficient marketing infrastructure is tapping into data, and Coca-Cola has done just that.
Coca-Cola?has over 109 million likes on Facebook, 2.9 million followers on Instagram, and 3.3 million followers on Twitter. That is a lot of data to leverage and analyze — from brand mentions to customer interactions and feedback, including photos uploaded by fans that tag the Coca-Cola company.
Coca-Cola has devised a marketing infrastructure that leverages?image recognition technology?and?data analytics?to target users based on the photos they share on socials. This provides insights into the people drinking Coke products, including where they’re located and why and how they’re mentioning the Coca-Cola brand.
By identifying and understanding its customers, Coca-Cola has created personalized ads on social media, which have garnered a four times greater click-through rate than other methods of advertising. Not only does this marketing infrastructure optimization boost efficiency, but it also improves customer satisfaction and engagement.
Conclusion
Having a solid marketing infrastructure plays a critical role in your business’s success, as it allows you to nurture leads, collect useful data points and guide those leads through the marketing funnel, thus turning them into customers.
It’s important to build a marketing infrastructure that is robust and scalable. In marketing, scalability is your company’s ability to meet increased marketing demands, while efficiency is the ability to achieve the maximum return for minimal cost. To ensure your success and efficiency, you want your infrastructure to be able to adapt and evolve to meet your business’s changing needs.
There are several ways to pursue a scalable, efficient marketing infrastructure with varying options available depending on your specific goals and needs. While building a scalable and efficient marketing infrastructure can come with its challenges, the benefits — like improved productivity, better decision-making, and enhanced customer experiences — make the process far worth it.
Great article. My one add would be a CXM - Customer Experience Management platform to help you collect, measure, and analyze customer feedback. A good marketing infrastructure is great, but if you only take an inside out approach you are missing the picture of the customer's perspective.