Understanding the larger Marketing Automation Landscape

[Read Time: 5-6 mins]

Leaders in Marketing Organization should understand role of MAP in the larger perspective of a connected Marketing Ecosystem. There are occasions when we want to avoid complexities, focus short term and in the process lose sight of processes that intersect with MAP. Over simplifying things can be dangerous. While driving, blind-spots remain hidden from a driver's forward vision. Similarly, there are areas of Digital Marketing which are left out while deciding on a MAP execution strategy. MAP is like a Hub which ties together Spokes of a Marketing wheel. Three of the major functional areas to focus will be: Segmentation & List Management / Campaign Management / Prospect Nurturing & Qualification. Let us get into a bit more details here and see how these functions interact with other some of the key Applications/ Systems (Please note I am highlighting some of the essential applications here. Refer Gartner Digital Marketing Transition Map for the complete Digital Marketing Ecosystem and connects).

• Segmentation & List Management: Often Marketing organizations source data from external sources either purchased from Data Vendors or Event Organizers. As well as data sourced internally from Sales Support teams/ Service teams. As a result it becomes extremely important to invest time and standardize a data procurement process as well as define a Unified Prospect Attribute Model. Each data source should use a Global prospect data structure for sending/ uploading data to MAP. Complex business scenarios may require scoping a Prospect staging area to help enrich data, remove duplicate or merge records. It is not uncommon to see B2C organizations investing in Data Management Platforms (DMP) or Demand Side Platforms (DSP) in complex scenarios involving multiple data sources.
• Campaign Planning and Management: Campaign planning is a complex process that needs alignment with Business Goals. Once Campaign planning is complete, next step is to develop the campaign. This involves Content creation, Campaign message development and identification of Web/ Social assets that need to be tracked for Prospect behavioral data collection. This brings us to the decisions around, corporate content strategy. Unfortunately, there is no single solution for this. Some organizations prefer having a Centralized Content repository while others have a Hub-Spoke model with Hub representing the Corporate level Content repository and Spokes aligned towards compliance requirements around local regions. Hosting of web content and tracking them adds to the complexity especially when language dependencies are unavoidable.
• Prospect Nurturing & Qualification: Traditional business model had been considering Marketing function as a Cost Center, but not anymore. Progressive organizations are tying Sales with Marketing Operations together under the same umbrella to unlock greater benefits from this union. Important considerations include generation of high quality Sales-ready Leads, Intelligent process of assigning Marketing Qualified Leads(MQLs) and key decisions around data exchange between both these teams. These are big topics and are not scoped as part of this article. I do plan to write detailed posts on them in future.

This is article is part of a short series on guiding Organizations plan their strategy around Digital Marketing Automation . You may be interested in reading more on small steps towards your big move to Marketing Automation Platform