Marketing has always been a journey. Agile marketing is likely to be a challenge at first, but there is no going back. Like your prospect, digital transformation is about changing your entire marketing approach by starting small, experimenting, iterating, improving, building, and extending.
Originally published in The Partner Channel Magazine - Fall 2018
Digital transformation is a term that has been thrown around for a few years now, and everyone’s understanding probably differs depending on roles within the organization. In its narrowest sense, it may simply mean going paperless, but it extends to automating processes, eliminating manual data entry, and serving up content when the customer demands it. In addition, it embraces the new frontiers of artificial intelligence. It is the transformation of businesses and organizational activities, processes, competencies, and models to take advantage of the benefits that modern digital technologies bring to businesses today.
According to McKinsey*, organizations that fully embrace digitization are seeing outsized growth in productivity
and profit margins. The leaders are digitizing the way they work with clients and suppliers and giving employees
digital tools to use in every aspect of their daily activities. Currently, the technology sector (no surprise) leads in
digital adoption, followed by media, finance, and professional services.
WHAT ARE THE IMPLICATIONS OF DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION FOR
TECHNOLOGY MARKETING PROFESSIONALS TODAY?
While technologies have affected customer behavior and expectations on one hand, and enable transformations
on the other, the focus should be on people and processes. One needs to remember that the customer experience doesn’t belong to just one department. To truly enhance the customer experience in an enterprise-wide and holistic way, several elements, divisions, caveats, processes, and technologies need to be considered.
FROM WATERFALL TO AGILE
For the most part, marketers historically mapped their strategy to the “one-size-fits-all” model which guides
prospects through various stages of the buyer’s journey—linearly. Within the context of digital transformation, the
approach required needs to be more agile and is dependent on content. Marketing is required to deliver relevant
content tailored to the buyer at specific points in time—depending on how they are consuming content, where they are in the buyer’s journey, and which devices they use—served to them in different formats such as an ad, an eBook, a social post, and a webinar invitation.
FOUNDATIONS FOR AGILE MARKETING
Start with the data. This one is never easy. It seems data is always in a state of chaos, so start with a small
data set that can be tested, where you can understand behavior and where you have the most content already
built. You will need visibility into where your prospects are in the buying process before you begin to map your
content accordingly and create the content you lack. It is worth understanding HOW your prospects consume
content to ensure it is available on all the right platforms.
Build a comprehensive content library. Deploying agile marketing tactics means you need a comprehensive
library of content to support them, including ads, emails, social posts, eBooks, demos, white papers, case
studies, and use cases. Depending on who is consuming the content, you may want to consider persona-based
content as well. It’s important that you can react in real time to the individual and deliver the ad, email, social
media post, etc. to keep your prospect highly engaged.
Use marketing analytics. Become an analytics expert and build a playbook so you can replicate your best
practices across other segments. You need to capture and analyze customer behavior across your channels to
understand how they consume your content. Experiment, iterate, and make gradual improvements to evolve
your marketing strategy to intercept customers when they’re most ready to engage. Think of marketing being
behavior-driven and serve up your content based on the behaviors you can identify, making sure to document
and address where you have gaps.
Implement the right tools for the job. To deliver on the promise of agile marketing, you need a high level
of control over your channels. By understanding the buying/interest signals, you can assess, fine-tune, and
deliver what prospects are looking for at each stage.
Like the prospects who are embarking on their digitization journey, marketers also need to invest in new
tools. If you don’t already use some form of automation for marketing, social posts, etc., you probably already
feel way behind. If the one you currently have doesn’t react the way you need it to, it’s time to find one that
does.
Automation of simple marketing tasks is just the starting point. You also want tools that will allow you
to reach your prospects on their terms. Examples may be a dynamically generated resource center on your
website which you can tailor based on persona, or investing in a predictive analytics campaign which delivers
content to buyers in real time.
Organizations that have invested in providing their employees with digital tools are leaps and bounds ahead
of you. This may be where your journey needs to start BEFORE you can engage in steps one through three.
Marketing has always been a journey. Agile marketing is likely to be a challenge at first, but there is no going back. Like your prospect, digital transformation is about changing your entire marketing approach by starting small, experimenting, iterating, improving, building, and extending.
*https://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/overview/in-the-news/which-industries-are-the-most-digital