how to create a marketing technology blueprint · 2019-03-06 · in marketing technology (also...

How to Create a Marketing Technology Blueprint: The Myth of the Marketing Stack

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HOW TO CREATE A MARKETING TECHNOLOGY BLUEPRINT: THE MYTH OF THE MARKETING STACK

It was easier to ignore that state of complexity and to hope the Web became easier to understand over time, compared to the effort involved in trying to truly understand

Most marketing people involved in marketing technology (also referred to as “martech”) are by now familiar with the Lumascape technology landscape or Scott Brinker’s ChiefMartech blog marketing technology landscape.

The usual reaction is dismay at the complexity conveyed in these graphics, and confusion as to what they really mean. This situation harks back to the early days of the Web when people knew it was important, but did not know what it meant for their businesses and their careers. It was easier to ignore that state of complexity and to hope the Web became

Marketing Technology is Complex, Confusing

easier to understand over time, compared to the effort involved in trying to truly understand, apply, and leverage it. Marketers realize that a wait-and-do-nothing approach for marketing technology, however, is not an option. Any delay will lead to lost market share and in some cases loss of entire markets. In order to make sense of the huge number of options, people have turned to graphical representations of the tools that show how those tools can be utilized.

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https://chiefmartec.com/2018/04/marketing-technology-landscape-supergraphic-2018/





And Pretty Graphics are Not Meaningful…

Enter the “marketing stack” graphic. These are representations of the combination of tools and technologies that can be assembled to address the interactive marketing landscape and explain how the enterprise can put these tools to use. The problem is that though these graphics are appealing (they are typically created by marketing departments), they don’t lead to any insights about the best combination of technologies or how these technologies serve the customer. They have clever names that are meant to provide some insight about what they are or how they are used, but these clever names serve only as a distraction from addressing the real issue of solving the challenge of appropriately leveraging technology for engaging with customers.

Names like “One Direction,” “Core Thinker,” “Core Style,” “Data Flow,” or “Tetris” represent an attempt to classify marketing technology stacks. However, the point of classification is to faciliate decision making, and these categories do not help achieve this goal. A more meaningful way to organize marketing technologies is based on the customer lifecycle and the organization’s strategy for engagement with customers.

Approaching marketing technology decisions from this perspective simplifies the design of a marketing technology blueprint. The following six steps will allow your organization to understand gaps in its technologies and build new capabilities to best serve its customers.*

“The problem with “marketing stack“ graphics is they don’t lead to any insights about the best combination of technologies or how these technologies serve the customer”

1. Understand and map the customer lifecycle.

2. Define the engagement strategy at each step of the lifecycle.

3. Survey and assess existing tools and approaches.

4. Define the future state based on competition, industry maturity and customer expectations.

5. Assess internal process maturity in the context of engagement strategy and technology landscape.

6. Develop implementation blueprint based on enterprise maturity and highest value areas of opportunity.

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Understanding how customers engage at each stage of their lifecycle is an essential component of marketing and the use of tools and technologies. Every organization has similar stages, from learning about the product or service to ongoing long-term relationships.

Different industries have unique stages of customer engagement and often use different terminology to describe these stages, but the stages all have a similar flow and common objectives. The stages can be described as follows:

Map the Customer Lifecycle

1. LEARNProspects need to learn about the organization and offering. Usually the primary goal of marketing is to catalyze this process.

2. CHOOSE/MAKE A PURCHASE

The prospect then needs to choose, select or make their purchase. This is typically part of the sales process.

3. ACQUIRE

The purchaser needs to acquire the product or service. This may take place through a dealer, agent, in store pick up, online processes or delivery.

4. USE

The purchaser then uses the product or service. The product or service usage stage requires some form of interaction.

5. SUPPORT The purchaser may at some point require support, assistance or maintenance while consuming the product or service. Use and support can overlap, or be distinct parts of the lifecycle. In either case, it has a significant impact on customer retention and overall perception of the experience.

6. ADVOCACY

The organization needs to ensure that the customer continues to be enrolled to enable a positive brand perception in the marketplace. Though this is frequently the sum total of the customer experience and is reflected in measures like Net Promoter Score (NPS), it can be enhanced through community development andsocial media.

Advocacy

TELECOM

MANU-FACTURING

FINANCIAL SERVICES

Research Choose Apply Close ServiceProcess

Learn Choose Purchase Maintain RecommendUse

Learn Buy Get Pay SupportUse

Discovery Awareness RetentionConsideration PurchaseINSURANCE

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Define the Engagement Strategy

Organizations differ in how they engage with customers at each stage. For example, for awareness, some may rely on email marketing and tradeshows; others on Web content marketing augmented by traditional advertising. For the selection and purchase phase, the engagement approach will be different for a manufacturer who deals with representatives versus one that sells directly on the Web. Different technologies will be used if products are shipped from a central warehouse versus those that are picked up in stores, and the nuances of customer interaction during that stage will differ.

AT EACH STAGE, THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS NEED TO BE ANSWERED:

What is the primary mechanism for communicating with the prospect or customer?

What information will be needed? By the customer? By support personnel?

What channels and vehicles will be needed?

“What is the primary mechanism for communicating with the prospect or customer? ”

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Survey & Assess Existing Tools & ApproachesWhat classes of tool are currently in place to support engagement at each stage? For example, one enterprise used the following for the “Learn” stage:

• Content management • Campaign management • Search engine optimization (SEO)• Email marketing • Social media marketing

These were also used in the “Choose” stage, with the addition of on-site search, personalized content, and product comparison tools.

When it comes time to making the actual purchase, ecommerce technologies may now enter the picture (for example, catalog, shopping cart, and order management tools). Campaign management may still be used, but perhaps less extensively. The same goes for each of the other stages – different tools will play differing roles in each stage. A knowledge base may be essential for support, but less so for building initial awareness.

Each of the existing technologies can then be considered in terms

of relative value and utility in supporting the customer at each stage.

The focus of each analysis can now be on the highest value of a particular class of tool on engagement for each stage of the customer lifecycle.

In the areas where the particular tool has the potential to be most impactful, the tool and supporting processes can be assessed in terms of how well it enables a capability. For example, if site search does not allow customers to locate products according to their needs, that functionality would be flagged as a gap.

The gap could have many root causes. It may be due to not having the correct processes in place, not understanding the needs of the user, not understanding how to link needs to functionality, not having the right skills to configure and manage the technology, or not having the correct technology in the first place.

Because of the possible number of combinations of factors, reducing the focus of analysis to the most important processes for each stage of the lifecycle reduces the level of effort and complexity.

H= High value, M = Medium value for the stage of the customer lifecycle

LEARN CHOOSE PURCHASE USE MAINTAIN RECOMMEND

Web Content H H M M

SEO H H M

Search H H M H

Personalization H M H H M

Chat M H H H

Knowledge Base

M H H H

Configuration H H H H

VALUE AND UTILITY OF TECHNOLOGY FOR PHASES OF THE CUSTOMER JOURNEY

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Define the Future State

Digital capabilities are defined in the context of customer needs, the state of the industry, and competitive offerings. Advanced digital capabilities require not only appropriate technologies but also the corresponding processes that support those technologies. The combination of technology and process enables a capability that can be measured in terms of overall organizational maturity.

The future state is not something that can be generically defined for an enterprise. It is based on the customer perception of its brand and the relationship customers want with the brand. It is based on the customer journey, which is a more nuanced view of the customer lifecycle and includes all of the interactions as well as measures of customers’ thoughts and feelings as they interact.

When companies develop a model for the future state, they should pay careful attention to disconnects, friction in the process, redundancies, difficulties in getting to answers, and potential areas of frustration. The idea is to anticipate needs at each stage, and to surface information and answers in order to reduce effort expended in achieving an objective. This might translate into providing options when making a purchase or suggestions when researching selections. It could be in how account inquiries are handed off, or how a transaction history is organized. It could be the speed at which problems are resolved or how preferences are translated into personalized offerings.

The ways of serving customers more effectively are endless, and can be designed based on interviews, focus

The combination of technology and process enables a capability that can be measured in terms of overall organizational maturity

groups, surveys, and other voice-of-the-customer data. In addition, competitive analysis, process mapping, log analysis, heuristics, usability studies, journey maps and many other techniques are available for creating a rich, high fidelity, and multi-dimensional view of the ideal customer experience.

The ideal experience may not actually be the target state – it may be an aspirational “North Star” that could be far from the current capabilities and maturity of the organization. It provides, nonetheless, a directional goal that can be incrementally achieved over a timespan of years, depending on the current maturity level and starting point of the organization.

Focus Groups

Surveys Dialog Analysis

CompetitiveAnalysis

ProcessMapping

Log Analysis

Heuristics Usability Studies

Journey Maps

Customer Interviews

CONSIDERATIONS AND TOOLS FOR INCREASING SERVICE EFFECTIVENESS

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The oft repeated “people-process-technology” framework for addressing effectiveness sometimes misses another critical element – that of culture. Culture

Assess Internal Process Maturity

is the “environment in which process, technology, and people interact” according to the Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute , which originated the well-known Capability Maturity Model for software development.

For many organizations making the long transition from traditional marketing to integrated digital marketing and customer experience management across the full lifecycle, the changes that need to take place at the cultural level are even more significant than the technology overhaul that needs to take place across the digital ecosystem. What was once

The task of influencing culture change is daunting, but can start by addressing current processes that have grown out of the existing culture.

the purview of support is now part of the bigger picture of customer experience and digital marketing. Technology that was once acquired based on technical requirements specified by the CIO are now specified by the needs of the CMO in support of departments previously not under the umbrella of marketing processes. The scope and reach of customer experience touches departments previously defined in siloes and owned by different functional areas.

The task of influencing culture change is daunting, but can start by addressing current processes

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that have grown out of the existing culture. Given the shift in ownership and focus on customer centricity, virtually every process that touches the customer must be reviewed from the customer perspective. By starting with the customer lifecycle and experience, organizations can review each process in the context of the engagement strategy and enabling technologies.

Today’s digital marketing and customer engagement technologies are analogous to a high performance sports car. The supporting processes are the roads on which that car can be driven. In many enterprises, those processes are more like dirt roads and cow paths than well paved highways. It is not possible to get the best performance from the tools if the processes are convoluted, poorly designed, inappropriate, or full of disconnects and manual linkages.

Each of the supporting processes can be assigned to a maturity state that is mapped across various dimensions of a maturity model. Similar to the Capability Maturity Model, maturity models can be defined based on a combination of industry standards and process dimensions or customer experience element. These models typically contain five stages, with Level 5 being an aspirational, fully optimized state (see Figure 3).

Figure 3. Example maturity model

STAGE/ JOURNEY

STAGE 1 ADHOC STAGE 2 NASCENT STAGE3 EVOLVING STAGE 4 HARMONIZED STAGE 5 INTEGRATED

Learn • Static content • Fragmented user

experience• No mobile optimization • Little or no SEO

• Scenario, persona and use case driven IA with baseline metrics

• Not well integrated with offline

Some integration of online and offline promotions, events, campaigns with personalized content based on past purchase

Dynamic, optimized highly curated content experience with manual feedback mechanisms for content tuning

Multi channel, multi device integrated digital experience online and offline, single view of the customer, adaptive content driven by real time analytics

Choose Poor site navigation, no ability to search, confusing content or selection, content not aligned with user needs, disconnected from shopping function

Integration of content with ecommerce functionality, faceted search based on customer needs and driven by personas and use cases, content strategy specifically designed to assist selection of product and accessories

Real time chat with agent to answer questions, semantic search for curated video assets and knowledge base access, configuration of custom products, tuned attributes for faceted search

Adaptive content based on attribute model that considers demographic, psychographic, social graph and web site behaviors to provide just in time content., Avatar interface to structured content to answer questions

Predictive analytics driven personalized offers and experience. Real time integration with dealer network, social media, social graph data, third party data, web site click streams, single view of customer data

Purchase No connection of promotions to purchase. No product catalog, no attributes to aid selection and filtering,, no ability to narrow accessory search to correct product

Mobile friendly search, browse and purchase, Promotional content surrounding targeted customer through paid and earned media

Shopping cart retrieval with targeted just in time offers based on past behaviors, cross sell and up sell driven by data relationships and merchandiser strategy

Agile promotions, bundles, personalized recommendations based on customer data and behavior

Custom product design and pricing with order flowing to manufacturing with flexible financial models to compensate dealer

Use No visibility to product information to enhance the experience after purchase

Custom communication based on product owned, personalized content for owners

Proactive, two way dialog with customer orchestrated by organization, co-delivered and personalized by dealers

Virtualization of product experience

Connected product experience

Maintain No content supporting product maintenance

Basic technical materials and manuals available on line

Diagnosis tools and checklists

Diagnostic virtual mechanic on web site. Proactive service alerts

Real time self diagnosis of product

Recommend Won and done product transaction. No follow up or interaction

Platforms (email, website) to constantly encourage and capture customer feedback

Product development insights through crowd-sourcing

Connect product-based and/or regional customer communities

Ongoing participation in community, social media interaction

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Develop Implementation BlueprintArmed with knowledge of the current state of the technologies in place, contextualized with the customer lifecycle, along with a desired future state informed by the enterprise’s engagement strategy, a set of capability gaps can be articulated that are aligned with each class of technology.

Figure 4. Current state mapped with desired future state on maturity model.

STAGE/GROUPING STAGE 1 ADHOC STAGE 2 NASCENT STAGE3 EVOLVING STAGE 4 HARMONIZED STAGE 5 INTEGRATED

Content and/or ProductInformation Management

• Basic Content Creation

• On-Going Quality Monitoring

• Common Platform

• Product Attributes Normalized

• Content/Product Data Curated

• Product Master Data Management, Consistent Data Cross-Channel

• Attributes Driven By Customer Research & Aligned with User Experience

Technology • Web Content Management Platform

• Analysis Platform

• Campaign Management

• Email Management• Marketing Automation• CRM

• Advanced WCMS Configuration

• Ecommerce• SEO Management Tools• Digital Asset

Management• Order Management• Cart Optimization

• Marketing Management Tools

• Lead Scoring• Loyalty Tools• Ad Management• Mobile Marketing

• Social Media Monitoring• Community Tools• Sentiment Analysis• CRM Full Tie-In to Digital

Environment• Market Segmentation

Tools

Analytics • Analytics Tool Setup to Acquire Vanity Metrics (Hits etc.)

• Analytics Tool Setup to Track and Evaluate Various Channels

• Resource Allocation to Apply Analytics

• Analytics Program Setup to Manage/Track All Digital Behavior.

• Analytics Program Setup to Include Multiple Data Points Along with Advanced Interpretation and Analysis

• Analytics Program Setup to Include Multiple Data Points Along With Advanced Interpretation and Analysis. Feedback to All Areas of the Organization.

Taxonomy and Navigation

• Taxonomy is Navigation

• Taxonomy Leveraged for Facets

• SEO and Taxonomy Integrated

• Taxonomy Drives Content & Data Classification

• Taxonomy Optimized for Multiple Devices

User Experience • Branding and Look and Feel Consistency

• Responsive Design• Persona Definition• Hybrid/Mobile App

Development

• Video Production Support

• Rich Interactive Content Creation

• User Testing

• Integrated Brand Messaging Across Channels

• Agile Delivery for UI Development

• Advanced User and Testing Program Across Channels

Globalization • Translation Mechanism

• Localization Partner Engagement

• Translation Memory• Global SEO• Global Payment

Gateways

• N Country Localization • Localization Management System

These gaps can be mapped to the corresponding stages on a future state maturity with the distance between the current state of maturity and future state indicative of the level of effort required to reach that level. (See Figure 4.)

The blueprint identifies the types of capabilities needed along with supporting processes, and can be used to define scenarios and use cases for technology evaluations.

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Today’s digital technology landscape is complex and convoluted. Vendors have crowded the marketplace with solutions that are far beyond the ability of many organization’s current maturity. The approach described here for simplifying the complexity requires a thoughtful and detailed review of many aspects of enterprise strategy, engagement approaches, lifecycle analysis, journey mapping and process assessment. With this approach, the right tools and technologies can be selected with sufficient resources for deployment.

Special thanks to Steve Walker for his assistance in developing the approach and to DX Summit workshop attendees whose feedback validated our methodology.

Conclusion

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About Earley Information ScienceEarley Information Science is a professional services firm dedicated to helping organizations just like yours become an AI-powered, customer-driven enterprise. We have the tools, team, and processes to design and execute a scalable, governance-driven digital roadmap, led by your customer’s immediate and long-term needs. Together, we can implement a digital transformation that provides a personalized, accurate, and fulfilling customer journey, driving measurable ROI to your bottom line.

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how to create a marketing technology blueprint · 2019-03-06 · in marketing technology (also...

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