It's hard enough getting your heads around the endlessly changing, massively fragmented world of Web 2.0 marketing and what it takes to meet the needs of the 'connected consumer' without having to manage and streamline what you're doing, co-ordinate and budget your activities, monitor the seemingly infinite number of new websites, blogs and social networks, and track performance — this really can be the last straw. There's just too much to do and it feels like the goalposts are always moving.
Thankfully, help may be at hand in the form of MRM (marketing resource management) software. Now, I'm not here (and not equipped) to tell you which of the products out there is best for you — that will come from trying them out and in-depth research — but I can point you to a
short but informative article on www.emarketingandcommerce.com by Alan Bunce, a senior product manager at software vendor Unica.
I particularly liked the following two points on how MRM can help marketers:
- It lets marketers be more nimble in response to changing marketing landscapes. Marketing plans that incorporate Web 2.0 often need to change rapidly, because collectively online communities “never sleep” and yesterday's marketing plan can swiftly become obsolete. Capturing marketing plans and budgets in an MRM system puts the most up-to-date version just a click away from everyone's fingertips.
- It provides visibility into everything marketing is doing, and improves collaboration around planning and execution, helping to achieve the holy grail of integrated cross-channel communications — which today sometimes seems even more out of reach when blogs, Wikis, social networking, etc., are added to the marketing mix.
Here's another
useful post by Paul Dunay, the brains behind the highly regarded
Buzz Marketing For Technology blog. It covers pretty much the same ground, namely that as marketing becomes more 'distributed', marketers need to 'have a very solid base of measurement to draw from', such as the comprehensive MRM platforms of Eloqua, Aprimo and Unica. Dunay says:
"Why even do that, you ask? Well, I believe we’re being bigheaded if we think we can keep content on a site and expect people to come get it. Publishers are getting this point, big time, by syndicating out their content as much as they can. As marketers, we also need to think bigger about syndicating our content."
And if you syndicate content, which is the obvious way to build a web presence and send your product or service viral (through web apps, widgets, blogs, social networks, banners, videos, whatever), then you still need to measure the effect and impact of that syndication — somehow you need to make sense of all the madness and a decent MRM platform could be just the ticket.
Finally, you should check out this
other little post by Paul in February. In it, he covers how marketers need to move beyong the concept of the marketing 'campaign' when approaching social media, as this suggests a beginning and an end (which is becoming less and less relevant in the always on, timeless digital era). In any case, it almost always takes time for social media messages, in whatever form (a podcast series, blog or new community) to filter through and be picked up. You don't bracket social media 'campaigns' into fixed time periods, you just roll with it.