It’s an exciting time to be a marketing leader. Your work is more essential than ever to company revenue and reputation as customers are more active on digital media and mobile devices, and the opportunity to understand your constituents is growing every day. In order to build a world class marketing organization, you have to make sure you are strengthening your brand and building a symbiotic relationship with your customers through digital media. You have to anticipate what your buyers want, and in return they’ll deliver loyalty, trust, and revenue. Your job is to set strategy and make sure you have the right tools to make it happen. You also have to be able to qualify your return on investment (ROI) among multiple channels, and continually deliver improvements of cost and efficiency. No pressure, right?
Challenges arise when we begin to consider how much data is locked away in unreachable systems within our own organization. While we understand that the organization at large is capturing a lot of crucial data, like services, sales, and financial data. We must also understand that if that data is not integrated into our marketing plans and used to inform our strategic planning efforts, then has that data really helped us? Do you truly understand your market segments and who your at-risk customers are? Do you understand why they are considered ‘at risk?’ This type of information will likely not be in your own internal marketing system alone. Tapping into multiple internal systems within our organization is no easy task – it requires some heavy lifting from a technological perspective.
