Are Marketing Technologies Fragmented?

An On-going Debate with New Research from Forrester Consulting

by Christina Motley

There’s been an on-going debate about whether or not marketing technologies are fragmented in today’s digital world. In their latest research, Forrester Consulting and Oubit discuss the successful implementation of a digital marketing technologies across organizational functions and business departments.

I was asked this question recently and without hesitation said absolutely yes, although others may disagree. Here are 6 reasons why I believe marketing technologies are fragmented today.

1. Although many companies invest heavily in technology tools, they often do not invest enough time into training, on-boarding cross functional business segments, developing processes or integrating the technologies into integrated workflows to achieve the greatest Return on their Investment (ROI). Yet the CMO is accountable — or should be held accountable — for not only communicating with and marketing to customers, but to all organizational shareholders, including an emphasis on internal, corporate, media and investor relations. Furthermore, great marketers are not necessarily great leaders, yet the CMO role requires significant leadership skills internally and externally. Many companies are missing the boat in terms of the right hire when it comes to their marketing leadership.
2. Marketing budgets are estimated to climb, according to the CMO Survey (February, 2013) conducted by Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and the American Marketing Association (AMA), with an emphasis on digital marketing (expected to increase an average of 10.2% over the next 12 months) and social media (estimated to increase 11.5% over the same time period). However, CMOs are largely focusing their day-to-day efforts on soft leadership skills and are inundated with meetings, resulting in what AD Age predicts will cause CEOs and COOs to bring more outside consultants to the CMO suite as they look beyond their industry categories for inspiration and new skills sets.
3. The average tenure of CMOs is 23 months, according to the Chief Marketing Officer Journal Volume 1 by the CMO Institute and the AMA. The CMO Survey of 4,963 top U.S. marketers at Fortune 1000, Forbes Top 200 and top marketers, also reveals, the average time marketing leaders stay in their current role is an average of 4.6 years. Because marketing is both an art and a science, this time lapse hurts businesses which are investing in marketers to develop a deep understanding about the global market, competitive landscape and consumer behavior. If these firms and marketers are following best practices, they are testing different messages, strategies and tactics with different target audiences. While progress can be measured in the short-term, the companies are most likely loosing traction every time employees turnover. The CMO Survey also demonstrates this trend, reporting that only 4.3% of respondents believe they are developing knowledge about this to do marketing (i.e. developing new marketing capabilities and training, or transferring existing marketing knowledge to other employees, and only 5.4% of respondents report integrating what they know into their marketing strategies. These are respective dips of — 25.9% and -34.1% compared to 2012.
4. Various studies — including the CMO Survey — also report that while many businesses are making great strides to align marketing with sales, only 27% of those surveyed report marketing leads sales activities. Additionally, only 9.9% of respondents say their social media efforts are “very integrated” with their overall marketing strategy and 25.1 percent rate the marketing excellence in their companies as “good, fair, weak or very week,” indicating lack of fully-integrated marketing plans. In most businesses, IT is not aligned with marketing, yet smart decisions — the best decisions — come from collaboration across business functions from people who are experts at different business aspects and provide varying knowledge, experiences and perspectives.
5. The sheer volume of information, marketing messages and technology platforms that exist in today’s digital world, makes it impossible for one — or even a few — marketers to keep up with. It takes a team and a holistic, integrated approach from all employees (each one who is — or should be empowered to be — a brand ambassador and marketing advocate) to yield the greatest ROI.
6. Technologies — old, existing and new ones — continue to place an increasing demand on marketers. Not surprisingly, the CMO title did not exist 10 years ago or so.

Stay tuned and I will right the other side of the debate … how aren’t marketing technologies fragmented.