Marketing leaders are facing the hard reality that they lack necessary resources to execute transformational change.
Are you in the 96 percent of CMOs that agree marketing is being asked to do things it has never had to do before?
Marketers are outside of their comfort zones and many are realizing they desperately need resources and expertise to execute organization-wide change. While many have looked at MarTech as the silver bullet to solve for marketing disruption and sales disintermediation, industry analysts have often seen the opposite.
“If I was going to pick one word to describe marketing today, it is change.”
Scott Brinker, Chiefmartec.com
Marketing technology is a dilemma for marketers because it requires not only new sets of skills but a rethink of what it means to develop an effective and aligned marketing and sales go-to-market modus. With new technology comes new buyer and customer behaviors. Blindly adopting technology to increase the speed of delivery of existing marketing stories – stories that are misaligned with the new buyer reality -has left brands invisible.
In the face of rapidly changing market needs and evolving customer demands, marketing teams must embrace a lean, agile and flexible model for executing marketing ops.
Marketing-as-a-Service (MaaS): What is it and Why do SMBs need it?
This has fueled the rise of Marketing-as-a-Service (MaaS). MaaS has emerged as a concept that fills in the gaps for businesses looking for assistance in developing marketing strategies, campaign creation, and execution. Choosing the right MaaS solution for your business is key to stretching your marketing dollar and the success of your marketing ops.
Successful marketing leaders realize that their in-house marketing expertise is limited, and with increasing focus on digital media, localization, and personalization, marketing teams often lack the required skill set or resources to comprehensively deal with every aspect of a campaign.
Marketing-as-a-Service (MaaS): What is it and Why do SMBs need it?
We’ve seen MaaS forking into two options for companies.
The first is more of a “body shop” type of solution, typically filling for specific skill sets or a capacity issue. Agencies offer this tactical plug and play model, but in the end, it’s disconnected and harkens back to the traditional sales and marketing model.
It’s tremendously important for a MaaS firm to not just understand your brand story, but they need to have a full understanding of the strategy driving the tactics and the measures to evaluate success. If the focus of a MaaS initiative is to just implement a set of tactical initiatives without asking ‘why’ and quantifying expected returns, you should hit the pause button on that project.
Are you kicking off an initiative because it’s trendy? Or, is it an initiative that’s tied to bringing your brand closer to the destination?
Transformational Marketing-as-a-Service
The second type of MaaS we call Transformational, and it works in concert with strategic initiatives as an accelerator for the senior marketing team. A Transformational MaaS team helps provide marketing leaders with the best return on marketing investments by identifying the ideal initiatives to outsource and which initiatives should remain internal.
They ensure that their client’s Story, Strategy, and Systems are all aligned – in that order – with simplicity and clarity. The new reality comes with a recognition that it is only after a simple and clear brand story is established that one can confidently move ahead to define and activate a cohesive marketing strategy. This activation requires more than a look at the tech systems that are in place. It’s a holistic look at the people, processes, and platforms that will bring the strategy to life.
Transformational MaaS looks to a customer-informed Story to define the right strategies and programs, which in turn defines the revamp of the internal teams needed to take on this opportunity. A lot of marketers view this as a daunting task – but the reality is, if you don’t go about it the right way, without an effective approach, it can be. It is not just about assessing the current tools, data, and platforms that may be in place – it’s about assessing the people, processes, and performance that will be enabled by that technology.
Marketing technology success is more about social science that it is about computer science!
Transformational marketing requires marketers to shift their thinking and transform the way marketing performs and generates results for an organization. Many marketing leaders are confident they have strengths in certain areas. However, transformationally aware marketers recognize the requirement for new, holistic, and objective perspectives to complement their strengths.
Here are 7 key considerations before engaging a MaaS firm
It’s tremendously important for a MaaS firm to not just understand your brand story, but they need to have a full understanding of the strategy driving the tactics and systems that are in place. Remember, marketing technology stacks must be clearly aligned with your brand strategy and systems to effectively deliver remarkable customer experiences. In order to avoid the chaos we call Marketing Mayhem, you must bring simplicity, clarity, and alignment to your marketing operations.
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