I’ve spent the better part of two decades specializing in helping eCommerce IT and marketing organizations find ways to optimize their customer-facing websites, and, more recently, mobile applications.
Two things have remained consistent:
- IT organizations are laser-focused on page speed, page load times and other similar IT-focused 7-layer stack metrics. Need a refresher, click here: OSI Model
- Marketing organizations are laser-focused on revenue and conversion, especially as it pertains to all things digital marketing and campaigns. (e.g. loyalty e-mails, PPC, SEO, paid social, channels, affiliates, organic, etc.)
Recently I’ve been contemplating what the reasons might be for why these two organizations would not be joined at the hip. Both using #1 to dig into how that impacts #2? And vice versa.
In other words, aren’t they the same thing? Why separate them? They are two sides of the same coin.
Define the Problem
First, let’s define what I mean by “two sides of the same coin” in this example.
Here is the definition of “two sides of the same coin” (as lifted from The Free Dictionary):
“If two things are two sides of the same coin or opposite sides of the same coin, they are closely related to each other and cannot be separated, even though they seem to be completely different.”
So why are they separated? The answer is rather simple.
I see two reasons, both of which are easy to fix with the right mindset and the right expertise:
- Organizational issues. Marketing typically reports up through a CMO or VP of Marketing. IT and the technical teams typically report up through a CIO/CTO. The C-Level suite meets at a level that reports to the CEO.
- Vendors in the MarTech stack. Let’s face it, with over 7,000+ MarTech vendors, the enterprise software industry has been a huge contributing factor in the existence and continued tolerance of this problem.
What should you do?
So how can this be fixed? Easy.
First, fix #1. This is easier said than done as many management consulting companies have been in the business of providing extensive organizational change services for several decades. But my recommendation is to take it one step at a time. Start with targeting the digital marketing campaigns that are run every week. “Marry up” the marketing team responsible for those campaigns with the IT/application teams that are responsible for creating and managing the assets tied to those campaigns.
But don’t pick every campaign. Pick the ones that are key to the week’s revenue performance. Loyalty e-mail going out to 20 million members? Pick that one. A digital push to paid search using more than one channel (e.g. Bing, Google AdWords, Facebook, etc.), target that spend.
Now that you’ve got the campaigns, ensure the team is on-board. Co-locate the marketing & IT team. If you can’t co-locate, get everyone together on Zoom, Slack, etc. (This was called the “Integrated Product team, or IPT, back in my Aerospace days.). Plan the launch. Monitor it. Measure it. Optimize it.
Now tackle the MarTech stack.
How would I do this? Easy. I’ve done it before. Look for “Best of Breed”.
When I was with Lockheed Martin back in the late 1990’s, I owned the software engineering process for 2 major development programs: The F-22 fighter jet and the C-130J transport. You want to hear about silo’s and tools? I lived it back then. Each phase of the software lifecycle had its own tool. When you went across the lifecycle, you had to use a new tool. Requirements? Tool. Design? Another tool. Code? Another tool. Testing? Yet another tool. And at each step the data had to be entered/mapped all over again.
Sound familiar? (Let’s look within just ONE stack: Bing, Google AdWords, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc., etc., across the dozens of ad platforms out there.)
So here’s what I did about it (And I really can’t believe that some of these are still on-line and published, but it does lend a solid case for the folks that say, “once on the web, always on the web”.):
So how does that software engineering use case map to this problem, you are probably asking yourself? Well, it’s exactly the same problem, just a different domain with different data. With this coin, there are two sets of technologies to serve different sides of the same coin.
One the one hand, there are several “Real User Measurement (RUM)” tools/technologies that have sprouted up over the years, including a few that I have had hands-on experience with. These are Akamai/SOASTA mPulse, Blue Triangle, Catchpoint, Rigor, DynaTrace and New Relic, to name a few.
On the MarTech side, tools that measure campaign and Digital Marketing performance within key silo segments include Google, Optimizely, AdRoll, SalesForce (Datorama, Krux, etc.), IBM Watson, Kiss Metrics, Adobe Cloud, etc. Some newer ones, such as conDati and Quantum Metric, even cross silos and provide forward-looking insights. Better yet, you can take a peek for yourself at all 7,040 of them from the 2019 version of the MarTech stack here: MarTech Stack
So what should you do? It really is about the “Three Legged Bar Stool”. Say what? People-Process-Technology. I already mentioned the organizational/people aspect, though briefly above. (I don’t want to get all McKinsey on you in this blog!). The other two are a bit more complicated. Why? Tools are inherently built with processes built into the technology. If the process within the tools you select doesn’t fit your process, then the tool will fail–unless you change your process to match that of your technology stack.
So when you evaluate technology and solutions for both sides of this coin, make sure that the process behind these technologies matches yours. If it doesn’t, the rollout and potential success will drop considerably, and will probably lead to eventual failure.
Takeaway and Call to Action
With the biggest online revenue period of the year fast approaching, it’s time to get your team aligned and positioned to take advantage of your team’s ability to drive incremental revenue for your company by simply putting priority on understanding your company’s “two-sided coin”.
Is it too late? Nope. Picking where to start and where to focus can typically show positive ROI results in 30 days or less. (Or, to put it another way, 4 weeks of campaigns or LESS.)
Now, will I tell you which technologies and processes are best in this blog? Absolutely not.
Maybe in the next blog, though. 😉
And, yes, I do have my opinions. 🙂
I can be reached on Twitter @DanBoutinGNV.
My e-mail is danboutin@mindspring.com.
My LinkedIn: Dan Boutin
…or you can simply comment on this blog.
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