In this CMO Series, my colleagues and I have focused on a variety of topics that CMOs today should be thinking about as fundamental to building a technology and data-driven marketing practice.
So far we’ve covered:
• “As CMOs Face Turbulence, Are They Choosing The Right Technology?”
• “The Smarter CMO is Focused on Technology”
• “What is the right enterprise marketing stack for you?”
• “How to Analyze Data for Real-Time Decision Making”
• “Building a More Complete View of Your Customer”
• “Why Activating Data is The key to Customer-Centric Marketing”
• “What is the Right Media Mix? How Do You Determine This?”
• “Media Mix: Traditional vs Programmatic Buying?”
• “Synergies and Dissonance: The Attribution Challenge in Omni-Channel Marketing”
Technology is, of course, a common theme in these posts. And today we will take it one step further by taking a look under the hood of this technology to help you better understand the various components that are critical to success for a marketer.
At MediaMath, we call this technology the TerminalOne Marketing Operating System™. And regardless of whether you are using our technology or someone else’s, the components that we outline below are critical to creating the foundation of a marketing practice that is built to lead over the next 50 years.
With the TerminalOne Marketing Operating System™, a CMO or other marketing executive has the ability to plan, execute, optimize, and analyze strategic, customer-centric marketing programs that drive measurable business outcomes.
That may sound extraordinarily complex, but the good news is the tools already exist – the hard part is the organization mindset change to put them into practice.
Here’s what we believe should be part of any technology infrastructure successful enterprise marketers invest in:
Data Management: A data platform that ingests and normalizes all relevant internal and external data – including 1st party and 3rd party online and offline data– allows for flexible segmentation, profiling, and analysis, and seamlessly makes the data available at the point of media execution, including the ability to target users across the various devices they use.
Media Management: A cross-channel media platform that provides access to all digital media inventory across display, social, video, mobile, search and other channels and has the ability to add channels as they become addressable via programmatic buying (e.g., IPTV, DOOH, etc.). Moreover, it should simplify the workflow across these channels while still capturing the benefits of each, such as unique targeting options, premium inventory and private marketplaces, custom formats, etc.
Creative Management: A content management system that goes beyond the ability to house and serve ad units, but is capable of linking with the data systems to dynamically test, tailor, and sequence messaging based on the individual history of that customer (such as previous products purchased or previous messages seen), to ensure the right customer experience.
Decisioning Engine: Data, media, and creative are just the raw ingredients. The magnitude of information involved requires sophisticated machine-learning algorithms to ingest all that information and determine the right set of marketing actions to take in order to achieve a given set of marketing objectives – from branding to engagement to purchase to upsell. The ultimate goal of delivering the right message to the right person at the right time in service of driving ROI is perhaps the most important function of the marketing platform of the future.
Advanced Analytics: Whether for day-to-day operational reporting, planning & forecasting, customer segmentation & insights, trend & opportunity identification, ad hoc or strategic analytics, a flexible and powerful analysis suite is instrumental to success. These tools should not only be integrated with the above components, but with first-party applications as well, to ensure seamless flow of information and insights into the business.
Workflow: A streamlined workflow that unites and simplifies execution across channels as well as across objectives (e.g., awareness & ROI) and provides full transparency into all of components of the system and accountability over results.
Technology integration: A true platform, with robust and flexible open APIs that enable marketers to tailor solutions for their specific needs and integrate any and all desired partners into the system. Ultimately, the technology must be extensible to address not just present needs but future ones as well, and thus offer a powerful array of modular components on which new capabilities can be built and managed from a single point of control.
Professional Services: Utilizing any technology effectively requires the ability to complement it with expert services that can help tailor solutions to meet your business objectives. From training, to integrations, to custom features, the full potential of any technology is often realized in the “last-mile” that links it to the specifics of a given enterprise.
If your technology infrastructure includes the above components, preferably through one connected platform, you and your team can more efficiently and effectively:
• Create a single view of your customers – online and offline
• Find and engage your customers across all media types
• Personalize the customer experience based on individual history
• Deliver superior business outcomes at lower cost and greater scale
• Create greater transparency and accountability into every marketing dollar
So, if you are a CMO trying to navigate today’s data-driven, highly fragmented technology landscape in an effort to better understand your customer, and you are not using a marketing operating system that does the above, give us a call so we can help you determine if we can help. Download collateral here.