Some senior corporate marketing managers pursue after marketing automation projects more to gain an advantage over another head of marketing at a different division in the same company than to compete with marketers at a rival corporation. This behavior builds corporate fiefdoms.
These fiefdoms often get their identity from the banner the marketing troops fly above the equipment that they’re using to gain the advantage over the opposite marketing team. Along one front you may see the standards of Oracle Eloqua or Marketo or Market2Lead streaming in the air. Along the other front you see Aprimo or Neolane or Engage B2B.
And the list of technology providers has only grown seemingly exponentially for over a decade like an endless arms race. Call a detente!
If you don’t do it, the internal argument soon turns into a squabble over which tool is better than the other rather than how can everyone combine efforts to drive marketing more effectively as a united corporate team.
How can you bust this silo mentality and get people to stop turning against each other and toward the real competition outside the company?
Marketing Automation Silo Busting Is Part Of The CMO Job
As Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) call a task force to define the key measures of marketing performance most directly able to impact sales convertibility. What work can Marketing do to turn ‘maybes’ into ‘yes’ and from whom? Then, simply hold all marketers to meet these KPI’s, forbidding them to redefine them. Yes, you read that right. Put your foot down or marketers will walk, no dance, all over you!
Be sure, therefore, that as CMO you announce no tolerance for anyone coming up short and filing a storyline that fails to match the overall performance expectations that these key measures alone will tell…measures that will not need marketing automation alone to track but actual marketing skill set. In a word, collaborative strategy IMPLEMENTATION.
You know the kind of KPI’s I’m talking about. They’re the type you dread, the kind Finance trusts because they’re modeled after producing bottom line results. This means the departments with the most responsibility will be direct marketing and frontline sales or field ops. They’re the only ones that are customer-facing and carry metrics written in their DNAs. Messaging, positioning, branding, PR, events? They provide the ammo. But direct and field marketing handle the logistics because they can report on where the bombs land with near scientific precision.
Are they complaining that they can’t track those metrics? Then, you better listen! These are the experts in tracking hard data, not that nebulous thing called awareness.
At that point, it won’t matter which tool set the team ends up using to deliver these metrics. Just have the same metrics delivered consistently from all quarters of the organization with no blame-shifting over which technology would have been better if only…blah, blah, blah.
It is true that marketers tend to be highly creative individuals. So are engineers at an R&D department and both resent being made to produce practical results. They have to be highly motivated to produce exciting, innovative, useful products for others to sell and use. But both types of skill sets must perform within constraints and based on market feedback signals, not visionary illusions. They must be held to a consistent performance standard that makes money.
If they do not deliver, then you may have staff needing training, both technical and social. And if despite training and team building coaching they still can’t get it together, then you’re likely facing a surreptitious insurrection. Find the culprit and get rid of him or her! This person is going to end up with your competitor anyway. Don’t let this saboteur take more secrets across the moat to the opposition than you’re already bound to lose.
There must be no tolerance for unaccountability. Put measures in place to track even nebulous concepts like brand, goodwill and mindshare, yes indeed. But those don’t turn into cash. They’re not priority because they’re like many vanity metrics: vacuous. Instead, pick the specific elements in the brand, goodwill or mindshare that must be tracked for manageable changes that impact the bottom line, and start monitoring them for improvements.
Then, hold everyone’s feet to the fire by demanding for the same measures from everyone regardless of which tool they use to produce them. And reward achievement, always.