Data-Driven Marketing

With 2012 drawing to a close, there's a few key stats I think everyone involved in marketing should reflect on:

In 2011, people looked at 10.4 pieces of content before purchasing. This is double of what it was in 2010.

By 2017, CMOs will spend more on technology than CIOs. 

71% of CMOs feel underprepared for the data explosion that their organizations are facing. 

There's a connection here. Customers are doing more research online. There's more tech than ever to help catch and evaluate their online activities. And no one feels ready to handle it. 

These are just more symptoms of how fundamental of a shift marketing is undergoing. In fact, still calling it marketing almost seems like a disservice, as it requires so much more. I'm not the first to say this, but a modern marketing department requires an entirely new skill set, in addition to what was previously required. 

Here's some of the things you needed in online marketing just five years ago:

- Copywriters

- Graphic Designers

- Web developers

- Email marketers

- PPC specialist

- SEO wizards

- Community Manager (at this point, just someone who had facebook)

Here's what you need now, in addition to all of those roles:

- Data analyst

- Lead Generation Experts

- Lead nurturing specialists

- CRM integrator

- Sales liasion 

- Multi-variate tester extraordinnaire

- Real community manager (someone who understands different networks, their audiences, and has their ear to the ground about new opportunities)

- Closed-loop guru/ROI master

It's a bit overwhelming. And a far cry even from five years ago, let alone the Mad Men era of the 60's.

Today's modern marketing departments are all data-driven - beating back the constant criticism that half the marketing budget is wasted, but no one know which half. By employing closed-loop analytics and by aligning their activities with sales, Marketing is able to distinguish which campaigns are the most profitable, how much of the pipeline is from their activities, and if able to shorten the sales pipeline, making the sales team more efficient.

A recent Gartner webinar mentioned that in several large companies, such as SAP and Google, marketing departments have their own P&L statements. They are actually responsible for how much profit they generate. A feat that would have been unthinkable even five years ago (although, I wouldn't bet against Google tracking it).

The reason for the rising importance of marketing pulls all of these trends together:

-People are reading more about products online because they don't want to talk to salespeople

-This applies across all verticals

-Marketing is making salespeople more efficient (and thus we'll likely see less salespeople who are more efficient in the future)

-Customer retention can be better tracked and measured, and thus can be made more efficient through marketing

In short, we're seeing marketing in general playing a larger role across all areas. This is likely why we're seeing such a projected increase in their technology spending - collecting, analyzing and acting on data from across customer service, outbound & inbound marketing, sales efforts, public relations and events takes a lot of software. Doing anything intelligent with it requires people with new and developing skill sets in order to 

Content Marketing is about to become tablestakes

If you don't have a way to track it's effectiveness, you're shooting blind

Integration is important/silos will be deadly