Good marketing is hard ...for very good reasons.
First, consumers are more confused for many reasons (pandemic, politics, economics, etc.), so it is becoming more and more difficult to get their attention. There are more channels and platforms than ever, which means marketers need to be omnichannel and omniscient.
But sometimes it's hard to do good marketing...for not-so-good reasons. Because let's face it, there are a lot of things that don't quite work in the world of marketing. Malfunctions can be hard to spot, but I'll give it a try anyway.
And I'd love to hear your thoughts on what I missed because I'm sure there are more…. Think of it as a starter list!
Let's start with the separation of agencies
This transition is part of what I call the natural in and out of business. Go from centralized to decentralized and vice versa. The same goes for the marketing/agency universe. The status quo has changed: all of a company's marketing needs fit neatly into a complex three-dimensional jigsaw (strategy, creativity, media and production under one roof), more recently with the advent of digital, the hyperspecialization. and unbundling. . It suddenly seemed like every brand marketer needed at least five different companies to handle strategy, creative development, production, and more.
This piecemeal approach was, to say the least, over-correction: it introduced a lot of friction, waste, and misunderstanding into the marketing mix. (Now that the pendulum is swinging again, driven by inflation and cost savings, as brands try to see what one company can do more effectively, efficiently and at scale...like mountain bikes .)
Marketers have lost much of their control over customer data and information.
Quad helps brands master what we call experience marketing (MX), which includes all efforts to drive action, from consumer awareness and trust to brand choice and purchase. Just as CX (customer experience) is about improving the customer journey, MX is about improving the marketing journey – marketers themselves deliver content and experiences to consumers.
We work with many top global brands (over 4,500) and we're seeing more and more top marketers dramatically increasing their dataset. To master MX, marketers develop programs to collect first-person and first-person customer data.
For many marketers, it's a catch-up game of learning or relearning who their customers are at the family level. With the cost of digital campaigns rising and mainstream social platforms failing, many brands are realizing they need to find new ways to manage their data. Speaking of what...
Marketers have become too dependent on the "black box"
Over time, many brands have become too dependent on external data systems and algorithms, "black boxes" over which they have no control and which they do not fully understand. For example, marketers (as we all know by now) have been on the bandwagon for far too long.
The high-profile cookie cutter, led by Apple and other big tech companies that are beginning to rethink data privacy, has been a wake-up call for marketers. At Quad, we use the Signals by Quad Intelligence suite of solutions to advise our partner brands on how best to collect their data and best use it in online and offline campaigns. Which brings me to...
Many brands still view online marketing and offline marketing as separate things.
Consumers' online experiences shape and guide their offline experiences and vice versa. Digital and IRL are intertwined, interdependent, and part of a continuum for all demographics (but especially Millennials and Gen Z).
However, many brands view online marketing and offline marketing as two different things. Or at least they treat them differently.
At Quad, to help brands redefine their MX, we spend a lot of time advising them on the setup, flow, integration and timing of their offline and online messaging. Which brings me to...
Too much equipment will ruin the marketing plan
As my colleague Eric Ashwart, Quad's Head of Agency and Marketing Solutions points out, any marketing proposal can be a sore point and a source of contention. It refers to the quicksands that arise when the strategy team is not fully in sync with creative agencies, communications teams, digital teams, social media teams, production teams, media planners . To light up. Marketers view this friction as an inevitable part of their marketing experience. Because obstacles come and reconciliation always takes time, right?
But the truth is that there is a direct link between the increase in the number of transfers in the marketing plan and the lack of effectiveness (or even failure) of this campaign. The reverse is also true: the simplicity of your marketing experience, which we at Quad obsess over, has a liberating effect on creative effectiveness.
So how do we start fixing what's broken?
Part of my job as CMO for Quad is to listen to other marketers – to learn their specific marketing pain points, learn their specific pain points, and help lead conversations about fixing marketing gaps.
As always, the first step to solving a problem is admitting that...we have a problem.
That's why I'm thrilled that Quad is speaking and sponsoring the Forbes CMO Summit 2022, where we will continue these high-level conversations.
If you plan to attend, I look forward to hearing from you. But if not, I still want to know why you think marketing isn't working.
Contact me here and together we will find the right solution.
