Welcome to our four-part blog series,The Marketing Factory, which discusses the disruption of digital and its effect on the entire marketing ecosystem. In Post 1, Recognising the challenges of a changing marketing landscape, we look at how marketing channels have evolved and the requirement of marketers to adapt to digital content. Post 2, Succeeding in the new marketing landscape, explores the benefits of a centralised and personalised approach to marketing content. Post 3, The Marketing Factory Foundation, examines the new role of the marketing team, generating best-in-class campaign content. Concluding our blog series, Post 4, Adopting a data-driven marketing approach, looks deeper into the key benefits of the Marketing Factory and how companies are winning big by adopting a centralised approach to the ideation of marketing campaigns, the creation of master assets and a structured process that allows for scalable productions.
Firstly, let’s look at the definition of ‘Marketing Factory’, here at the eBusiness Institute, we define it as: a department, area or dedicated group of people in an organisation who are solely responsible for the production, management and distribution of all master content assets (articles, images, infographics, videos, webinars, etc.).
Post 1 – Recognising the challenges of a changing marketing landscape
Long gone are the days when marketers had only a handful of channels to focus on. Now, alongside the advent of digital disruption, marketing channels have evolved from a few distinctive channels such as TV and periodicals, to a multitude of web, social media, mobile and video channels. Where once marketing channels were manageable locally with bespoke content and images, the challenge is now a huge one; satisfying the specific content requirements of each channel with thousands of assets, while achieving mass data-driven personalised campaigns.
An evolving channel landscape requires marketers to adapt from a few channels to a multitude of channels used by consumers along their journey.
The marketing landscape has been constantly evolving during the last 20 years, but over the last 5 years there’s been a transformation beyond recognition. Not only marketing channels, but the content marketing landscape. There are now a multitude of marketing channels, each one requiring specific content (asset images, videos, webinars, articles, etc.). The complexity of the marketing ecosystem requires the consumer experience to be at the very centre of everything. This mass personalised communication challenge requires customised assets for each and every channel – and a huge rethink of how marketing functions.
Consumers require personalisation and are becoming more demanding and sophisticated in their interaction with digital content.
As Kevin Lindsay from SEJ highlights, “Consumers are obsessed with content. They’re so obsessed that they’re spending nearly one-third of their days engaging with digital content. However, consumers aren’t just willing to engage with any old content. They require content that is personalized to them and delivered on the channel they want, at the moment they want it. For brands, this means creating new content that’s specific to every product, every customer segment and every screen size during every step of the customer journey.”[1]
In order to move into mass personalised communications, marketers have to deliver customised assets for each channel.
As mentioned, each channel requires specific and customised assets. Assets cannot just be used randomly, this is a typical mistake when using scripts originally created for TV commercials in a YouTube advertising campaign – TV scripts usually build up to the drama in the second half while YouTube videos need to capture the consumer’s attention in the first 3-5 seconds. This random, non-strategic use of assets at a local level leads to proliferation with a consequent lack of creative and production quality, driving up costs, resources and increasing inefficiencies, as well as diluting the brand identity. This results in fragmentation throughout the marketing ecosystem and therefore an inability to implement effective and efficient campaigns – this is something we, here at the eBusiness Institute, observe first hand in our day to day practice.
In conclusion
The mass one-to-one communication challenge seems a huge one, but it can be won. Companies must first recognise and accept the change, and then understand their situation within this landscape. They must adopt a centralised approach for iterative marketing campaigns and content assets, and Post 2 of our blog series, Succeeding in the new marketing landscape, will explore this solution further and look at how companies are already winning big with this approach.
This article was created and written by Luigi Matrone – CEO & Founder of the eBusiness Institute.
At the eBusiness Institute, we have extensive experience of working with numerous brands on their digital transformation. We understand the importance of an optimised consumer experience to drive your brand’s sales online and offline. Contact us to learn more about how we can help you.
Source
[1] https://www.searchenginejournal.com/content-reuse/258385/
