Full Sail Partners Blog | Marketing (6)

Have you ever thought about all the information a firm collects on a daily basis? Think about it, every department is collecting information all the time. More importantly, information collected impacts your firm’s strategy and directly correlates to how successful you are at winning and retaining business. So what should your firm be doing with all of this information? The following five concepts answer this question and are the future of marketing for professional services firms. 

1.    Multiple Marketer Personality (MMP) – I disagree with the philosophy that being a jack of all trades is a bad thing. In today's world of marketing, your career depends on the fact that you must juggle multiple tasks at one time and that you can quickly grasp concepts that you may know nothing about. This complex role of the marketer requires us to have a disease called Multiple Marketer Personality (MMP).

How can you tell if you have MMP? One way to tell is your role requires you to understand, decipher and extract data. One of our past articles talks more about this specific requirement that identifies someone who is equally passionate about marketing and savvy with technology to become the Marketing Technologist. Other key symptoms indicative of MMP are understanding how HR, finance and operations impact marketing. Understanding strength and weakness of employee talents, how communication occurs between client and employee, and the ROI of marketing are critical to establishing a firm’s growth plan. A marketing strategy becomes a pipe dream, instead of a realistic strategy, without a good grasp of these areas.

2.    ‘Necessity is the Mother of Invention’ Says Your iPhone – Mobile is no longer what will happen, it is happening. Having mobile access will no longer be a nice to have, but a necessity. We actually collect and share an infinite amount of information on mobile devices and the cloud is changing the way we conduct business. Can you submit expense receipts or document a new opportunity with a client in real-time on your phone? More and more of our life is on a mobile device and computers are not always available. If your firm is not able to access information on-the-go, you will fall behind your competition. To learn more about mobile CRM, read “Mobile CRM: A Day in the Life of a Business Developer.”

3.    Fusion of Data Tools – What do you get when you have visibility into your entire organization? Inquiring professional service minds would wish to know. Marketing data is so spread out between Client Relationship Management (CRM) systems, website forms, email systems, accounting systems, project management system, etc. that having one place to report is nearly impossible. Moving into the future, firms need to make a conscious effort to connect these autonomous information systems. Marketing automation + ERP integration is the future. Marketing automation tools connect inbound marketing, outbound marketing emails, social scheduling, SEO and lead nurturing. Where ERP connects all business functions, from your Finance, Management Accounting, Project Management, Client Relationship Management (CRM), Human Resources, Inventory and Purchasing. Each can be very powerful alone, but together they become a powerhouse.

4.    Gathering Feedback that Impact Your Client – 65% of a company's business is from existing customers. This means that a happy client equals future revenue, but do you really know what your clients think of your firm? You should and you can. Client feedback tools are changing the way professional services firms manage their clients. Other industries have called them, Voice of the Customer (VOC), Client Experience Management (CEM), and Enterprise Feedback Management (EFM). But professional services firms have different needs and research has found that only 5% of them utilize a customer/client feedback system. Firms no longer have to wait until the end of a project to know that their client is unsatisfied. With client feedback tools, quick two-minute surveys are sent to clients during the life-cycle of the project. This allows your firm to proactively manage your client's expectations by knowing what makes the client happy and also identify things they would like to see changed. As addressed in this blog, “Using Project Feedback to Increase Profitability,” feedback is the key to stopping profitability loss during a project. 

5.    Sharing Firm Knowledge with Social Collaboration Tools – Are you working with a team and still sending out group emails? Stop! Social media changed how we communicate in our private life and it has changed how we communicate in business. Business collaboration tools are designed to ensure that teams work more effectively. No longer do you need to send a group email and worry that you left someone off. Business collaboration tools allow team members to share project related information on one site. They can also be integrated with other business tools, such as ERP and CRM systems, and Outlook. Since business collaboration tools are designed to be user-friendly, they are easy to implement and people are more likely use them. Additionally, business collaboration tools are not just for internal communication, but can also be shared with the client. Interested in how your firm can start utilizing social collaboration, this blog further highlighting the “5 Key Reasons Why Business Collaboration Tools are the Future.”
 
The future of marketing for professional services firms is based on the way we collect, share and use information. Is your firm taking the right steps to get ahead of the competition? Connect with us to discuss more about the future of your firm. 
 
*photo credit: http://www.business2community.com/  

The digital age has revolutionized every aspect of our lives. If you want to know something, simply search for the answer on the internet. Email and social media are now prevalent ways to communicate, and are becoming increasingly effective marketing channels. This revolution has changed how we conduct business. More importantly, the way we market our business evolves daily and has created a new role called the marketing technologist. 

The Impact of More Data

A Forrester Research study found that 96% of CMOs surveyed agreed that the pace of change in technology and marketing will continue to accelerate. As a result, firms cannot rely on mass marketing techniques that provide little return on investment. A wealth of information about your prospects and their level of interest is readily available with the right tools and knowledge. This modern marketing world is becoming more strategic and performance-driven. So with the rise of performance-driven marketing, marketing decisions are based on extremely accurate data. This new era of marketing has given birth to a new breed of marketing professionals known as marketing technologist.

What is Required of a Marketing Technologist?

A marketing technologist is a unique individual that is characterized as analytic and creative. They have a background that is a blend between information technology and marketing. Furthermore, a marketing technologist is the secret to staying ahead the technology curve and your competition. They know how to analyze the data collected from marketing campaigns to gain a deeper understanding of your customers. In fact, they can use this data to determine the level of interest of a potential lead to create a nurturing campaign that guides the lead through the business development process. In addition to creating content and evaluating campaign performance, marketing technologist are tech savvy and understand how new marketing technologies work. This increased ability to collect accurate data in near real-time is the direct result of the digital age and the advent of new technologies.

Why the Growing Demand of the Marketing Technologist

The marketing technology software industry is booming. International Data Corporation (IDC) recently reported that organizations worldwide will spend over $130 billion on software over the next five years for marketing departments alone. Today, having a website and a few social media accounts is the norm for business. Now there is a never ending sea of content management and marketing automation platforms that allows for all types of new creative ways to engage customers. More importantly, these platforms can be integrated with internal CRM solutions to increase marketing effectiveness by:

• Enabling lead nurturing before the sales team gets involved in the sales process.
• Gathering data about potential leads by tracking their web activities, browsing habits, and responses to marketing efforts.
• Prioritizing leads by scoring them based on their recorded activities and recognizing when a lead is ready to be engaged by the sales team.

As more technologies enter the marketplace, the demand for marketing technologist will grow.

The Future of the Marketing Technologist

Even though SHRM, the leading organization for human resources professionals, does not recognize “Marketing Technologist” as a job title, there are job postings on employment websites with similar job descriptions across the country. According to a recent study by Gartner analyst Laura McLellan, CMOs will be spend more on information technology than their counterpart CIOs by 2017. Marketing departments are spending more on technology than information technology departments - that is saying a lot about the future of marketing and is indicative of the future growth of the marketing technologist role. As companies invest more into their marketing technology, having a qualified individuals will be a requirement.

A current trend in many organizations is to closely align the marketing and technology departments to work together as a team. Not because they do not want to hire a marketing technologist, but rather the result of having a limited amount of people to choose from with experience in both marketing and information technology. The title of a recent article posted on Forbes, “The Rise of the Unicorns – Why Marketing Technologists will Rule Modern Marketing” supports this assertion and supports the real growth in the marketing technologist role.