To thrive in today’s rapidly changing market, it requires a “paradigm shift” that affects every aspect of your marketing. A marketing transformation requires a radical change in the way you even think about marketing.

To succeed, your marketing transformation must go way beyond buying some cutting-edge tech, slapping a cute little chatbot on your website, and calling it a day.

It must encompass your company culture, a complete reinvention of your operating model, a restructuring of your marketing processes, marketing capabilities that can shift with every change in your market, an Omni-channel approach, and to support it all – software as agile as your new organization.

What is a marketing transformation?

Marketing transformation can be defined as the process of using digital technologies to transform your marketing processes (activities). These processes support the following goals: acquiring, growing, and retaining valuable customers.

Which are the 5 core areas that are impacting marketing transformation?

Analysis of your current situation means identifying the existing status of the five key elements that are integral to any technology-driven marketing transformation project: process, people, data, technology and culture. Let’s look at each of those elements.

Process

Consider each aspect of your current marketing process from end to end. Which of tasks are conducted manually and which ones are automated? Could more or better automation help? Inevitably, you’ll identify processes that have become overly complicated or time-consuming (or both) and will benefit from reassessment.

Also break down the marketing process in each channel. For example, is there consistency between the in-store and online experience, or between email and telesales or customer service? Are you hindered by departmental siloes or data siloes? How would integration make things more efficient?

People

After assessing how current job roles contribute to the marketing effort, you’ll likely find bottlenecks and identify skills gaps. Digital transformation brings with it a need for new technologies, and for people with the ability to use the new technologies. How best can you develop people so that they are fit for the roles required while meeting their personal objectives for development?

Most of all, do you have the leadership in place — in the appropriate sectors of the business — to continue to push the transformation forward, enforce new behaviors and champion departmental projects?

Data

Data provides the foundation for all of your decision-making — in your marketing campaigns and elsewhere. At best, poor quality data will hamper any attempts at transformation. At worst, it could be completely misleading.

Identify where your organizational data is held, who “owns” it and how up to date it is. If you are hoping to deliver that seamless multichannel or Omni channel experience that customers like so much, you will have to consider how data flows between your systems.

By analysing the data, you can identify gaps that need to be filled. If there is a skills gap, you can identify early on any training that people need and make sure you have money in the budget to support that training.

Technology

Review the tools you have available and what your existing technology can do for you. How well are your systems integrated and how will the new technology help your marketing transformation? For example, business intelligence, analytics, big data and public cloud systems are some of the most desirable new technologies. These systems are which are capable of providing a single customer view and conducting real-time customer segmentation are among the most sought-after marketing solutions.

Culture

Any marketing transformation initiative must take account of corporate culture and align with wider organizational strategies and the overall business vision. But people are often reluctant to upset the status quo, which makes fostering cultural change often the hardest part of any project that involves deploying new systems and adopting new processes.

Collaboration across the business is key to overcoming resistance to change. By analyzing cross-departmental cultures, you can identify potential points of resistance and plan to either remove the obstacles or navigate around them.

To succeed, marketing transformation projects need to be embraced by the entire marketing team, and they need buy-in and support across the company. This is something big brands have in common: a desire for customer-centricity driven from the top.

Not every project will enjoy top-down support or companywide buy-in, so those pushing for change need to be prepared to take on unfamiliar new responsibilities and develop greater empathy for the challenges faced by colleagues in other departments. However, as the inspirational entrepreneur Jim Rohn once said, “You cannot change your destination overnight, but you can change your direction overnight.”

SUMMARY

In order to meet the modern demands of consumers, marketing capabilities and technology must also evolve. Successfully updating existing marketing technology, measurements and strategies requires an informed marketing transformation strategy that can guide efforts toward better campaign capability. By understanding the crucial areas of focus, brands can optimize their transformation and set the stage for better ROI and increased campaign impact.

Felix Mambondiani is  Marketers Association of Zimbabwe Training Manager, a holder of a Master of Commerce Degree in Strategic Management, IMM GSM Bachelor of Marketing Degree, a Diploma in ICT and a PhD Student. He is an experienced Marketer with several years of practical experience.