Digital Marketing Moving More In-House

In my previous blogs on the GenX CMO and the Agency of the Future as a Marketing Solutions company, I described how the new Gen X CMOs are taking over at a younger age, they are more hands-on, tech-savvy, analytically oriented and financially focused than ever before.  They are more likely to demand not just creative and media-buying from their ad agencies, but also strategy consulting, process improvement, software development, systems integration and predictive analytic services as well.

But most importantly, they are more likely to do more in-house, with their own people and with licensed SaaS software and new kinds of analytics.

These predictions from last year are already coming true, as evidenced by the new CMO Council Report which shows that  “Clients are Building New Internal Skills, Deploying Marketing Performance Platforms and Improving Campaign Effectiveness and Outcomes.”

The Financial Times covered the report in a story today about how “Skilled Clients Pose a Threat to Ad Agencies.”  In a great quote from that article:  “You’ve got to look at the difference between the ability to create nifty interactive campaigns and actually having customer data, which underpins everything today. That data resides in the enterprise,” said Donovan Neale-May, executive director of the CMO Council.

Covario provides best-of-breed SaaS solutions for reporting and analytics and also action-oriented software for PPC, SEO, Display Media and soon will be releasing a Social Media module to its award-winning Marketing Action Platform.

ACTIONABLE INSIGHT 1: Demand best-of-breed software and analytics for your role, from front line paid search or SEO managers all the way up to the CMO:   CMO dashboards , analytics and automation have traditionally been viewed as add-ons to CRM or BI (business intelligence) solutions.  Only in the past couple of years have true Marketing Automation, Marketing Resource Management, and Interactive Marketing Analytics software and platforms become available.  Some software is more “transactionally” oriented to automate routine tasks like ad serving, ad trafficking and media buying,   Some software is more analytically oriented for gathering, analyzing and communicating large sources of data.   Forrester and Gartner are great sources of information about all the new software packages available for marketers.

ACTIONABLE INSIGHT 2: If you do use an agency, make sure they are software-savvy:  Digital marketers in any discipline often rely on the creative or execution services of their agencies and judge them as such.   More frequently, we are seeing RFPs include a focus on the software solutions their agencies use, and what they provide for client use.    Make sure your agency is leveraging best of breed solutions for their own efficiency. More importantly, make sure they are providing real time transparency into ALL of your digital marketing data that you need to do your job and communicate your results around the organization.

ACTIONABLE INSIGHT 3: Partner across your own organizations for success:  The most surprising development I have noticed in recent years is the rise of two new positions in large company structures—“Marketing IT” and “Marketing Finance.”  The Marketing IT manager is a new role that lives inside the CIO’s organization and works with the marketing function to help select and support the new best of breed platforms for any marketing discipline.  The Marketing Finance manager tends to be part of the CFO’s organization and is different than traditional Purchasing.  While Purchasing helps negotiate RFPs and licenses, Marketing Finance is more around budgeting, forecasting and planning, and helping establish the true ROI of campaigns.

As CMOs attempt to do more in-house and push their agencies to develop new skills and technologies, it will be critical for digital marketers to be ahead of the curve on new technologies for your own use, and to partner not just outside your organizations, but inside as well.

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