There's no question that companies across the board are slashing their advertising and marketing budgets. In fact, a recent research report from the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) cites that 77 percent of marketers plan to reduce their advertising campaigns' media budgets.
As CMOs, marketing VPs, and distributed marketing managers grapple with declining ad budgets, growing attention is being placed on technology platforms that drive costs out of marketing and make it easy for distributed marketers to develop ads targeted to a particular customer or prospect. The right technology means a consumer in Portland, Maine, will get a far different message from one in Portland, Oregon.
Timing is everything
Marketing asset management (MAM) is one technology that helps enable marketers to send the right message to the right person at the right time. It leverages the data from CRM; the knowledge of business intelligence; the creative materials and campaign timelines from MRM; and the communication needs from customer onboarding and lead nurturing. MAM meets the demands of consumers who want to be engaged, not interrupted.
It wasn't long ago that advertising and marketing were all about interruption. As you watched your favorite TV show, marketers interrupted you with messages. Print ads begged for your attention and radio ads interrupted your listening. Outdoor boards interrupted your focus. A stack of direct mail awaited you at your mailbox. You get the idea.
Campaigns often included integrated brand positioning and coordinated creative messaging across different mediums. Whenever possible, these messages included calls to action designed to drive the desired consumer behavior. For decades these interruptive tactics alone were effective.
Engagement-based marketing
Yet as most corporate marketers are painfully aware, the effectiveness of historically strong interruptive tactics is plummeting. It would be easy just to blame the proliferation of DVRs and a multitasking audience. But it's not that simple. What marketers face today are consumers who won't stand for interruption tactics. They want marketing to be on their terms, and on their timeline.
That's a tall order; it's not something a marketer can fix with stronger creative messaging, more innovative positioning, or additional ad space. Instead, marketers must engage in real-time, meaningful one-to-one dialogue with consumers in a consistent and brand-compliant manner using an ever-expanding breadth of advertising mediums.
Not even the best collection of ad agencies can effectively meet this challenge. No army of production artists can assemble content fast enough. But technology can.
Drive ad costs out and effectiveness in
Marketing automation technology like MAM reduces the delivery cycle of ad materials by replacing inefficient processes that were previously dependent on human labor and automates them, saving a tremendous amount of time and money. Campaigns that used to take days, weeks, or months can be executed by distributed marketers in minutes, with corporate retaining complete brand control.
In these tough times, brands wanting to reduce ad costs while driving new revenue to the bottom line should consider marketing automation technology that makes advertising easy, effective, and most important, more engaging. Because everyone knows it's rude to interrupt.
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About the Author: John Thomson is president and CEO of Saepio Technologies. Contact him at 877.468.7613 or jthomson@saepio.com.