The New “Marketing Technology” LUMAscape Underscores the Complexity of Evolving Your Internal Technology Marketing Platforms

At Just Media, we have the pleasure of working with a variety of marketers across a multitude of industries: B2B Tech, Consumer Tech, Healthcare / Life Sciences, Financial Services, Human Capital Management, Energy, etc. However, they all face the same challenge – evolving internal marketing technologies to optimize, measure and track the flow of users from inquiry/interest through revenue generation. Only a select few have it nailed. In looking at the new “Marketing Technology” LUMAscape, it’s easy to see why. It’s simply overwhelming, some might even say depressing.

And guess what?  Internal marketing technologies are just the tip of the iceberg. It doesn’t take into account all of the equally daunting 3rd-party marketing technologies that deliver bigger and better ways to target users through outbound marketing. For that, have fun navigating all of the other LUMAscapes. Yes, there’s Display, Search, Video, Mobile and Social, just to name a few.

It’s a tall order. As a first step, most companies are focused on simply aligning their 1st-Party Data through Web Analytics, Marketing Automation and CRM/Sales Automation platforms. This enables companies to track inbound users through to sales pipeline and revenue generation. Very cool.  As a start. But there’s still the missing piece of 3rd-party outbound marketing campaign data.

Most marketers are only tracking outbound campaigns through last-click data. “Oh, they came in from Google Search, so that must be the only place to invest our marketing dollars.” Wrong. What about the trigger that drove them to search in the first place? To really do effective campaign measurement and analytics, companies need to look at the full impact of their marketing investments and measure this 3rd-party data with their internal 1st-party data. This is what will allow you to make the most efficiently optimized use of your precious marketing dollars. Again, not an easy task.

Even more depressed now? Don’t be. Leveraging marketing technologies is an evolution and not a revolution. And you’re not alone. Start with the basics. Yes, you must align your automation and sales platforms. You must have some level of user/lead nurture. But as you’re doing these, setup a proper methodology for aligning your outbound campaign data in conjunction with your internal data. This will allow you to test, optimize, repeat what works on a tactic-by-tactic basis, whether you’re using traditional publishers, lead generation platforms, data targeting techniques, social advertising or even native content marketing.

If you don’t feel you can do this alone. Find partners. Seek advice. And that doesn’t have to cost you money. Heck, we’ll share Just Media’s campaign analytics methodologies for free if you want to see our “Technology in Marketing” tour. But this isn’t about us. It’s about the evolution of a market and setting a foundation of knowledge exchange.

Crawl, walk, run.

Again, you’re not alone. Put a smile on your face. This stuff isn’t as cool as curing cancer, but better than a slap in the belly with a cold fish.

Hey, we even think it’s fun!

Brandon Friesen
Just Media, Inc.