Today, websites are more than just visual tools conveying a company’s personality, goals and services. In this digital era, a website functions as a company’s “catalogue”, main brand and messaging platform, major transaction point, and the first point of contact for the vast majority of customers, prospects and competitors alike. For some, it goes further still with the website becoming the central publishing, content and communications platform for the entire organisation.
With technology powering best practise across social media, cloud and mobile technologies, the lines between marketing and IT are becoming more and more blurred. Modern campaigns require a strong online presence that makes them highly dependent on IT. No wonder Gartner predicts CMOs will spend more than CIOs on IT by 2017.
The definition of digital marketing excellence is constantly shifting and it’s no longer enough for marketing departments to be solely business focused. The CMO and marketing team increasingly need to be savvy across multiple disciplines, including technology.
When the tech can’t cope with marketing success
There are many examples of highly successful marketing campaigns overwhelming the technology infrastructure that is supposed to facilitate them; great commercial opportunities very quickly turn into PR nightmares. This is where a broader technology perspective can help marketers, and where technologies such as cloud hosting come into their own.
For instance, music and entertainment festivals face extreme peaks and troughs in traffic to their websites, particularly when line-ups are announced or tickets go on sale. The cloud-based Managed Service Provider (MSP) approach migrates website operations off-premise to the cloud, allowing capacity to be added on a temporary basis. In practical terms, marketing teams such as the one running Bestival can increase web server capacity to match key points in their calendar. They don’t have to make a capital outlay on technology infrastructure that is only ever used at peak times.
By using an MSP that can deliver flexibility on a commercial and technical level, companies that experience these peaks in traffic are able to maintain quality of service at crucial times, with minimal notice. The company therefore gets the best value out of their infrastructure, marketing departments can continue to innovate and customers always get communication and service availability. Once the traffic has calmed, the capacity can scale back down to its usual levels, saving money, time and headaches.
Cloud-enabled marketing
Marketing excellence is by definition, creative and innovative. The MSP approach to hosting website operations in the cloud provides the ability to run websites smoothly whatever the size and complexity of the content it displays. Marketers and web developers can create fantastic applications on company websites, however it is vital to be aware of the technology gap between creative developments and the performance ability of infrastructure. Hosting websites through a MSP allows in-house IT departments to develop innovative functions without the worry of supporting infrastructure, which can sometimes be a hindrance.
Technology limitations are increasingly a concern for marketers who want to see their campaigns delivered with maximum effect. Considerations such as security, digital performance and compliance are becoming more frequent topics of conversation in and around marketing teams. This underlines the idea that as IT performs an increasingly vital role in customer engagement, communication, sales and conversion, the lines between marketing and technology are breaking down.
It is vital that companies continue to be innovative in the way they blend marketing excellence with technology know-how, and lead from the front to maintain customer interest and market validity. Websites are central to the success of a brand and are invaluable in promoting achievements, services and goals. This capability means that marketers need to continue to evolve their understanding of the technology choices open to them. Look at it this way; imagine if industry analysts were predicting that CIOs were going to spend more money on marketing than CMOs in two years time instead of the other way round? The CIOs would be expected to broaden their marketing knowledge considerably, use the latest best practice ideas, and to keep up with industry trends.
With 90% of technology spending in 2020 predicted to be driven by departments outside IT, the already massive impact of tech on organisations, employees, customers, partners, suppliers, stakeholders and especially marketing will continue to grow. The best CMOs and marketing departments of the future will be the ones that embrace technology, seek ways to make it work for them and do so much more than muddle through with tech.
By Campbell Williams, Group Strategy and Marketing Director at Six Degrees Group.
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