Are Your Marketing Expectations Unrealistic?

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In this episode of the B2B Marketing Mindset, we discuss marketing technology: what it is, how to use it, and when to use it.

Customer Relationship Managers, Attribution and AI (Oh my). 

Some businesses insist on jumping into the deep end of the proverbial marketing pool without making sure they’re in a position to actually utilize the tools they want.

Marketing technology has come a long way, and can be incredibly useful, but if you don’t do your homework, you’re just setting yourself up for failure.

A few signs you’re not ready to use Marketing Technology:

1. No Clear Marketing Strategy – Fundamentally, technology of any kind is a tool, something used to execute a plan, not a replacement for strategy. If your business lacks a clear strategy and specific goals, you have nothing to work towards. You need to know what metrics you need to measure before you start worrying about how to measure it. 
2. You Aren’t Already Using Analytics (properly) – Simply having Google Analytics set up isn’t enough, you need to be actively monitoring it. A bunch of loose data points doesn’t help you. This does tie back into point #1, your dataset needs to be analyzed through the lens of your marketing plan.
3. No Marketing Expertise In-House – Is marketing a core capability of your company? If the answer is “no,” you’re not ready to implement more complex tools. Don’t try to just “wing it”.
4. Your Data is a Mess – You should be able to explain your raw data and how it’s organized to a child. No one’s organization system is perfect/works for everyone, but client information shouldn’t be scattered across several half-baked spreadsheets that only the author can read. Keep it together, concise, and legible. 
5. You Can’t Afford It – The more you measure, the more expensive it gets. If your marketing is struggling, there’s better things to invest in than just throwing large chunks of budget at studying every minute detail. 
6. Short-term Focus Over Long Term Strategy – This is not to say that the short-term is fully irrelevant, but when it comes to more complex marketing, it takes time to aggregate data and see how it changes over time.