THE MOVING WALKWAY TO THE DIGITAL MARKETING HUB

BY PERIANNE GRIGNON

Congratulations. You’re one of the bold ones. You’re thinking of addressing your enterprise challenges with a Digital Marketing Hub.

But how do you get there? Is the Hub right for you? And what do you do when you’ve deployed one? There are three main steps to take on the walkway to the Hub.

Step 1.
The Maturity Model

This is an exercise in which you determine goals and value. Start by asking yourself:

• Where are you today in your digital marketing initiatives?

• What do you need to reach your goals?

• What are the expected investments and payoffs?

• Which success metrics will tell you when you’ve gotten there?

The purpose of this
exercise is to determine
your capabilities and the
level of integration and
synchronization that you’re
seeking. Do you need other
solutions — say, website,
online display media, search,
video, mobile advertising,
or mobile applications like
SMS, call centers, email,
click-to-talk, and click-to-
chat social? Do you need
help with existing display
media, data, or analytics?
You can set a price tag
and calculate the gain —
a lift in ROI and cost
effectiveness achieved
through integration and
taking a customer-centric
approach to marketing.

Choose a manageable jumping-off point — say, an attribution study or a reach frequency study — then set a budget and establish key performance indicators. And don’t move on to the next step until you’ve mastered the last one. The biggest mistake you can make is going for the big bang all at once.

The cost? Traditional enterprise systems require a huge investment in infrastructure: the Hub doesn’t. The Hub platforms are “Software as a Service” (SaaS). You pay for them as you’re using them. And you can scale up as you make your ROI case.

Step 2.
Clean Up Your
Processes

The challenge is not managing the programs — it’s managing the rules that manage the programs. Many things have to be in place before you derive full benefit from a Digital Marketing Hub.

Technology. Find a vendor that can integrate your point solutions and put all the required technology on one platform.

Data. All your actionable
customer data should reside
in the Hub. And it should
differentiate between
customers and prospects.
Make sure that you’ve
resolved your corporate
governance issues like who
owns the data and how it
gets collected and used.