Blurred Lines: Changing Culture Of The Marketing Department

Mark Randall, the director of sales & marketing, Bulletproof, shares his insight into how a Cloud technology culture will help you thrive in a fast-paced industry.

You may remember a time in the not so distant past, where marketing and advertising was a one-way street. Marketers and advertisers would work on their campaign, place their advertisements and prepare for launch.

They’d have billboards, print advertising and TV commercials running and then play the waiting game. Interested customers would come to buy your products, nurtured through your marketing campaign.

That was before technology helped change the shape and nature of not only marketing and advertising, but the media industry as well. So how do companies that play in these spaces adapt and thrive? The answer lies in embracing Cloud technology, but first let’s look at the how the aforementioned scenario looks like in 2016.

If you want to buy a product in 2016, chances are you’ll do your homework. You’ll research online – whether that’s on your phone, laptop or tablet. You’ll compare across different brands; you’ll compare pricing from the brand’s website with external marketplaces like eBay and international websites. Then when you’ve made your decision, you’ll go to the website or store and buy the product.

Underpinning that research is inbound marketing, where you’ll have a suite of collateral and content that drives your customer along the decision making process.

They’ll read some product information, they’ll read a blog, they may subscribe to your newsletter and download a copy of your eBook or white paper. Inbound marketing means people come to you and they’ve basically made their purchasing decision on your product.

How does Cloud technology guide this process?

Cloud technology facilitates companies that work in dynamic industries like marketing, media and advertising. When you think of how Cloud benefits companies: increased performance, ability to scale during key campaigns, performance optimisation, cost savings, flexibility, maintaining uptime – these are all benefits these types of companies crave.

For instance, at Bulletproof we’ve worked with Network Ten to implement a Cloud solution that allowed them to scale at key events, such as their Commonwealth Games coverage or during the Masterchef finale. These events mean they experience short, sharp spikes in traffic, above and beyond normal levels.

Cloud solutions mean that Network Ten is able to scale down once these peaks are over to realise cost savings. With the media industry in a state of flux as it shifts to digital and on-demand content offerings, Cloud also facilitates effective digital content delivery.

This means that they can provide their users with a seamless experience, even during those peak broadcasts.

Importance of speedy delivery

Cloud technology is also about speeding up delivery. That’s where it’s instructive to think in terms of DevOps processes. DevOps breaks down internal silos that exist between Development, Infrastructure and Operations teams and means campaigns, products and services can be released to the market quicker.

For advertisers and marketers, introducing and embracing a DevOps culture means that it doesn’t matter if you’re launching an advertising campaign, rolling out a new content delivery system or creating digital platforms rapidly – increased speed to market and audiences helps cultivate your success.

Leveraging the power in your customer and audience data

For businesses that play in the Marketing, Media and Advertising space, Big Data and Analytics is perhaps the most exciting technological trend. Your organisation is probably gathering terabytes of customer data.

For many organisations, this data is gathered and then it becomes a question of “What next?” This is where Cloud technologies can guide the data analytics process for you and help you get real insights into your customers, viewers or audience including:

What are people listening, watching or reading?

When are they doing this?

How are they doing it – via mobile, laptop, tablet?

Where is your audience? Are they city, regional, rural?

What causes people to drop off from your audience during your program?

How APIs are already helping marketers

For people to gain insights into data and analytics, APIs are an important consideration. You may or may not have heard of APIs (Application Programming Interface), but simply put, they expose information between programs. You’re already using APIs but may not know it, such as when a prospect uses Live Chat on your website or you embed a YouTube video on your website’s blog.

APIs are important for marketers and advertisers because their work closely aligns with the Big Data and Analytics mentioned above, helping turn your customer or audience data into something you can use. They connect information from your apps, website and legacy systems and save you time, money and stress in the process.

While marketers and advertisers are always under pressure to run campaigns, make changes on the fly and adapt quickly, we’ve touched on how Cloud technologies can help add speed and agility to these demands.

With time of the essence and delays waiting for agency, creative or web development not acceptable, having a technology culture and embracing capabilities around Cloud technology, DevOps, Big Data and APIs helps minimise the stress and risk, while increasing speed.

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How does Cloud technology guide this process?

Importance of speedy delivery

Leveraging the power in your customer and audience data

How APIs are already helping marketers

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