The technical tools marketers are supposed to manage can be time consuming and take away from time spent actually marketing. Aniqa Tariq has four suggestions for streamlining their use and getting the most out of marketing teams.

Whether they’re communicating to businesses or consumers, marketers consistently have to cope with more platforms and applications than any other department. They’re required to manage multiple unintegrated data tools from e-commerce platforms to data enrichment services, all of which require very specific skills.

This constant juggle leaves marketers spending too much time managing technology, and not enough time using it to personalise experiences for their customers. No matter how tech-savvy the marketer, disparate applications – and the disorganised data that comes with them – are preventing the majority of the industry from thinking beyond the basics.

Only a fraction of marketers believe the technology they use helps them automatically segment their customers and market to the right leads. Our most recent ‘State of Salesforce Report’ found that 34% of marketers globally utilise Salesforce for reporting or lead routing only, and just 26% of marketers believe their data quality is a competitive advantage or strategic asset.

Technologies have the ability to unite a multitude of platforms, data and channels, to create more personalised and bespoke customer experiences; but companies need to understand how to better tap into their power to bring data and information together, automate processes, and provide insights that support positive experience and drive business outcomes.

So how can marketers enable technology and navigate complexity to gain greater customer insight? Here’s four solutions for marketers that can remedy the issue of complex technology and start driving ROI.

1. IT is key

Embrace the IT department – they can actually be the silver bullet in helping improve marketing ROI. Many organisations are especially guilty of deploying multiple applications with no single platform.

Managing unintegrated data tools is time consuming and requires very specific skills. At the same time, when systems like marketing automation and CRM are implemented and managed in silos, it bars internal teams from enabling a consistent demand funnel.

By working closely with IT, marketers can instead lead integration and data projects that turn their CRM systems into a hub of customer and prospect information. This will unite data into a single, shared CRM platform instead of rendering it useless when spread across many different applications.

2. Become a champion for data governance

Only 19% of marketers believe their company has strong data quality, management, and standards in place, and almost a third of marketers say data quality is an issue. However, most marketers leave data governance to the IT department. If they want to improve, they must be champions for data governance within their organisation.

Governance and an improved partnership with IT will bring together disparate applications and data, and position marketers to get more out of intelligent applications.

3. Embrace intelligent apps

Only 3% of marketers surveyed use intelligent apps – such as ones that anticipate which leads they should market to next and begin the process automatically. Conversely, 32% of marketers reported determining which leads to market to manually, based on historical data from their platform. This reactive approach throws away a huge opportunity to take advantage of predictive and even prescriptive technology that not only suggests which leads to market to next, but recommends the best action to take.

Marketers should demand more from the technologies on which they rely the most to help them make business decisions and optimise their workday, instead of just serving as a glorified historical log.

4. Mobilise your marketing campaigns

The workforce is increasingly mobile, and that includes the marketing department. In fact, 61% of surveyed marketers believe there is a significant opportunity to improve how they use mobile to achieve their goals. The best companies are investing in making tech easier for all employees to do their jobs from anywhere, on any device.

To get more out of the marketing team, the answer is simple – optimise for multi-device, multichannel users so they can spend more time marketing.

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Aniqa Tariq is managing director of Australia and New Zealand for Bluewolf, an IBM company.

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