The most obvious driver of dysfunction or inefficiencies within a marketing organization is misaligned goals and incentives. The clearest and most common example I run across when working with clients is the user experience vs. online marketing battle. You may not know it exists, but if you do any business online it most likely does.

Here is a quick way to see if you have a problem that may be gating your success:

1. Is there a group or person who is responsible for designing, building, and updating your company’s website?
2. Is there a group or person who is responsible for acquiring, cross-selling & retaining customers online for your brand?
3. Are these TWO separate people or groups?

In some organizations IT is still responsible for the website, in many others there is a “specialized” group who is responsible for user (I hate the word user) or customer experience and who may or may not leverage IT to heavy technology lifting. Most companies have grown past the first scenario of IT solely owning the site and have brought in some sort of customer experience function in house and I commend them for that.

Where that plan breaks down is marketing. I strongly believe a website today is a marketing platform not an online brochure, and certainly not simply an online application. Consider your physical RETAIL space, and your virtual RETAIL space obviously have some differences, but they typically have one common goal RETAILING.

In the physical world the facilities group does not have “full control” of the store, there is more to the store than carpet, wallpaper and plumbing. There is no mistaking that it’s all about making those cash registers ring and putting smiles on customers faces. You have security issues (remember Winona Rider). You have complex systems like inventory management, terminals, servers etc., but you never hear “Keep the marketing department out of our turf…this is beyond them”

This will be the first of a long list of post dedicated to discussing how we should redesign the traditional marketing department. It’s no secret that CMO’s are dropping like flies from many organizations, frankly because the old proven tactics are just simply not as effective anymore. Companies are crying for new blood in marketing, but it’s right under their noses. Management says “we need more accountability for our marketing dollars, we need to embrace more robust analytics, we need to be more nimble, and we need to relate to the new consumer”.

Consider this, not so long ago the interactive group was not so popular. They have had to fight for every dollar, they have embraced technology, and have been doing a lot more with less. They have grown past “telling and selling” and have learned how to have “marketing conversations” with your customers. We all know message integration is key, and every one in your marketing department should leverage these new channels. Putting an old school marketer in charge of interactive is like giving a toddler the keys to your car either useless or dangerous, while giving a great email marketer direct mail is child’s play. Consider where your next CMO should come from.

Lets get right to it. I think the concept of an interactive shop has a shelf life. Somewhere between 3-5 years is my bet. The reality is all advertising will run on technology eventually, and eventually is unfolding right now. The new CMO, and his or her whole crew will know how to market across channels. Every single product manager, every analyst, the media guy even the janitor on the marketing floor understands you have to use more than direct mail to do the job now. Yes, I said the marketing floor because there will not be an “interactive department”. That would be a silly concept, it would be like saying the folks on this side use email, and the other side of the floor still uses paper and a fax machine for everything. This new marketing floor will need an agency partner. It can’t be a one-dimensional interactive shop, and it certainly wont be the “two martini lunch” Madison Avenue shop of old. It will look like something new.

Let’s face it most people by now get it, they get the concepts behind media and creative optimization. They know all about multi variant testing, advanced targeting and eCRM. They understand how to better assess ROI, they sometimes get some of the interdependencies between channels, and some even know how the technology behind some of this stuff works.

What’s surprising to me is how few of these smart people actually practice any of this on a regular basis. I have some thoughts why they don’t … it’s hard work.

The operational aspect of this new marketing world is a bitch. It took people years to learn how to get an ad in the paper without screwing it up. Back in the day I remember type setting by hand, then came film, line screens, separations, blue lines, crop marks, bleeds, and registration marks. Then it got easier for us, but you still needed to learn about Postcript, Syquest and Zip Disks, and don’t forget to embed those fonts. With direct mail you had to lean a bunch of rules around, weight, insignia etc.

In hindsight that was all child’s play compared to what it takes us to pull off a campaign today. Just walk through all the steps, vendors, and technologies you would have to involve to trigger an email offer to a customer based on what they were browsing for on our website in real time. If you could answer that I’m impressed, if you could pull that off in less than 3-4 days in your organization you should win a marketer of the year award.

That should actually be easier than it is today for most marketers, and it can be if you focus on getting the plumbing right. What does your marketing technology ecosystem look like? Have you focused on the data that these investments can potentially empower you with, or have you also thought though the operational workflow for you and your team? What good is knowing that if you changed this message TODAY it could yield another million bucks in revenue, to then learn it will take you three weeks to make that bloody change?

Optimizing thru spreadsheets is so five years ago.

The downturn of many “once great” companies can be attributed to simple ignorance. This particular form of ignorance is a product of arrogance, the arrogance to think, “we make products or services that people want” when they never bothered to ask their customers if in fact the still wanted them.

Consider how the mighty have fallen. Not too long ago every corner Mom & Pop video rental shop was put out of business and replaced by a blue and yellow phenomenon called Blockbuster, there was one of these bad boys in every corner. Again not to long ago we can still picture these guys in their boardroom boasting about how they ruled the world. Then this little thing called NetFlix happened. They obviously did not see it coming, at least not until it was perhaps too late.

The point I want to make is that they should have. There is really no excuse. You don’t need a crystal ball for this, all you need to do is pay attention. Shifts in consumer behaviors don’t happen overnight, but you can always count on the fact people change.

Companies spend an ungodly amount of time and effort keeping tabs on what their competitors are up to. It’s amazing to me how little effort they actually spend understanding their customers.

This week was “bring you Son or Daughter to work” week. It occurred to me companies should institute a new holiday – and it should be scheduled everyday.

If I have not made my point here are a few more clues – The newspaper industry, the music industry, the airline industry, and buggy whips!

No more surprises  - declare today – “Take your customer to work day”