How Digital Marketing Operations can Transform Business

Summary

Business Development is the creation of long-term value for an organization for customers, markets, and relationships (Scott Pollack from Forbes, 2012). Commonly used metric in business development are revenue, expansion, and strategic partnership. Business Development activities extend across different departments: Sales; will focus on particular market or particular clients, often for a targeted revenue number, Marketing; involves promotion and advertising aimed towards the successful sale of products to end customers, Project Management; decide the business expansion require new facility in the new market, or will all the products be manufactured in the base country and then imported into the targeted market, Product Management; decide does the new market require a customized or altogether new version of the product because regulatory standards and market requirements vary across countries, Vendor Management; determine will the new business need external vendors or will shipping of a product need a dedicated courier service or will the firm partner with any established retail chain for retail sales, Partnership; will define the strategy to enter a new market, will it be worth going solo by clearing all required formalities, or will it be more sensible to strategically partner with local firms already operating in the region, and cost saving efforts. How to prepare business development is plan your career, define what kind of industry that requires your competencies to help you in business development. A digital business requires different processes, like, when we share awareness in traditional with events, advertising, or partners, while in digital, we can use online marketing (SEO, banners) or affiliates. How to do personal branding with; use of professional social media like LinkedIn, ex: what kind of person are you, focus on your strength, your credibility; use networking, ex: future possibilities, and career enrichment. Sample case: Company XYZ has a product or service that already well known and successful in one region (i.e. Indonesia). As time goes by, their Business Development team assesses further expansion potential. They conduct a benchmarking and do a lot of research to some potential region, also begin to define which region has the biggest potential and what are the action plans. After all research and studies, BD team concluded to expand the business to Malaysia.

Abstract

Digital marketing operations involves the application of capabilities, processes, structures, and technologies to cost-effectively exploit and scale the interactivity, targeting, personalization, and optimization of digital channels. Five steps to bring marketing operations into the digital era: the first is Truly Understanding  Customers; tracking, analyzing, and interpreting customer behavior and attitudes should be an ongoing, often moment-to-moment undertaking that is critical not only to targeting and shaping relevant content and experiences but also to optimizing how they’re delivered-an important capability, given that during the buying process consumers add an average of 1.7 brands to those they are considering. One global hotel chain, for example, has combined its customer-research group and marketing-analytics group that reports directly to the chief marketing officer in an effort to better understand its customers. The second is Delivering a Superior Experience; for example, L’Oreal’s Makeup Genius app, it is enabled by complex technology that involves coding dozens of makeup shades, matching them to a near infinite variety of skin tones, then tracking their satisfaction levels after purchase-all of which are analyzed to further refine the matching process and improve the customer experience. As an experience is delivered to the customer, there needs to be a system to capture how that shopper responds and feeds that information back into the organization, which then adjusts its offer or message accordingly, so it happened two-way flow of information and also helps decision makers adjust campaign spending based on trends and opportunities. The third is Selecting the Right Market Technology; marketing technologists, in particular, have a critical role in navigating the ecosystem of more than 2,000 marketing technology providers to create solutions that deliver the most effective customer experiences and marketing operations. An important element of managing a capable marketing-operations function is building a system that has the flexibility to work with large platforms that are becoming more dominant, such as Adobe or Oracle, as well as point solutions that are constantly introducing innovations. The fourth is Implementing Processes and Governance; the failure to establish guidelines for how business units might pilot new technologies, how data will be shared across the organization, or which capabilities will be managed in-house versus by external agencies and partners could result in a patchwork of efforts across the enterprise that sow confusion and hamper attempts to scale. To address this challenge, one global consumer-packaged-goods company rethought its entire approach to bringing a new product to market, beginning with a complete overhaul of the marketing brief, in a way to new approach required every agency involved in the product launch to participate in the creation of the stronger briefs. The last is Using the Best Metrics to Drive Success; as companies become more customer-centric, for example, metrics should focus on customer activity rather than simply product or regional activity, metrics should also reinforce new behaviors and processes, such as how fast a product is launched, and however, metrics need to deliver insights quickly-often in real time-, need to be delivered in a way that is easy for decision makers to understand, and need to be forward looking to identify future opportunities so the business can actually act.

Reference: https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/marketing-and-sales/our-insights/how-digital-marketing-operations-can-transform-business