Bridging the Data Divide: The Untapped Power of Integrated Marketing and Customer Data
In the data-rich landscape of modern business, a curious paradox persists. While companies amass unprecedented volumes of customer information, they often operate with a fragmented view of their customers' journeys. Marketing teams track campaign metrics in isolation, while customer experience or service departments maintain separate records of interactions. The result? A disjointed understanding that undermines the potential for truly personalized experiences.
The Persistent Gap in Journey Mapping
Most organizations still maintain artificial divisions between marketing data (impressions, clicks, campaign performance) and customer-level information (purchase history, service interactions, preferences). This separation creates blind spots in journey mapping, where:
Marketing teams see campaign touchpoints but miss post-purchase experiences
Customer service lacks visibility into which marketing messages customers have encountered
Product teams develop features without complete context of acquisition channels
Finance departments struggle to connect marketing investments to customer lifetime value
The persistence of these silos isn't merely an organizational inconvenience—it's a strategic liability that prevents companies from delivering coherent customer experiences.
The Dual-Lens Advantage: Why Both Journeys Matter
When businesses integrate marketing and customer data, they gain a holistic view that reveals insights neither dataset could provide alone:
Enhanced Attribution Understanding By connecting pre-purchase marketing touchpoints with post-purchase behavior, companies can finally answer the elusive question: "Which marketing investments truly drive long-term customer value?" This moves beyond simplistic last-click attribution to a more sophisticated understanding of influence across the entire journey.
Contextual Personalization When customer service representatives can see which marketing campaigns a customer has engaged with, or marketing teams can target based on service history, personalization becomes meaningful rather than mechanical. This contextual awareness transforms generic interactions into genuinely helpful engagements.
Predictive Capabilities Combined datasets provide the foundation for predictive models that can anticipate customer needs based on patterns across both marketing engagement and customer behavior. This anticipatory approach allows businesses to be proactive rather than reactive.
Operational Efficiency Breaking down data silos enables organizations to eliminate redundant efforts across departments. The efficiency gains extend beyond marketing—informing product development, inventory management, and resource allocation.
Defining the 360-Degree Customer Profile
The term "360-degree view" has become something of a business cliché, but its essence remains valid. A true 360-degree customer profile integrates:
Identity Information: Who they are (demographics, psychographics)
Interaction History: How they've engaged (website visits, app usage, store visits)
Transaction Records: What they've purchased (products, services, frequency)
Marketing Exposure: Which campaigns they've seen (ads, emails, social)
Feedback Data: What they've said (reviews, survey responses, support tickets)
Social Sentiment: How they talk about your brand publicly (mentions, comments, shares)
Contextual Factors: Relevant environmental conditions (location, season, economic indicators)
Predictive Indicators: Likelihood of future behaviors (churn risk, upsell potential)
The power lies not in collecting these data points separately but in connecting them to reveal the interplay between different aspects of the customer relationship.
Common Challenges in Integrating Online and Offline Data
Despite its clear benefits, implementing a truly integrated view faces several persistent challenges:
Technical Hurdles
Data Architecture Limitations Legacy systems often weren't designed for cross-channel data integration, creating fundamental structural barriers to unified views.
Identifier Fragmentation Tracking the same customer across devices, platforms, and physical locations requires sophisticated identity resolution capabilities many organizations lack.
Real-Time Processing Constraints Meaningful personalization requires rapid data processing, but many systems struggle with the velocity requirements of true omnichannel integration.
Organizational Barriers
Departmental Silos When marketing, sales, and customer service operate as separate fiefdoms with distinct KPIs, data integration becomes politically challenging.
Skills Gaps Many organizations lack the analytical talent to extract meaningful insights from integrated datasets, even when technically available.
Budget Allocation Conflicts Investment in data integration infrastructure often falls between departmental boundaries, making funding difficult to secure.
Compliance Complexities
Regulatory Restrictions Privacy regulations like GDPR and CCPA create legitimate constraints on how customer data can be integrated and utilized.
Consent Management Tracking consent preferences across channels adds another layer of complexity to integrated data management.
Practical Approaches to Integration
Despite these challenges, forward-thinking organizations are making progress through several strategic approaches:
Technical Solutions
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) as Integration Hub Modern CRM platforms have evolved far beyond basic contact management to become central nervous systems for customer data integration. When properly implemented, a robust CRM serves as the authoritative record of customer interactions, providing:
Unified contact records that marry transaction history with marketing engagement
Workflow automation that bridges departmental processes
Integrated service ticketing that maintains contextual awareness
Custom objects that capture industry-specific relationship nuances
The true power of contemporary CRM lies not in contact storage but in relationship orchestration across marketing, sales, and service functions.
Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) Purpose-built integration platforms that unify customer data from disparate sources provide the technological foundation for integrated views. While CRMs excel at structured relationship data, CDPs specialize in:
Anonymous-to-known identity resolution
Behavioral event processing at scale
Real-time audience segmentation
Cross-channel identity stitching
The most sophisticated organizations leverage both CRM and CDP capabilities in complementary fashion.
Social Listening Integration
Forward-thinking brands are now connecting social listening platforms directly to their customer data infrastructure. This integration transforms scattered social mentions from marketing curiosities into actionable relationship intelligence by:
Mapping public conversations to individual customer records
Identifying advocacy potential among existing customers
Spotting service recovery opportunities before formal complaints
Detecting emerging sentiment shifts within specific customer segments
When social listening moves beyond the marketing department to inform customer experience strategy, companies gain unprecedented insight into unstructured feedback that would otherwise remain invisible.
Unique Identifier Strategies Implementing consistent customer identification methods across channels (like logged-in experiences, loyalty programs, or sophisticated identity resolution) creates the connective tissue between datasets.
API-First Architecture Moving toward flexible, API-driven systems enables more seamless data exchange between previously siloed platforms.
Organizational Strategies
Cross-Functional Teams Creating dedicated teams with representation from marketing, product, and customer service ensures integrated data serves multiple stakeholders.
Unified Metrics Developing shared KPIs that span traditional departmental boundaries encourages collaborative data utilization.
Data Democratization Implementing self-service analytics tools makes integrated customer data accessible to business users across the organization.
How Generative AI Transforms Integrated Journey Analysis
The emergence of generative AI represents a step-change in how organizations can leverage integrated customer and marketing data:
Enhanced Pattern Recognition
AI excels at identifying complex correlations within large datasets that human analysts might miss. By processing integrated marketing and customer data, generative AI can reveal subtle journey patterns and unexpected causal relationships that drive business outcomes.
Social Sentiment Analysis at Scale
Generative AI has fundamentally transformed social listening capabilities, evolving them from basic keyword monitoring to sophisticated sentiment understanding. Today's AI systems can:
Process millions of unstructured social conversations to extract meaningful patterns
Distinguish between casual mentions and urgent service needs
Identify emerging reputational threats before they become crises
Map social sentiment to specific product features, marketing messages, or customer segments
When integrated with structured customer data, this AI-powered social intelligence creates unprecedented visibility into how public sentiment influences individual customer journeys.
Natural Language Interfaces
Gen AI systems can translate technical data queries into natural language, making integrated journey data accessible to business users without SQL expertise. Marketing managers can simply ask questions like "Show me customers who engaged with our social campaign but didn't complete purchase" and receive meaningful visualizations.
Predictive Journey Orchestration
Beyond analysis, generative AI can recommend next-best actions based on integrated journey patterns. This enables real-time journey orchestration that adapts to emerging customer behaviors rather than following rigid campaign rules.
Automated Insight Storytelling
Perhaps most powerfully, generative AI can transform raw journey data into narrative insights that explain customer behavior in business context. Instead of presenting disconnected metrics, AI can generate explanatory narratives that help teams understand why certain journey patterns emerge.
Simulation Capabilities
Advanced generative AI systems can simulate how changes to marketing tactics or customer service approaches might influence end-to-end customer journeys, creating virtual "journey labs" for testing strategies before deployment.
Moving Forward: The Integration Imperative
The competitive advantage of integrated customer and marketing data will only grow more significant as customer expectations continue to rise. Organizations that bridge this divide will deliver more coherent experiences, allocate resources more effectively, and build deeper customer relationships.
The journey toward integration is neither simple nor quick, but it is essential. By acknowledging the current gaps, addressing the challenges systematically, and leveraging emerging technologies, businesses can transform fragmented customer understanding into a genuine competitive advantage.
In a landscape where customer experience increasingly determines market success, the ability to see and respond to the complete customer journey may be the most valuable capability an organization can develop.
Mad About Marketing Consulting
Advisor for C-Suites to work with you and your teams to maximize your marketing potential with strategic transformation for better business and marketing outcomes. Catch our weekly episodes of The Digital Maturity Blueprint Podcast by subscribing to our YouTube Channel.
Citations:
Marketing and Customer Analytics: 8 Integration Techniques - Insight7 https://insight7.io/marketing-and-customer-analytics-8-integration-techniques/
Use Case: Combining First and Third-Party Data - Revelate https://revelate.co/use-cases/combining-first-and-third-party-data/
The Power of Marketing Data Integration: Boosting Business Success https://diggrowth.com/blogs/data-management/marketing-data-integration-for-business-success/
Data Analytics and Market Research: How to Combine Them - Insight7 https://insight7.io/data-analytics-and-market-research-how-to-combine-them/
Integrate Strategies for Best Online and Offline Marketing https://www.digitalauthority.me/resources/strategies-connecting-online-offline-marketing/
Unlocking the next frontier of personalized marketing | McKinsey https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/growth-marketing-and-sales/our-insights/unlocking-the-next-frontier-of-personalized-marketing
The Digital Maturity Blueprint Podcast: A Fresh Perspective on Transformation
In a landscape saturated with digital transformation podcasts that focus primarily on technology adoption, "The Digital Maturity Blueprint" co-hosted between Nav Thethi and Jaslyin Qiyu seeks to offer a refreshing yet comprehensive approach. This podcast series cuts through the noise by examining digital transformation through four critical lenses that most conversations miss entirely.
Breaking the Digital Echo Chamber
Digital transformation isn't failing because of technology - it's struggling because we're treating it like a series of solo performances instead of a carefully orchestrated ensemble piece. This perspective sets the tone for a podcast series that refuse to chase buzzwords or simplify complex organizational challenges.
Unlike some who are fixated solely on technology implementation, The Digital Maturity Blueprint evaluates transformation initiatives through four interconnected dimensions:
Environmental Impact - Addressing the uncomfortable truth that digital infrastructure has significant ecological consequences
Financial Implications - Analyzing the true ROI beyond surface-level metrics
Operational Efficiency - Examining how digital initiatives reshape organizational workflows
Customer Experience - Measuring transformation through the lens of enhanced customer value
Beyond the Technology Fetish
The podcast deliberately challenges the notion that digital transformation is synonymous with tool adoption. As Nav and Jaslyin both think, "Using co-pilot and chatGPT don't really make companies AI-enabled." Instead, they advocate for a more deliberate evaluation framework.
The discussions tackle overlooked realities like data centers projected to emit 2.5 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide by 2030, and companies utilizing only 58% of their martech capabilities—stark reminders that unchecked digital expansion carries hidden costs.
A Framework for Sustainable Transformation
The podcast goes for a structured approach to each topic. Whether discussing customer-centric models, data-driven decision making, or emerging technologies, each episode methodically examines implications across all four impact dimensions:
On environment: How digital initiatives can reduce carbon footprints through optimized operations
On finances: The genuine cost-benefit analysis of digital investments beyond procurement costs
On operations: How transformation streamlines workflows and enhances productivity
On customer experience: The ways digital maturity translates to improved customer journeys
Practical Wisdom Over Digital Platitudes
The authors try to bring refreshing candor to discussions typically clouded by corporate jargon. When discussing chatbots, they acknowledge that “traditional AI chatbot is a great tool but it sucks!”. This balanced perspective—acknowledging both potential and limitations—provides listeners with realistic expectations rather than inflated promises.
The podcast's examination of data-driven decision making exemplifies its nuanced approach. Rather than simply advocating for more data collection, they explore how analytical insights can simultaneously reduce environmental impact through optimized resource allocation, drive financial efficiency through targeted investments, enhance operational productivity through streamlined workflows, and deliver personalized customer experiences through actionable intelligence.
Leadership Beyond Technology
Perhaps most valuably, The Digital Maturity Blueprint recognizes that successful transformation requires leadership alignment. The podcast emphasizes that "digital maturity is not only a tech team's responsibility" but demands "top-to-bottom alignment" with leaders who "drive the vision and strategy, set goals, break siloed efforts, and keep the organization working together for a common goal."
For organizations navigating their digital journey, this podcast serves as both compass and map—directing attention to what truly matters while providing a structured framework for sustainable transformation.
Through thought-provoking questions like "When was the last time you assessed efficiency of your tech stack?" and "Do we have a clear view of our current technical debt and data architecture - or are we building a penthouse on shaky foundations?", we prompt listeners to examine their own digital initiatives with fresh perspective and renewed clarity.
We hope that The Digital Maturity Blueprint ultimately delivers on its name—offering not just inspiration but a concrete methodology for organizations seeking meaningful transformation rather than digital window dressing.
Catch our weekly episodes here by subscribing to our YouTube Channel. Find out more the different episodes available here!
Mad About Marketing Consulting
Advisor for C-Suites to work with you and your teams to maximize your marketing potential with strategic transformation for better business and marketing outcomes.
The Evolution of the 7Ps: Timeless Wisdom in the Digital Age
After decades of witnessing marketing trends rise and fall like tides, one truth remains constant: the fundamentals remain while the methods evolve. In an era where artificial intelligence, social media, and digital transformation dominate business conversations, the 7Ps of marketing—Product, Price, Place, Promotion, People, Process, and Physical Evidence—continue to serve as our compass through the stormy seas of digital transformation and evolution.
The Foundation: Ancient Wisdom Meets Modern Reality
Like a well-designed blueprint, the 7Ps were developed as an extension of the original 4Ps to better address the service industry's needs. Today, these principles aren't just elements of a framework; they're the pillars upon which all meaningful market connections are built, providing a comprehensive structure for developing and executing marketing strategies, regardless of whether you're selling physical products, digital services, or hybrid solutions.
The Digital Metamorphosis of Each P
1. Product: From Matter to Mind
Then: Focused primarily on tangible features and benefits
Now: Where once we crafted tangible goods with our hands, we now shape digital experiences with our minds. Products constantly evolve with each user interaction, encompassing:
- Digital products and SaaS solutions
- Hybrid offerings with digital companions
- Data-driven development cycles
- Real-time customer feedback loops
2. Price: The Art of Value Exchange
Then: Traditional pricing models based on cost-plus or market-based strategies
Now: Pricing has transformed into a sophisticated dance of algorithms, propensity and psychology, featuring:
- Dynamic pricing powered by AI algorithms
- Subscription-based models
- Freemium strategies
- Microtransactions
- Real-time market response capabilities
3. Place: The Infinite Marketplace
Then: Physical distribution channels and retail locations
Now: The marketplace has transcended physical boundaries, becoming an omnipresent reality where digital and physical realms intertwine:
- Omnichannel presence
- E-commerce platforms
- Mobile apps
- Social commerce
- Seamless online-offline integration
4. Promotion: The New Storytelling
Then: Traditional advertising and marketing communications
Now: We've moved from monologue to dialogue, from broadcast to conversation:
- Content marketing and storytelling
- Social media engagement
- Influencer partnerships
- Personalized digital campaigns
- Data-driven optimization
- Community-driven narratives
5. People: The Human-Digital Symphony
Then: Focus on staff training and customer service
Now: Every digital touchpoint must be imbued with human understanding:
- Virtual assistants and chatbots
- Social media community managers
- Influencer partnerships
- Technology-augmented human support
- Community building
6. Process: The Hidden Architecture
Then: Standard operating procedures and service delivery protocols
Now: The processes that once lived in dusty manuals now flow through digital veins:
- Automated workflows
- AI-driven decision-making
- Data and AI-powered customer journeys
- Real-time adaptability
- Seamless integration
7. Physical Evidence: The Digital Gateway
Then: Store layout, branding materials, and physical touchpoints
Now: Every interaction builds trust in an increasingly virtual world:
- User interface design
- Website experience
- Mobile app functionality
- Digital brand presence
- Virtual and augmented reality experiences
The Impact of Modern Technologies
The true power of modern marketing lies in how we weave together four key technological advances:
1. The MarTech Ecosystem
- Marketing automation platforms
- Customer relationship management systems
- Analytics and reporting tools
- Attribution modeling
- Integrated tech stacks
2. The Data Symphony
- Real-time customer insights
- Predictive analytics
- Behavioral tracking
- Performance optimization
- Pattern recognition
- Business and consumer intelligence
3. The Platform Paradigm
- E-commerce integration
- Mobile-first approaches
- Cloud-based solutions
- API ecosystems
- Cross-platform and omnichannel consistency
4. The Social Fabric
- Community building
- User-generated content
- Influencer partnerships
- Social commerce
- Digital word-of-mouth
Looking into the Marketing Horizon
As we stand at the crossroads of tradition and innovation, remember this: while the tools will continue to evolve, the principles remain eternal. The successful marketers of tomorrow will be those who can honor the wisdom of the past while embracing the possibilities of the future.
The future will likely bring further evolution as technologies like augmented reality, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence mature. However, the 7Ps aren't just a framework – they're a lens through which we can understand the eternal dance between business and consumer. As we venture into new frontiers, let these principles be our north star.
The key to success isn't just adopting new technologies—it's understanding how these innovations can be integrated into a comprehensive marketing strategy that addresses all seven Ps in a cohesive and customer-centric way. In marketing, as in life, the more things change, the more we need to stay grounded in fundamental truths.
Mad About Marketing Consulting
Advisor for C-Suites to work with you and your teams to maximize your marketing potential with strategic transformation for better business and marketing outcomes.
Demystifying Digital and Data
I cringe and roll my eyes internally whenever I hear companies talk about how digitally mature they are because they have a nice looking website, are on all the latest social channels and have adopted a dozen of MarTech tools but not entirely sure how they are measuring success or what they are truly trying to achieve.
Being digital goes beyond just a nice looking website, be on all the latest social channels and buying all the fancy MarTech tools so you look like you are at the forefront of digital adoption. It’s also to avoid creating a data and digital dumpster.
Yes, there is such a thing as too much data and digital tools.
On the flipside, there is also such a thing as over reliance on one single platform/tool, person or process to try and help you make sense of the data you have or enable your business.
“Wait a minute”, I hear you say. “What am I supposed to do if both scenarios are not ideal?.”
I was recently inspired to write something about this after attending a few forums speaking about digitalization, data analytics, Gen AI and MarTech.
It depends on a few factors:
what are your objectives for using this tool or platform?
what are you trying to achieve and what insights are you trying to gather with the data collected?
how does the tool and data help you achieve your objectives?
what are you current processes like that will either hinder or enable you to fully utilize the tool and data collected?
what are the current skillsets and mindsets of your people that again will either hinder or enable you to maximize the tool and data?
what matters most when it comes to choosing the right tool?
what matters most when it comes to analyzing the data collected?
have you tested other tools serving a similar nature and what are the test steps you have used?
how are you collecting your data, storing, managing and analyzing it? What do you do with the insights gathered?
understand the pros and cons of multiple tools/platforms versus single tool/platform and their impact on your objectives and desired outcomes.
Some companies have chosen to stick to certain tools because they have invested a lot of time, money and effort on it despite it not meeting their needs. Some companies have chosen to over rely on just one or two people to be their so-called power users and are almost at the mercy of these folks.
Both scenarios create what we call bad behavior almost like a bad relationship where you know deep down it’s not quite right but you are so entrenched it feels like you need to live with it. What happens then is they abandon the tools bought or underutilize it (especially in the first scenario) and buy yet another tool without first understanding what is it that is not working well.
The other possibility is to hire an expert to either train your users or join your company and end up being at their mercy especially if you as the function or business owner doesn’t have a clue as to what you are trying to achieve, what the tool is capable of and its limitations, and how you intend to sustain the use of the tool if your needs change.
The way I prefer to work and advise my clients have always been to really deep dive into their pain points, current processes, people capabilities, business and marketing objectives , outcomes they want to achieve and how they want to measure success.
If I know for sure that there is a more effective platform or tool to help them achieve what they need, I will not hesitate to advise them to bite the bullet and consider another tool. Likewise, if I know the issue is not the tool but their current lack of knowledge or a gap in their processes, then I will work with them on addressing that gap instead.
A critical part of change management is mindset and behavioral change, and enablement of the people with the right skillset, supportive processes and therefore cultivating a supportive mindset to adapt to the change.
There is no one-size fits all, so what matters more is to be open to learn about different options available out there, not just what you are comfortable with or what others are using.
Psst - For data analytics, there are - tableau, amazon quicksight, power bi, looker, qilk, apache spark just to name a few commonly used ones. I have my personal favorites but it depends again on the factors I mentioned above.
About the Author
Mad About Marketing Consulting
Ally and Advisor for CMOs, Heads of Marketing and C-Suites to work with you and your teams to maximize your marketing potential with strategic transformation for better business and marketing outcomes.
Everyone Loves Some Data But…
The million dollar question is - what exactly do you want to get out of the data?
Everyone has been talking about data for a good decade or so and depending on your level of data maturity, you are either still trying to find where are all of your data sources are located or you are now trying to monetize the insights gathered from your data.
Woe to you if you’re in the former bucket but no surprise many organizations, especially non digital native ones are still sadly in this bucket. Wow to you if you’re in the latter bucket, so what can you do to monetize it?
Customer data platforms, data management platforms and customer relationship management platforms suddenly became the talk of town thanks to Google’s flippant stance on third party cookies, that kept rolling back and back. Companies realized their archaic customer data collection methods and storage methods (often just in excel spreadsheets (horrors!)) are not quite cutting it.
Some are even confusing the whole customer data terminology and what it means when we talk about cookies, first party data, third party data and personal information level data. Some have all but sitting in silos or disconnected platforms that don’t talk to each other while others have none (more horrors!).
Some used to think a good data visualization and analytical tool is the holy grail to get all the answers they need by simply plugging it onto of their so-called data sources. But they soon wonder - how to plug, what to plug, where to plug and why can’t it just be plugged and played?!
Things like:
is the data clean, updated or accurate?
is the data in the format that is even retrievable., extractable or readable?
do you even have the data sitting where you thought is sitting?
is your data even categorized in the logic, classification and format that is aligned with your decision-making algorithms?
million dollar question - what exactly do you want to get out of the data? What is the truth that you’re after?
If these were not considered before your so-called plug and play approach, then you get a ton of data yes and a ton of outputs yet but hardly any useful insights. You get more of what we call, data outputs in a format that looks like you just downloaded a gigantic excel spreadsheet or a bunch of fancy looking graphs to make you feel good about some visually appealing data formatted in a presentable manner
E.g. you might see things like:
xx customer transactions performed over xx period
xx customer spent over xx period
That is still not data insights, it’s just data outputs telling you how many transactions and spent over a certain period of time. What are you going to do with that without other insights around:
who are these customers in terms of their interests and life stage needs and what is the co-relation between this and what they are spending versus not spending on?
what did they exactly spend on and why that might be the case?
what are their other needs and what is the possibility for that?
what else have they spent on and why that might be the case?
are they spending more or less on the same products/period and why that might be the case?
The difference as you can see is in terms of the why and the co-relation between the transactional data and the rationale behind it.
We first need to know what it is that we want to see and how that will help us to better understand our customers’ behavior or potential to engage more with us. It helps to have these in mind, and then work backwards to derive what we then need to have in terms of data types and sources in order to arrive at the desired insights.
It’s equivalent to knowing what is that treasure you’re seeking for so you know which location, treasure map, equipment, skills, knowledge and coordinates to get there.
So, do you know the treasure you’re after?
About the Author
Mad About Marketing Consulting
Ally and Advisor for CMOs, Heads of Marketing and C-Suites to work with you and your marketing teams to maximize your marketing potential with strategic transformation for better business and marketing outcomes.
The Case of the Misunderstood MarTech - Concept of “Power Users”
There was once a bakery who was trying to get better at creating more pastries for their increasing customer base at a more efficient manner, including pastries on demand and that can accommodate different dietary preferences. They had a head baker who is also the owner of the bakery, 2 baking assistants, a cashier, 2 servers and 1 marketing person who also oversees pop-ups at designated customer events.
One day, a baking supplier introduced them to this state of the art baking oven that seemed to be everything they have ever wanted; customized settings allowing for tailored dietary needs, self regulating temperature control to avoid burnt pastries, pre-set recipe function so they can just choose any setting easily, pop in the ingredients and get their key pastries all done without having to keep referencing the recipe list each time they bake.
The supplier said the best part of this new oven is that anyone can be a baker and everyone should learn to be a baker using this oven. However, the training comes at an additional cost though they will be accredited as professional xx oven practitioner after that, which apparently is a very prominent accolade to have in the industry.
The head baker was over the moon at this prospect that she can get everyone to chip in and bake even more pastries in a shorter time that way since they can just use the preset functions moving forward. She insisted that everyone needs to be trained, pass the test and get certified, else they will get penalized in their performance review.
However, many of them soon realized that it wasn’t that easy to be certified as it does require some baking knowledge, experience and even appreciation. This resulted in a few of them having to take up certain baking modules that were added as part of the entire “package” sold to the baker by the vendor. That’s not all, if they fail the test, they need to pay and retake the test again. The entire training, test preparation and certification took each of them 4 to 6 months at varying speed, depending on their appetite and aptitude to really learn all the modules and be able to pass the test.
During this time, things started to fall into pieces.
The head baker managed to pass the certification herself. So did her baking assistants. The cashier, servers and marketing person however struggled to cope while trying to do their current jobs as efficiently as possible.
As the baking assistants became very good with using the oven to churn out pastries, they also ran out of ingredients faster than usual but as they were so obsessed with using this new technology, they then asked the head baker to help with getting the ingredients faster so they can be loaded into the oven. Initially the head baker thought why not but soon she realizes it’s not practical as she, herself can also use the oven and she wants to be the chief designer to design new baking recipes to fully maximize the oven. Thus, she then delegated this task to the cashier, servers and marketing person to help instead, adding to their level of stress in trying to cope with yet another additional ask.
Eventually, it led to chaos as everyone was in the kitchen trying to prepare ingredients, use the oven and essentially be a baker, which was the vision sold by the supplier; no one was serving, taking orders, getting payment or promoting the bakery. Customers started complaining about this lack of attention as queues started forming not for pastries to be ready as they were all piling up in the kitchen but for them to be ready, packaged, displayed, served and to even make payment. Some of the bakes also became quite inconsistent in taste as it depended on the non bakers to prepare the original ingredient list when the assistant bakers were too held up baking. This led to bad reviews of the bakery for its service, poor maintenance of the shop front and inconsistent quality.
Yet, the head baker was still trying to recover the cost of investment on the oven and training modules as well as test modules to be able to hire more people to help. Worse, business became impacted and sales were dipping, which then led to unconsumed ingredients and pastries going bad. Frustrated, the bakery owner blamed the oven and decided to sell it; the supplier agreed but persuaded her to go for another newer model that has an added function of doing ingredient quantity forecasting to solve her problems instead. She was tempted yet again as she thought that was the cause of her problems.
This is not a piece about ovens, the baking industry or even pastries. It essentially is an observation I made while helping companies to review their MarTech stacks and/or implement their MarTech adoption process.
Just as not everyone is a Baker and should be a Baker in that story, not everyone should be required to use the tool in the exact same manner and level. There are job roles and expertise for a reason and a good one. Whoever is designated to maximize the use of it to benefit the rest of the company, should be your power users, your expert users and your most certified users. There should be different levels of users who should then be trained to use the tool differently so they can reap the most benefit out of the tool to in turn, benefit the rest of the company and your customers.
Remember, before you blame the tool, look instead at your original purpose, objectives and what you were trying to solve for with the tool.
About the Author
Mad About Marketing Consulting
Ally or Advisor for CMOs, Heads of Marketing and C-Suites to work with you and your marketing teams to maximize your marketing potential with strategic transformation for better business and marketing outcomes.
The Case of the Misunderstood MarTech and more…
Has marketing technology, content marketing and need for customer driven insights changed all that much in the last 4 years since I first wrote this post in 2020?
In 2020, I observed that companies were moving into Adobe experience management as their go-to content management platform. Come 2024, I am still experiencing some late bloomer companies especially in the content marketing game, now only moving into Adobe experience management or AEM for their content management platform in a bid to get ahead of the game in personalization of the customer experience and engagement.
They will soon be in for a surprise as AEM alone will not differentiate them from their competitors who are doing the exact same thing or have done the exact same thing as it’s after all a technology and a platform. It is merely an enabler but not the solution itself.
It doesn’t negate the need and the fact that it still boils down to having insightful and forward looking content that is useful to their customers. It certainly doesn’t negate the need for them to first have a close connection with their new and existing customers in order to know what kind of content matters to them above all the noise in the market. It certainly doesn’t remove the fact that you need a robust content pipeline to feed the hungry beast of a machine to fully maximize its capabilities especially in organic SEO and to supplement your SEM strategy.
That unfortunately is still a missing piece in lots of companies. Why is it so hard to get that thought provoking viewpoint? Why do so many so-called subject matter experts still behave and think they know it all when the truth is, they are merely regurgitating facts and what others are already saying or just passing the content strategy buck to their agencies? Why are companies who claimed to know their customers, not asking them the right questions in order to help them get the right answers?
Another common mistake is when companies don’t really know the full potential of a particular technology, including MarTech or marketing technology that they have and what they are investing in next.
What then happens is they start shopping for the next latest technology without first reviewing and fully understanding what they already have, how it’s being used, who has been using it and how it else it should actually be used. Often times, you’ll find the technology is perfectly fit for purpose but being used either by the wrong people or the wrong way. In addition, the existing organizational structure and culture might also not provide an ideal process of supporting its use.
But instead of changing that first, they start looking at the next big thing, adding to the mess of integration, implementation, adoption and usage problems that their employees and sometimes customers need to deal with. This leads to stack bloat.
4 years on and stack bloat is still a problem; in fact it has worsen and will continue to as even more MarTech tools get added to the market.
Therefore, instead of blindly investing in all sorts of MarTech tools and platforms, companies should also make sure they have the right objectives, people, processes and plans in place to fully maximize the capabilities of the MarTech. Else, they will end up with yet another white elephant and a misconception that it wasn’t a good enough technology. A case of the blind leading the blind is anything but fine.
Same goes for having the right expertise in who they hire to be thought leaders, spokespeople and making an effort to invest in getting consistent feedback and sentiments from both customers and prospects alike. This is to avoid an echo chamber situation, which is common in hierarchical organizations.
Ultimately, companies who wish to embark on their MarTech journey especially to better support their content marketing efforts need to look at it holistically and not cut corners on doing the needful. Start with your customers, then be clear with your objectives and then plan with a view to buffer for the what, who, where and how in terms of tools, processes and people in your organization.
About the Author
Mad About Marketing Consulting
Ally for CMOs, Heads of Marketing and C-Suites to work with you and your marketing teams to maximize your marketing potential with strategic transformation for better business and marketing outcomes.