Marketing Power Tools – Building efficiency through effective use of power tools

In the same way that two men using power nailers can roof a house in less than a day versus a week using manual hammers, our clients utilize LiveTechnology’s platform of marketing power tools to take cost, time, and hassle out of the process of managing large advertising production management tasks such as ad localization and versioning.  That said, in the same way that construction power tools have specific designed-in capabilities and are sized for the job at hand – so it goes for marketing automation.  In this issue, we take a look at how to evaluate how your organization could benefit from using LiveTechnology’s “power tools”.

A simple process:

When you boil down the process of getting an advertising or marketing message into the marketplace, it really comes down to three simple steps:

• Create/Ideate:  In this process, the message is ideated, created, written, shot, recorded, etc.  Typically this function is performed by creative services departments at either agencies or within companies.  At this step, people think of the idea and then execute it into something that can be used in the second step.
• Production:  Production is the process of synthesizing the output of the creative process into something that can be consumed by the third step …
• Media and Manufacturing:  Media and Manufacturing is the process of utilizing the output of the creative and production steps to deliver the message to the intended audience.  This includes media outlets and channels such as newspapers, websites, magazines, TV stations, direct marketing and more, and includes manufacturing processes such as POP, printing, and more.

The process is relatively efficient and capital-intensive at the ends of the process – and has lots of room for improvement in the middle.

A Question:

Our clients often call us intrigued by the concepts and then struggle to apply them until we help them define how to judge whether or not you need “power tools” in your marketing.  The question always is “Well, how do I know if this is going to work for MY company?”

The Answers:

Don’t you love it when someone answers your question in the form of another question?  The answers lie the questions you should ask yourself when considering the question “do I need marketing automation at my company to help build efficiency in our marketing process.”

1)      Do you have dealers/stores/sales reps/franchisees that sell your brand?

2)      Do those selling your brand at the transaction level use your brand in marketing?

3)      Are those selling your brand locally using your brand correctly?

4)      Do you have directly-owned distribution or is it two- or three-tier?

5)      Do you frequently run advertising in multiple newspapers or print publications on the same day?

6)      Do you have the need to target your ad message to those receiving it?

7)      Do you run online advertising where the message is targeted to either the location or demographic of those viewing the site?

8)      Do you source-code or in some other way, uniquely identify your advertising and marketing materials for the purpose of tracking?

9)      Do you have your agencies create multiple versions of the same thing for any possible reason?

10)   Do you have the need to share your brand’s assets and information with partners or other entities?

Just saying “yes” to a single criteria means you should take a serious look at utilizing marketing technology to build efficiency in your marketing efforts.  Like the use of power tools, using marketing technology application like LiveTechnology’s LiveRetail and LiveMarketer products shouldn’t be done unless you’ve given serious consideration to the job at hand.  But, with a well-founded business case, and well understood marketing needs, marketing automation technology can save up to 90% on the cost of marketing versioning and localization, reduce cycle times by up to 75%, increase advertising accuracy to a rate far greater than what can be achieved manually, and finally, increase your distribution network’s satisfaction with your brand.

Conclusion:

Like a power saw or a power nailer, using marketing automation tools like LiveTechnology’s products, needs to be considered carefully.   But, given the right set of circumstances, the results can be stunning.

~ Stewart Campbell,