Dr Frankenstein created a monster. He never imagined it would go, rogue. The same happens with brands in the digital world. Trending conversations, Influencer marketing, Social enigma goes out of control. Whether you are selling a Boeing or a Burger, you are no more a King once your target audience has found a monster taking over. In the burger brand, someone without brand knowledge and a certain Emotion level inevitably wrecked the social conversation.

No, we don’t have a bias for burgers over pizzas.

In another case, a well-known pizza company : ) the social editor posted a deal via curated images: pizza + cheesy dip + garlic bread + cola can and of course the discount. 4 shots of different sizes at different angles. The pizza had sauce on it (yuck!), fries slipping off the tray (untidy), a glass of soft drink (the offer was on the can) and a crushed paper napkin. The post had more than 30k negative comments out of 45k in just 30 min 😉 Did the brand understand the error, or they thought people didn’t like the deal?

Will you depute someone to perform surgery on your hand (brand) if he hadn’t been to a medical (brand) school. If yes, that is a Marketing Horror.

43% of data from marketing activities don’t connect across sales-marketing data. CRM – Social Media – Email marketing – Influencer marketing – analytics is a fragmented marketing approach in isolation.

These technology mistakes by a small business not only hurt their investments but their customer relationships too. You may not be even knowing; Dr Frankiestien’s monsters might be brewing right under your nose. How? Read On ~

Content Monster

You ask the wrong question to Agencies if you ask How many pieces of content you will create. Instead, ask them (to ask you) how much you can invest in populating/spread the content. You don’t have to create new content daily. It would help if you worked on getting the content you already have in more people’s hands. Eventually, content spreadability is the outcome you can’t predict.

A simple but powerful marketing automation tool like HubSpot can help you post, track, analyse your social amplification and reach, including organic and paid.

Remember:

“If a technology isn’t adding strategic value to your business, it is removing value from it.”

Martech slavery or evasion

Stay the Course thinking vs Adopting a shiny new toy -both are poor decisions. You choose to do nothing because you don’t know what to do means you are a step behind. If you adopt a shiny new gadget from the PR Buzz, you didn’t fill in the big picture. Technology mistakes by small businesses are primarily due to emotional decisions. Avoid creating a tech monster via emotional or brand luring decisions.

Introduce a dual operating system in your organisation. When architecting your business as Digital First, establish it based on proven technologies and guiding strategy. And develop the agility to test newer and innovative technologies.

“People make technology decisions for reasons that have little to do with the technology. They make political decisions, emotional decisions. They make decisions because of some allegiance to a brand.”

Influence technology decisions for non-technology reasons.

IT vs Sales & Marketing, who commands the marketing technology – The constant disconnect between IT and sales & marketing drives irrational decisions at both ends. Your Martech choice should balance the two elements, facilitate the customer experience and support marketing strategy execution. A marketing automation tool is only good if you see through it your objectives.

Marrying Technology! What if you need to divorce tomorrow

Defining your business problem in terms of technology need is a sure failure. “Your lack of a scalable way to interact with contacts is a business problem; marketing automation tools like HubSpot could be the execution channel.”

“Martech slavery or evasion both are hazardous”

Once you have picked the technology, before you sign up, have an exit plan ready. Build loosely coupled integration initially. At the same time, seed in the exit for the future. Think about the possibility of change.

Consider your Marketing Technology Problem as a process issue, take corrective actions first around people, process and then use technology to automate, measure and scale.

If you have implemented the best CMS, best Programmatic Ad Platform, best Marketing Automation and CRM platform, probably you haven’t implemented Digital Transformation holistically. You don’t want a joint family with separate kitchens cooking their recipe.