Marketers have also waded into unfamiliar technical waters. In other words, marketing technology and data analysis have upended their profession. Most marketers are still trying to wrap their heads around the complexities of technology and trying to separate hype from reality. Hence, there's a real fear of failure.

Perhaps most frightening of all, the majority of marketers don't really have a plan. They're making reactive marketing tech decisions rather than strategic ones. In fact, Forrester says only 44 percent have a clearly defined and deployed digital strategy.

The bottom line: Lots of scatter-shot marketing dollars hang in the balance, while returns may prove to be elusive.

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Want to get a leg up on the competition in your marketing efforts? Read these 10 quick competitive advantages for modern marketing...

Digest...

1. Lead scoring

2. Measured mobile expansion

3. Lead nurturing

4. Account for multiple buyers

5. Align content to stages of the buyer’s journey

6. Document your content strategy

7. Use video in content marketing

8. Analyze your marketing data

9. Integrate your marketing technologies

10. Get customer-centric

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Description...

With complex sales cycles often extending into years, maintaining long-term relevance requires both strategic planning and dynamic adaptability. Digital Relevance provides the techniques and advice marketers need to match content to context and respond to constantly shifting markets. Author Ardath Albee supplies the necessary tools for looking beyond the outdated campaign approach of one-off, unrelated buyer interactions. She outlines clear-cut strategies for developing customer-oriented communications, identifying the distinct value that differentiates your company, and making the shift from singular communications to a continuum approach. Digital Relevance also provides insights for ensuring that data and metrics are used to relate programs to the achievement of business objectives. Through engaging case studies Albee shows marketers how to create brand stories that can be used over time in order to ensure continued relevance, engagement and progression toward buying. 

Adapting to a continuum approach, observes Albee, takes a shift in mindset and reinforcement to ensure it becomes a natural part of approaching marketing strategy. Digital Relevance responds by offering practical solutions for organically integrating this important method into your approach. Albee's 'Relevance Maturity Matrix' will help you understand the levels of transition and what it takes to move from one level to the next.

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What does the Managing Digital Transformation guide cover?

The guide is structured to help step you through the process of reviewing current approaches, making the case for change and investment and then managing this change. The 7 recommended steps for digital transformation are:

Step 1. Proving the need and making the case for transformation
Step 2. Benchmark current digital marketing capabilities
Step 3 Define the best structure digital marketing activities and process
Step 4 Define resourcing requirements
Step 5. Change processes to support digital integration
Step 6. Manage change for digital transformation
Step 7. Optimising performance across integrated channels

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Digest...

Consider one of the most common workflows that MAPs and CRM share: lead nurturing. Lead nurturing is often based on the automated enrollment of an individual into a pre-set series of communications (emails). A person may be enrolled into a nurture marketing program in a variety of ways, including when a value changes in their record from the CRM system.

There are many other examples such as…

•  Weekly/monthly product updates – Drip Campaigns

•  New client onboarding communications – Nurture Programs

•  Client Satisfaction Surveys – Landing Pages/Surveys

•  NPS (net promoter score) Tracking – Surveys

•  Customer events – Event Management

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Digest...

Integration and customer profiling are the biggest roadblocks to digital marketing success according to a new study called “The Contemporary CMO’s Toolkit 2.0” by 451 Research which casts a contrarian eye over a sector otherwise known for its gimlet eyed view of progress.

Almost 70 per cent of those they surveyed say digital marketing is importance, but only 18 per cent are actually utilizing digital marketing systems according to the study. 

Among the key findings of the report:

-For digital marketing to be successful, it needs to be successfully integrated with sales and customer service operations. It needs to offer customers a consistent and holistic experience.

-Integration with sales and customer service operations is rare in larger organizations (where digital marketing adoption rates are consistently higher), and there is typically a poor overall customer experience and lack of a unified strategy regarding customer service and sales.

-Vendors of newer digital marketing technologies based on social media and advanced analytics should lower expectations based on buying patterns in 2014. Most buyers are still focusing most of their digital marketing efforts on email campaign management.

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