The job of an analyst is multidimensional. There are days when you’re called in based on your knowledge of a product, or a category. There are days when you’re called in based on your knowledge of a set of techniques or strategies. And then there are days when you’re called in because the client just doesn’t know who else to call. Not because they don’t have a hearty list of contacts on their phone, or a well connected LinkedIn profile, but because they need someone to help them find a way forward.
On those days I feel most like Lucy from the Peanuts gang, though I stop short at the snarky feedback. I’ve got my booth set out, my “the doctor is In” sign hanging, and I’m ready to talk through whatever roadblock the marketer is experiencing. Success in these conversations is marked by my ability to ask the right questions, and diagnose the pain, rather than my ability to provide all the right answers.
We get a lot of these calls from multichannel marketers. Why? Because multichannel marketing is hard. And it’s getting harder. All of the headlines about big data and predictive analytics and right-offer-right-time and customer experience all land squarely in the lap of the multichannel marketer. Not to mention the challenges of global – local or franchise model marketing, which is the topic of discussion on our client portal. Getting the right communication to the right customer at the right time with the right personalization is hard enough when you own all touchpoints…it’s a whole other challenge entirely when a major part of the brand experience is managed and maintained by individuals outside of your direct control, or executed by channel marketers operating in a different silo.
Multichannel marketers on these calls sound beleaguered. And the bigger they see the problem – when the pieces to coordinate feel as numerous as stars in the sky – the more likely their efforts are to stall, or fall short. Their MCCM implementations morph into what we’re lovingly calling “email plus” implementations. They deploy coordinated campaigns across email and mobile, but fall short of other channels, leaving their organization under-served, and any vendor selected (or already in place) vulnerable for replacement.
One vendor in the category mentioned that the organizations best able to climb over the mountain of requirements and find multichannel success are the mid-sized organizations. They may face slightly fewer complexities, but their need to compete based on a good multichannel experience is greater, and every touchpoint must work harder for them, due to limited budget, and lean resources. They don’t have the luxury of turning on millions in ad spend to cover for disjointed experiences – they’ve got to use every asset they have to maximum impact.
Don’t kid yourselves – the plight of the multichannel marketer is not easily solved by the posting of a motivational cat poster. Marketers need to hear from vendors that they are committed to their clients’ success, and they need to see evidence of this in customer references. But marketers also need to recognize that which is hard, and just as if they had no choice in the matter, like the mid-tier enterprise, move on through and do the work.
And in the meantime, hang in there.
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