Video Transcript
Rokture Ramblings – Episode 10 – Marketing Not the Golden Ticket
Hello everyone, and welcome to Rokture Ramblings, where I discuss topics around digital
marketing, marketing automation, and marketing operations for the financial services industry.
My name is Fernando Pena, and I’m the founder of Rokture, where I can help you master the digital
channel. And today’s topic, I’m actually going to go a little bit against my introduction here
and talk about something that spans outside of digital. And this is a topic that I call a ostrich
topic. And the reason I say that is because a lot of leaders are not wanting to see reality. And
as a result of that, they stick their head in the sand, almost like an ostrich would, at least
on cartoons, because I’ve never seen one do that in real life. But in any case, today’s topic
is, is marketing the golden ticket? So I’m going to go over marketing hype, marketing reality,
where it goes wrong, how to reduce the impact of obstacles, and also that it’s okay to ask for
help.
00:00:53 Speaker 2
So let’s talk about marketing hype. And this is something that you see every day now. This is
permeating the industry and really something where the promise from different vendors and
experts and just marketing leaders and people who are involved in marketing have a lot of hype
attached to their message. And a lot of that is, there’s merit to it. It is true in many cases.
But I think it’s also selling a lot of the processes and a lot of the successes short in terms of
what it takes to get there. So let’s review the marketing hype. There’s new technologies and
they’ve generated a tremendous amount of fanfare and they have increased productivity. That
is a definite plus and something that as a smaller financial institution, you’re reaping the
rewards of that because now this technology is accessible to virtually anyone. Marketing
automation has helped to improve scalability and also helped to increase productivity. And
also personalization and optimization are now given. So there’s really
00:01:54 Speaker 2
no excuse to not be able to do it, except for the fact that, of course, there’s some challenges
in adopting some of these standards. But again, the technology has helped with scaling, automating
and just helping different efficiencies. Cross -channel promotions and tracking is now possible.
So in the past, there was a digital channel and that was a very strictly defined vertical. There
was an offline channel. And then, of course, there’s a number of other channels that you perform
business in. But it was very difficult to track across them. And now it is easier. It’s still
challenging. And a lot of that is because there are many sort of firewalls between these different
platforms and systems. But in many cases now, especially with cloud -based technology, there’s
a blurring of those lines and you are able to track across them.
00:02:45 Speaker 2
Now let’s look at the reality of what marketing really is here. And that’s that the basic marketing
concept still applies. So regardless of everything that has been introduced and the fact that
we’ve got new technology to make life easier for marketers, there’s still a need to be able to
connect with your audience. And so that reality is sometimes lost. It’s not a formula where
you say A plus B is equal to C. There’s still something that has to take place that helps to convince
your audience and establish that trust. That is not something you can use technology for. The
other thing is that prospects are now more informed and aware. So they have been just continually
pummeled with messaging and they’ve seen every trick in the book tried to apply to them. And
as a result of that, they now have their guard up a little bit more. So it does require more effort
on your part in order to be able to get that message across to them. Now all of these technologies
are great. But one thing that is a
00:03:40 Speaker 2
constant is that they’re difficult to master. Even the easiest one still has a lot of functionality
and a lot more capability than most novice users are willing to learn about. And as a result of
that, a lot of the sort of advantages of the tech are not realized until you have a power user or
an expert at the helm that is able to really drive the potential of that platform and help you
realize its full benefits. There’s also too many options to determine a clear winner. So that
is absolutely a struggle. So you’ve probably all seen that big technology landscape diagram
that shows all the different technologies that are available for marketers. And oftentimes
those technologies span across different capabilities and functions. So you’re just given
a multitude of choices that every single vendor says is the best solution. And so that can be
very overwhelming and something that unfortunately causes a little bit of because you’ve
got different platforms that sometimes perform the same function
00:04:47 Speaker 2
and you’ve got to try to figure out which platform is the best for your intended use case. Last
of all, and as the hands allude to on this picture here, marketing is still very hard work. And
the reason being is that, again, all of these things that I just described, there’s so much more
that is part of the reality. So regardless of how other marketers or experts might say that it’s
very easy to perform marketing today, that’s not really the reality. And it really does take
a lot of research and a lot of testing, learning, training in order to get to a point where you
can see some success in the marketing space.
00:05:27 Speaker 2
Now where it goes wrong. And this is where my conversations and also the work that I do with organizational
leaders turns into something a little bit more than my initial outreach to them. So oftentimes
I’m brought in in order to be able to help with digital marketing. And that is true. That’s something
that I can absolutely help with. But as I peek under the covers in most of these organizations,
what I find is that there’s a lot more at stake and a lot more that needs improvement than just
marketing. And that’s why I say that marketing is not the golden ticket because oftentimes
marketing problems are a symptom of larger organizational issues. And so I’m sort of reclassifying
what I’m doing these days because it’s really to help with organizational growth. It’s really
to help with trying to uncover inefficiencies and trying to create alignment between all the
different teams in order to be able to allow marketing to succeed. So what I’m finding is that
there’s a lot of pre -work that
00:06:27 Speaker 2
takes place before you get to the point where you are starting to market successfully. So where
it goes wrong here is that oftentimes I see that organizations have a lack of strategy and goals
that are defined and accessible to the entire organization. Sounds simple. But unfortunately,
what I’m finding is that a lot of organizations may have goals and strategies in place, but they’re
not well, they’re not something that is observed or actually executed by the different lines
of business. They sometimes those different lines of business have their own missions and
their own objectives, and they don’t always align with what the organization as a whole is looking
to achieve. Speaking of misalignment, so misalignment of marketing and sales, this one is
a big one because there’s sometimes contention between these two groups or not sometimes,
many times, and they don’t really understand what each of them does. And as a result of that,
you get marketing trying to maybe do some of sales work and
00:07:25 Speaker 2
the other way around, and neither one is able to master the other’s skills. So there has to be
alignment and a clear delineation as to who does what and where that process is handed off from
one to the other. There’s operational inefficiencies. So this is something where you can have
the best marketing and the best sales process. But once those prospects are converting into
or those leads are converting into customers, if there’s operational inefficiencies and
that journey has a number of obstacles, then there’s going to be failure there. And unfortunately,
something like marketing will get blamed because you don’t see the conversions on the back
end. So marketing will say, look, I brought you 50 leads that were highly qualified and they
started the application process. And then on the back end, you’ve got just a handful that made
it through. So that’s uncovering something beyond marketing that’s problematic. Inconsistent
customer experience. So you’ve got this marketing message to say,
00:08:20 Speaker 2
we’re the best, we’re the most innovative, we are the most loved. And then your customers go
through the process or your leads do, and they find that this is not at all what I was promised.
So that inconsistent customer experience is a big problem and something that will keep marketing
from being able to succeed. And then I touched upon this as we started this slide, the inability
to define marketing’s role. So that has to be very clearly defined as to what is marketing in
charge of. Are they just a social media outlet? Are they just a part of the organization that
does branding or events? There really has to be a definition that this is marketing’s responsibility
and it spans beyond just digital because it really spans across all different touch points
if that’s what you choose for marketing to do. But it has to be very clearly defined. Otherwise,
somewhere along the line, the ball is going to get dropped and you’re not going to see the successes
that you should be.
00:09:16 Speaker 2
Next, let’s discuss how to reduce the impact of those obstacles. So I talked a little bit about
these in previous slides, but just to reiterate where you can try to see improvements. So first
and most important is to publish and socialize the organizational goals and KPIs. This has
to be very clear because otherwise there’s going to be a sort of misunderstanding that this
is what’s most important to a line of business or the organization as a whole. And so by making
this very clear in the beginning, there’s no question that this is what we’re trying to achieve.
And regardless of your individual function, this is where we have to reach. Clearly define
marketing’s role within the organization. So I mentioned this before. This is something where
we have to know this is marketing’s responsibility. This is where sales comes in. This is where
the operational aspect comes in, etc. Also stop leaning upon technology to fix issues. Use
it as a tool to improve working processes and functions. So when
00:10:13 Speaker 2
something’s broken, don’t immediately go off and buy a new piece of technology. Fix that broken
part of the process. Then introduce new tools as they’re needed when you figure out exactly
where you can uncover some additional inefficiencies. And then make certain that the sales
and marketing KPIs align with each other. I’ve seen this in organizations where, for example,
marketing is trying to push everybody to the web, but now sales isn’t compensated for any web
leads. And so that causes a huge disconnect and problems just all throughout. So make sure that
you don’t have two KPIs that just do not align with each other.
00:10:53 Speaker 2
And the last slide is really asking for help. So oftentimes leaders are overwhelmed. There’s
a lot that I just reviewed in these few slides that is just too much to even consider in many cases.
There are so many more things that you can be doing. And unfortunately, this part of it is a little
tedious at times. So asking for help is not something that you should be embarrassed about or
something that is discouraged. Today’s marketing environment really requires a dedicated
team or individual to realize success. There’s just so many nuances now that marketing is not
as straightforward as it used to be. And now when you introduce technology into it, it just becomes
that much more complicated. I’ve seen a lot of organizations conducting their marketing functions
sort of as a side hustle. And what I mean by that is that they have someone who does a few functions
and then they do some marketing, too. And I think this is just not the right way to go about it.
Unfortunately, it may look like it’s
00:11:49 Speaker 2
more cost effective and that sales can do the job without any help. But in reality, marketing
should be a dedicated function, a dedicated individual or team. And with that, you’ll be able
to finally see some successes. Also, understand that the entire organizational landscape
and developing proven strategy is critical. So what I mean by that is going back to, again, those
realities and obstacles. If you have organizational issues, then marketing is not going to
solve those organizational issues. If you have inefficiencies in a process, again, marketing
won’t solve that. You’ll be pouring leads and money into a funnel that unfortunately is not
going to net anything on the other side. So those have to be addressed and a strategy has to be
built to make sure that that experience throughout that funnel and that lifecycle is ideal
and is able to net some value at the end. And then also advocacy of that strategy is key to sustain
success. So it’s one thing for a leader to say, this is what we’re
00:12:47 Speaker 2
going to do. But unless you execute on that strategy and you advocate it on a continual basis,
then it’s one of those things where it just gets forgotten, where everybody goes rah -rah for
a short period of time and then they just go back to what they know. So continual advocacy is something
that is necessary. And that’s where I think an outsider can really help, where an individual
can come in and try to advocate on that strategy and leverage their expertise to demonstrate
that this is proven elsewhere. Therefore, it’s going to work within your environment as long
as we tweak it and make sure to customize it to your individual customer base and the way that
your organization runs. So this is something where, again, when I look at the type of work that
I do, although it’s focused on digital marketing, in reality, I end up going from a sort of specific
task that I’m trying to achieve to more of a generalist, because a lot of these things do have
to be addressed in order for marketing to
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work and especially so on the digital marketing side, because oftentimes that leads to an offline
experience. So we have to make sure that everything is perfectly aligned to net out that perfect
result. So that’s all for today. Here is my bio and contact information. So if you’re finding
that these challenges are just insurmountable on your part or you just like to discuss your
specific scenario, then please reach out to me. We’ll set up some time to go through where we
might be able to find some potential fixes or solutions for the challenges that you face. Thank
you so much for your time today. I will talk to you the next time. Bye bye.
