Web 2.0: A mixed blessing for marketing?

Web 2.0 is a double-edged sword for marketers - offering new opportunities but also demanding an effective integrated strategy. Marketing resource management could be one solution to this dilemma.

By Marcel Holsheimer, Unica

Just when marketers are starting to get a handle on the additional work needed to manage channel fragmentation and addressable media, they’re now being asked to explore blogs, online communities and other elements of Web 2.0 for their campaigns.

On the one hand, it’s exciting stuff. Instead of just blasting consumers with mass advertising or somewhat targeted direct marketing messages, marketers can now use digital marketing and Web 2.0 to engage in the more artful practice of building communities and letting consumers carry marketing messages for them. This interactive, ‘word-of-mouth’ approach can be a more effective way to do marketing and also puts the creativity element back into the marketer’s job.

On the other hand, it also means more work! The need for traditional marketing approaches hasn’t gone away, and neither have the increasing day-to-day demands on marketing organisations from senior management, internal customers and external partners. Finding the time to navigate an effective integrated marketing strategy that includes Web 2.0 seems at times like the proverbial quest for the Holy Grail.

Many organisations are embracing marketing resource management (MRM) software to help streamline their marketing operations and to better coordinate their activities across all channels.

MRM software provides marketers with the following:

• Increased efficiency: MRM helps marketers to plan and budget activities, manage day-to-day operations and track status and performance. This leaves time for them to get creative, explore new channels and develop that elusive Web 2.0 strategy.
• Flexibility: MRM allows marketers to be more nimble in the changing marketing landscapes. Online and interactive campaigns can quickly become obsolete and constantly need to be adjusted and reworked. Capturing marketing plans and budgets in an MRM system puts the most up-to-date version just a click away from everyone’s fingertips.
• Visibility: MRM improves collaboration around planning and execution, even when blogs, Wikis and social networking are added to the marketing mix. This is key to finding that Holy Grail of integrated cross-channel communications!
• Effective measurement: MRM holds all of the information necessary to make better marketing decisions in one place, so activities are no longer conducted in a vacuum with no knowledge of their outcome.

The increasing popularity of digital marketing and the expansion of the internet as a viable channel for campaigns has led to the evolution of MRM technology, as well. For example, rather than needing to review, mark up and approve primarily printed creative materials, internet marketers need to be able to review live web sites, banner ads and flash video, inserting notes and comments as part of the collaborative process.

In addition, internet marketing tends to be a highly distributed undertaking, with hardly any companies handling all internet duties entirely in-house. As a result, to serve as the central collaborative platform for everyone involved in marketing, MRM systems now need to be accessible by anyone, anywhere, regardless of whether they’ve got access to the corporate network or an easy path through the firewall.

MRM vendors recognise these new requirements and have moved to address them. And so, with the help of MRM, progressive marketers today are able to take Web 2.0 in stride, still get all their work done and confidently ask: “Next?”

Marcel Holsheimer is vice president of marketing for Europe, Middle East and Africa at Unica.

Other articles in this focus report:

• The market for marketing software


• The secrets to successful emarketing


• If you aren't using analytics, you’re not really marketing


• Marketing software in action


• Marketing software vendors