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Welcome to the The Marketing Source e-newsletter! Our goal is to
provide you with real-world marketing tips that you can put right to
work in your organization or business. If you have any ideas for articles,
please send them along.
Information Technology and Marketing: Friend or Foe?
Information Technology (IT) and Marketing are like oil and water --
the two just don't mix; truth or fiction? Truth is that it doesn't have
to be that way, but often the two departments speak in different languages.
A Real Example of a Marketing/IT Tangle
A marketing manager calls IT and asks for a simple report. IT bombards
marketing with technical questions and complicated explanations concerning
database management. IT tells marketing that the report will be ready
in what seems to marketing to be equal to the time it will take for Haley's
Comet to next be seen from earth. Frustrated, the marketing manager wonders
if it would've been easier to complete the report by hand.
The flip side, when the IT person gets the request from marketing for
a "simple" report, he/she sees a need for data from three different
sources, requiring hours of hands-on time. The marketing manager has
neither a clue about the other priorities and projects IT has on its "to-do
list" nor the cost of completing this project.
Simply put, IT and marketing have different roles and goals. Communication
frequently gets lost between the two departments and the two often remain
at odds.
It Doesn't Need to be a Battle
Listen up all you marketing and communication directors and managers
out there in the universe, YOU NEED IT. Failing to forge a good relationship
with IT will leave you frustrated and nowhere when you hit a roadblock
out of your expertise and within theirs.
Five Ways To Create A Better Partnership With IT
1. Make IT part of your team.
It may be a service department, but don't treat IT like a vendor or a
unit that isn't important. IT can bring technical expertise and information
to your project. If you have regular marketing meetings, IT should
be there. They can learn about what you are trying to accomplish, and
offer up their skills in helping to carry out your goals. They can
provide realistic solutions to potential problems with your campaign
and help you work within your system's capabilities.
2. Get educated.
If you are truly customer focused, you'll be evaluating results, analyzing
data on customers and looking for trends. To do that well, you need a
good, consistent reporting system and a way to improve your system. IT
can help with that. They need to understand your criteria for results:
what kind of data you look for and how you use it. Explain exactly what
you are looking for, and you just might find IT has some ideas for doing
that better or faster. If you educate yourself on basic methods and technology,
you'll be able to communicate more effectively with IT staff about your
wants and needs from them.
3. Everything can't be a rush.
Marketing generally likes to move quickly, but even with your CEO breathing
down your neck, every project can't be an emergency. Have a brainstorming
meeting once or twice a year with IT to let them know what might be coming
up and what types of projects you are working on. Cluing IT in on what
you are planning for the next six months to a year could give you some
timesaving advice, and showing some respect for their scheduling and
time might make them more willing to help you if something unexpected
does come up. If you are planning a large internet campaign, you should
make sure your system is equipped to handle the hits and you are gathering
the right information from your customers. Give IT time to do a little
planning and thinking ahead, and even your rush projects won't be such
a headache.
4. Send the jargon packing.
While marketing people use some technical words and phrases, it pales
in comparison to IT jargon. Don't let your meetings and discussions disintegrate
into a technical discussion that leaves you totally perplexed and requires
more meetings. Insist that IT's descriptions and explanations be in terms
you can understand. Hint: ask for diagrams or pictures. Even if you have
to go through a point several times, better that you understand it now
so you can make the best decisions for your project. People think and
communicate in different ways; make sure you are speaking to your IT
staff in a patient and respectful way and they will be more than willing
to explain to you what you need to know about how something works, or
describe the advantages of using a different kind of technology.
5. Get your hands dirty.
You can't expect IT to handle all your technical needs and decisions.
We recently sat through an incredibly painful meeting that involved going
item-by- item through a database in preparation for creating an analysis
of customer demographics. We could have just told IT to give us an outline
of the data included in the database, but we would have missed several
important things. As it turns out, the sales people who input the data
were skipping over any fields they didn't need to make the sale. That
was okay for the sales transaction, but not for an extensive data analysis.
Without our joint review with IT, we wouldn't have known important demographic
information was missing. It's essential to get involved with technical
needs and decisions when you are working with extensive data reporting
and when hiring outside web or technology vendors. They will appreciate
your involvement if you rely on their expertise and experience in making
decisions that affect their involvement on your project. Leaving all
the details up to IT isn't just unfair; it leaves you in the dark about
critical marketing issues.
Bottom line: It isn't always easy, but cultivating a relationship with
IT could be a powerful boost to your marketing strategies. You'll be
able to make the most of your data and of the technology available to
you to better understand, reach and communicate with your customers.
And that is what marketing is all about.
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