Don’t count on it. ROI in advertising and marketing was even a concept back in the 1960’s – the period that AMC’s hit series Mad Men takes place.

It’s a popular show because Mad Men strikes a chord with viewers for being factually correct with bad manners prevalent for the period: womanizing, especially by Sterling Cooper’s Don Draper; desk side chain smoking; lunch cocktails and office parties; and, the agency’s struggle with how to harness the power of the newest marketing channel: color television.

I’m sitting on a plane somewhere over the Atlantic working feverishly to close Q4 business while working on marketing strategy and its complementary partners of marketing plans, budgets and financial management, and spend plans. I know I’m not alone in my focus or quarterly sprint. I had the opportunity to meet with several of our customers in London at our EMEA Customer Conference and I know they shared with me that they are doing the exact same thing right now.

What did I do before Aprimo and the “Single Source of Truth”  marketing software that enables us to inspect and analyze what this year’s spend was and how it performed to drive our business?  I remember all too well what I did. I muddled through 36 versions of PowerPoint decks,  flipped and paged through volumes of Excel Spreadsheets that in the end – probably brought down at least two trees. Sigh.

 
I know I’m not alone. Just this past couple days I listened to other marketers representing the largest companies on the planet talk about how they use our marketing software to truly do more with less. It, coupled with the continued optimism that 2010 will bring us better business climate, makes up the juggling act of annual planning against quarterly results.

 
So guess what? In the end – that means I have time on the plane to write this short blog and contribute to our 2009 social media strategy that I’ll then load into our digital applications that help us manage and monetize blogging. 

Are you alone with your spreadsheets or your blogs? Which ones will drive more interest in your products or services? Let us know if you want to join the marketing innovation going on at Aprimo.

I have been learning a lot about marketing automation software and I will be the first to say as a marketer from a different world, I see the merits of it in streamlining effectiveness and creating great marketing efficiencies. I have a MAJOR gripe though! If you are reading this blog post the day it was published, then it is October 6. I am on the open sea on a Carnival cruise ship - no! that is not my gripe! My gripe is that due to all of this automating...I was "afforded the opportunity" to work ahead and keep my blog new and updated. With the instant gratification of social media marketing - how can you afford not to?

The days of "when I return from vacation, I'll get right on that" don't apply anymore. Marketers have to be bionic - work at the speed of light to front load content so companies don't skip a beat. The beauty lies in the return from vacation - software automation has pushed you to work ahead so your company doesn't miss a beat and neither do you.

For you marketers out there who think your company may fall apart if you aren't there churning the daily grind - perhaps marketing software automation is your answer!
Consider it paying yourself forward so you aren't buried when you return.  Speaking of buried, I had better go hit the sand!
 

I am a proud new parent of not just one, but two teenage girls.  Sixteen is their age and incredibly demanding is their rage.  Talk about changing your mind as often as you change your socks.  The worst is when I can't ever seem to find them - especially in this day and age of technology and multiple software applications - you think it would be a snap. 

What kills me, is the fact that they can't answer their phone, but they can text on the go, read blogs and post on facebook and twitter almost simultaneously.  They are truly the social media experts. Just think about what the savvy marketer is going to have to pull out of their interactive marketing bag to attract this group! Do you think the approach will be specifically online marketing?  I'm not sure about that. But what does scare me is the statistic I saw, 'online' that stated that in just nine months Facebook had one million new users, but it took the Television, 15 years to achieve the same thing.  Yikes!

Back to my daughters.  No, they can't remember to leave me a note on the counter telling me where they will be or leave me a voicemail so perhaps I need to go online and get a 'wall' that they can comment on, that way, I too, will become a social media socialite. 

How do you keep in touch with your kids?? Post it to my wall - ha!

About two years ago, my wife and I entered another phase of life - empty nest.  Just to clarify, our second of two headed off to college and wasn't looking back.  Our first was entering his senior year with grad school in his sights.  So, we were staring a very quiet house in the face.  Now, I don't want to say that my wife and I were celebrating this event.  in fact, we really enjoy the company of our sons and were lamenting this loss. 

Fastforward two years....during the first year and part of the second year we ended up welcoming a friend into our household that was going through some tough personal problems (a divorce).  This was good for us and helped transition us to the actual quiet time.  During the first summer, our sons returned home and we added two cats to the mix. During the second year, we experienced a fair amount of the empty nest so our jobs consumed much of the empty space. Now we have gone through another summer and one son stayed at school and the other graduated from an intense one-year business degree focused on Financial Management.  Needless to say, the job market is decimated, so he is still with us and studying for actuarial exams. 

So, what's my point (you should be asking)?  Marketing is just like our life...hard to predict and full of unexpected surprises (some good and some not).  For this reason, you need to be constantly tracking your marketing finances from an overall perspective so you know what money is spent, what is promised and what is forecast.  How else can you know how to react to new opportunities (Social Media Marketing), new competitive moves (product launches), needs for the sales pipeline or economic changes?   It's hard to find automation
that will help you deal with life's unexpected changes, but marketing automation software can definitely help a marketing operation stay swift on its feet.

There is a debate raging (well, at least in my head - which happens more then I care to admit!) on whether the web will turn out to be a channel or "the" channel within marketing across the majority of business types.  Understanding how the web has influenced buyer behavior for your business has serious implications for the modern marketer and the marketing software they will require.  This understanding will change the way we view the role of search engine management, organic search, social media, landing pages, email, and more in the context of our overall marketing mix.

The most dramatic difference causing a change in buyer behavior, in my opinion, is the radical reduction in the cost of research the web has facilitated.  What would have taken a staff of researchers months to pull together 20 years ago, can now be done by the average buyer in less than 10 minutes using search and the web.  This simple fact has caused a sea change in buying behavior.  The modern reality is that virtually nothing is too small or too inexpensive not to be researched.  If it takes me a few minutes to make a better decision, why not spend those few minutes on the web and research that decision?  Today's buyer is much more educated about their purchases because the barrier to that education has been radically reduced via the web.

For marketing, we must go where our buyers are present.  Our buyers, in mass across the globe, are going to the web because the instant, global, and diverse information it provides has given them the power to educate themselves at extremely low costs.  For many of us, that means we must meet the majority of our future buyers on the web or we risk never meeting them at all as they climb the education curve around our products and offerings.  That, to me, provides the basic recipe for why the web will become (or has become) "the" critical channel for many of our businesses regardless if we sell our products directly on the web or not.
 

Most CMOs I know have recovered from the roller coaster ride of the last 12 months and are casting an optimistic, albeit cautious eye toward 2010.  But, have our organizations fully recovered?  What lies in store for Marketing in the last quarter of 2009 and more importantly -- 2010?

You don't need an MBA or a degree in rocket science to predict more of the same -- tight budgets, tight resources and  BIG expectations to help lead the way for measured growth and a return to shareholder value.

However, is it time to consider a degree in Social Media Management, New Media or even Interactive Marketing?

It's time throw out the old playbooks and carve out exciting new roads.  2010 is not only about executing social media programs -- but monetizing the effort. It's about innovating the art of marketing with the science of software....online and offline. 

2010...Ready or not...here it comes.