Do you have the right marketing tools?

In this ever changing marketing landscape it is not surprising that most of us don't have the marketing tools we need. If we look at the marketing technology landscape put together by chiefmartec.com, how could we?  Scott Brinker has a great free download book called A New Brand of Marketing that explains some of this landscape and decisions we need to make as marketers.

A report by Ascend2.com is very interesting as it shows  that very few of us have all the tools we need and fully utilise them. So what activities are we doing? This is in part of the problem. The channels we use now to market are expanding and so the tools we need to create marketing and measure there effectiveness have also grown. This in turn has increased the applications that need to integrate to give one picture of lead generation and the customer. A big data problem?

Yes but also a marketer skills gap. You don't just walk out of a uni marketing degree knowing how all of these marketing channels work let alone the technology options to execute them. I guess the key from my perspective is to start by understanding your audience and what marketing is going to best work to engage them.

Then slowly develop the tools that you need to execute. If you are on every social platform it is going to be hard to manage. Maybe pick two and do those really well. For b2b probably LinkedIn and Slideshare, for Retail, Facebook and Twitter. Integrating a CRM and email software is a must have and if they don't integrate try a tool called zapier.com to connect them. 

The place where I spend the most time is in metrics so make sure you have an easy to read dashboard where you keep all the feedback from your website data, email and social so you can continually improve your marketing. Tools like Hootsuite to schedule social and following best practices in marketingprofs and social media examiner also allow you to fast track your learning. If you don't know something or you want a recommendation try LinkedIn groups and associations.