The Web Marketer's Dilemma

Shouldn’t running a web marketing program be a piece of cake by now? After all, the profession has matured over the past 10 years and marketing technology is abundant and cheap.

Yet by in large the marketers we talk to are overwhelmed by both the technology itself and the countless options for connecting with customers online. The barriers to entry for successful marketing have never been lower, yet the path to a successful web marketing program feels more daunting than ever.

We call it the Web Marketer’s Dilemma. And it represents both a challenge and a tremendous opportunity.

Technology Overload

In 1999 it seemed everyone had a nephew that designed web pages. Today, that nephew has developed his own Twitter client. There are literally thousands of low cost tools to help marketers succeed online.

Why spend six figures on enterprise analytics when you can have it for free from Google? Why build your own social network when you can extend Facebook into your site? Why install a bulky enterprise CRM when Salesforce.com can be on and ready in minutes? The list goes on and on.

Don’t think marketing technology headaches are only for the enterprise. Even a small company will need to stitch together dozens of tools and online services to run a web marketing program. There is technology that drives e-mail marketing, multivariate testing, bid management, customer relationship management, website analytics, landing page management, blogging, search engine optimization, campaign management and social media. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

The evolution and convergence of these tools are exciting and exhausting all in one. Just keeping up with new technology can be a job unto itself, never mind properly staffing the organization to make it all happen.

Finding the Seams

Wouldn’t it be nice if a single tool could handle all of these web marketing tasks together? Keep on dreaming. In fact, the more vendors try to consolidate and add features, the more convoluted and proprietary the systems seem to become. Companies such as 37 Signals have filled hundreds of niches by offering a simpler solution for a specific task.

So we marketers are left to stitch multiple tools together. In a perfect world, your CMS, CRM, e-mail marketing system and multivariate testing tools should all connect and share data. In this same world, your analytics data should be integrated to give you a single snapshot of visitor activity across all channels.

Yet the path to technology and data integration typically involves six or seven figure projects with some serious tech know-how and elbow grease. Vendors will tout ‘out of the box’ and the reality is usually anything but.

Putting the pieces together is still harder than it should be, but very necessary to run a successful web marketing program.

Wouldn’t it be nice if all the time spent figuring out technology could go toward the actual planning, execution and experimentation of the overarching program?

The Web Marketing Platform of Tomorrow

While the dilemma exists, it’s an unprecedented opportunity for marketers who can put it all together. A clear digital marketing strategy can offer true competitive differentiation online and off. The smart marketer will be able to take all of this loosely coupled technology and turn it into a web marketing platform. A platform that can evolve with the business and the industry.

The right internal team or partner can help develop a strategy that articulates your goals, right-sizes the technology and monitors the results. It’s similar to managing a stock portfolio. You need to be focused with your goals and diversified in the right areas.

How are you dealing with this dilemma? How many different tools are you managing, where do you integrate them and how are you staffed to succeed? Leave a comment with your challenges or successes.