John Wanamaker was a U.S. businessman and marketing pioneer in the early 1900s. One of his famous quotes is, “
Half of advertising works, half does not. The problem is I don’t know which half. ” Much has changed since then. Today, thanks to an increasing number of analytic tools and a greater onus on marketers to demonstrate advertising’s impact, we know a lot more about the impact of our tactics, often in real-time. Nowadays, we still agree with John in that only half of advertising works. However, the big difference is that we finally know which half works!
To help make sense of marketing and MarTech in the Human Capital Marketplace, the newly formed
HR Marketing Institute has initiated one of its first pieces of research:
The State of Marketing in the HR Industry: Leverage the Viewpoints of Suppliers to Boost Success Rates.
One of the questions we asked was “What Kinds of Marketing Technology (MarTech) Are Being Used?”
Finding 1: CRM systems are the most commonly used marketing technology
Behind almost every marketing initiative is one or more technology applications, many of which were not around a decade ago. As in most other functions, technology is fundamentally changing the way we market and sell. The array of available solutions promises improved marketing productivity, driving either efficiency or an uptick in sales. (In fact according to
ChiefMarTech.com the number of MarTech solutions has grown by over 460 percent in 8 years.)
CRM technologies represent the most commonly used MarTech (78%). These are often cloud-based solutions. CRM tends to serve two masters: the sales force and marketing associates. In fact, the biggest barrier to successful CRM implementations is consistent salesforce use.
SEM and SEO technologies also ranked high in usage and are both aimed at bringing new customers into the fold through their web searches. In fact, another recent report,
The 2018 HR Buying Trends, found the web tends to be the first point of engagement with potential customers. Ensuring their searches lead to you is critical.
About two-thirds of organizations are also making use of marketing automation. These solutions vary in complexity and sophistication, but they’re typically designed to manage campaigns, score and prioritize leads, and measure impact. Gone are the days of the single email mass send.
Finding 2: Web and campaign analytics have become widely used
We asked respondents to indicate their current use of four categories of analytics. The most commonly used analytics were web analytics, used by 93% of HR marketers. Today, most marketers are familiar with concepts such as open rates, unique visitors, bounce rates, traffic sources, time on page, and more.
The second most commonly used analytics are campaign analytics. These help organizations assess the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns by systematically analyzing success metrics.
We are still in the early stages of AI marketing applications, but the potential is enormous. For example, predictive analytics will increasingly help us model marketing initiatives that will yield the highest payoffs. They will also help us decide which new customers to target given specific time and cost constraints.
What does this mean for Marketing teams in the Human Capital Space and how they use technology in the future?
