If automation is the core of your next-gen marketing platform, you’re missing the point
Next-gen platforms promise to bring AI and automation to marketing and brand. But if the strategy isn't right, it's essentially just throwing muck at the wall to see what sticks. Tanya Hyams-Young, CEO of SourseAI, explains why AI needs to support strategy first and foremost.
It appears the marketing world has a new toy, ‘next-generation marketing platforms’. These are tech platforms designed for ‘next-gen’ marketers who are more likely to embrace the latest technologies and marketing methodologies, in particular AI and automation.
I find the definition of a ‘next-gen marketer’ interesting because I don’t think there’s many luddites in the sector. In fact, I’d say most marketers are quick to embrace new tools, channels and tactics. Maybe even to a fault.
The business case for marketing tech is getting harder and harder to prove, largely thanks to a growing pipeline of projects that fail to impress or deliver true business value. Case in point, customer data platforms (CDPs).
The inaugural Forrester Wave for CDPs revealed firms are increasing investment in the area, but finding that extracting business value is harder than most thought. Everybody understands that customer data is vital, but if CDPs are struggling to generate value, there’s a risk that next-gen platforms could also fall into a long line of martech ideas that sounded great in theory, but hard in practice.
Automation in next-gen marketing promises hyper targeting and effectiveness. But in practice tend to focus on streamlining processes and systems, helping marketers who are increasingly time poor, and lacking budgets. There’s a lot of talk about automating email and campaigns, A/B testing, reporting and even inbound or outbound comms.
Of course streamlining a lot of these repetitive executional processes would be helpful. But there’s a danger that these platforms will merely help throw as much muck at the wall to see what sticks. AI and automation are only as good as the prompts and data used to build it. With challenges such as AI hallucinations (how many Rs in strawberry?) and widespread misattribution in digital advertising, my guess that there’s going to be more muck than gold dust flying around.
If we’re building a new kind of marketing platform from the ground up with these powerful technologies, shouldn’t we start with something more strategic? Shouldn’t marketers use these tools to help answer why? Why is my marketing spend not delivering results? Why do my customers churn after 37 days? Why isn’t my product or service more profitable? Why isn’t my product resonating in the market?
To be truly impactful, next-gen platforms simply must have a data science capability at their core. They need to be able to collect, collate, and harmonise data (yes that’s the job of a CDP!) AND then turn it into insights scaling to every customer and every scenario that can deliver real business impact.
Afterall, data analysis is one of the most challenging and time-consuming tasks marketing teams face. It’s where AI and Automation can have the biggest impact. Bringing together datasets and crunching numbers that previously weren’t possible, you can understand more about your customers, your business and your campaigns than ever before. And you can forecast the impact of your actions.
Imagine if next-gen marketing platforms combined business intelligence, customer data platforms and AI data processing. You could really interrogate your market and business to develop campaigns based on killer insights. Then you could unleash automation for more tactical execution. That would be a truly powerful proposition. However, if they continue with the focus on tactics and automation, they risk missing the point altogether.
I think at times technology has become a bit of a distraction for marketers. Marketing has always been more about strategy than execution. But it seems that’s become less true in recent years. Kantar’s study from last year that found that only a fifth of marketers think that pricing strategy is part of their role.
Less than 40% said defending or growing sales and ensuring the product portfolio is right for demand are important jobs for marketers. I guess that’s because strategy can be hard, time consuming and not immediately tangible. Execution on the other hand is entirely measurable, even if it’s not successful.
But that’s why it’s even more important we use technology to support us to do the more difficult elements of the job. If we do, the executions will be even better!
Tanya Hyams-Young is the chief executive officer of SourseAI.
Keep up to date with the latest in media and marketing
