When I was in Washington DC last week I was out to dinner with a bunch of marketers. Over the course of dinner and a nice conversation one of the people there, Mary Ellen Tribby, while giving advice to another attendee said “Your technology should always support your marketing and not the other way around”.
Thats a fricking awesome quote… and I can’t agree more.
If your marketing department or your marketing is not driving your technology crazy… then they are not trying hard enough.
They should be causing problems for them all the time. Problems like… how do we keep these servers up with all this traffic… how do we find a shopping cart to handle all of these sales… how scale this or that to keep up with demand.
Often times marketing can get to involved in technology and it prevents them from what they do best.
About the author...
Jeremy Schoemaker – who has written 2415 posts on ShoeMoney.com.
Hi I am Jeremy Schoemaker and ShoeMoney.com is my blog. 99% of the post here are done by me but you will see others occasionally make guest posts. This blog is fun to write but for my day job I run several online companies.
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hey any thoughts on when the questions will be answered that were submitted a week or so ago?
Working on it brother…. have to have some unplaned surgery early next week and will be out for a couple weeks
Oh no! You’ll still be able to write, I hope? Sorry to hear, and hope it all works out.
Oh dear. Sorry to hear that you’ll be going under the knife, Shoe. Sending you good vibes!
hope u’ll be ok …
keep sharing brother….
Nice quote. I think that this is a dream any company could hope for: How do we deal with our growing pains? After all, a surge on the servers could only mean that HR, accounting, sales, customer support, and every other area should be busy as well. It means that all areas must join forces and working together. All parts contribute to the whole. If the functions can work in harmony, all the better.
The real challenge comes when you are doing these functions yourself! It then becomes a game of finding support – where, and how, and for how long.
I am a huge advocate of marketing, and have been lucky to work for companies that have treated it at as a core and vital function. Marketing as product management, marketing as strategy, marketing as business development, and so on.
Marketing and sales go hand in hand. Marketing supports the process of developing a product and taking it to market. Without marketing, and ultimately sales, you have no business.
I agree with Tribby’s quote. If the tech team is unable to support marketing, then you’ve got a big problem. If the tech team is driving marketing’s efforts, then you’ve got an even bigger problem.
Reminds me of a client that I once had. He thought Facebook ads were the second coming, and yet didn’t realize that the market he needed didn’t spend a lot of time on the site (back then).
Aw, come on. Everybody and their grandmother’s on Facebook these days.
True, but not everybody and their grandmother take the time to click through the ads.
Very well said. I agree a hundred percent. Marketing should not be treated only as the process that drives sales, although that is one of its vital functions.
However, it is a very fine line for your marketing to sell technology that does not yet exist. Bastardizations of products and even company values occur one sale at a time…
Lolz! These two types don’t mix all that well at work. It’s kind of like The Revenge of the Nerds. It seems like someone always has to step in to get things to actually happen.
That’s because the IT department has the ability to think. Can’t always say that about Marketing.
Let’s get back to money making tips!!!!
Hey, it’s good he’s posting something aside from t-shirts and tips.
Doesn’t it automatically follow? In business, doesn’t the formulation of your marketing strategy come first, and the selection of the tech come second?
Not really. Sometimes people get so caught up in a concept they tailor a marketing concept to it. Like, they want to have a twitter account because they believe that this will be the best medium to reach their target market, so they find a way to work it into their strategy. I’m no marketing expert, but I’ve seen it happen.
Ah so its like the marketing department should trouble the tech one :p
That mindset is VERY similar to building your information systems to FIT your business, and not the other way around. Makes total sense.
This is a very true analysis. A scalability problem is usually a sign of success.
its true and thats why its the one thing i liked when I started at a very young age (16) because I have a whole lot of time to figure things out and unknowingly Im developing all those tech skills and server administration..
but of course theres still a lot to learn and thankfully these days there are those specialized tools that can just rock..
Good for you, Melvin!
I think it’s great that young people nowadays see how online entrepreneurship works, how marketing goes hand in hand with technology. I’m always impressed with teens and students who have small businesses online. I used to think teens only go on MySpace and Facebook to socialize, but now there are those who explore social media to market their business. Just last week I was looking through online boutiques and craft stores in Multiply and Etsy, and I found out most of the entrepreneurs there were in their 20s.
Taking it out of the corporate setting and back to the perspective of a smaller business and its owner, this could also mean that you don’t buy marketing apps or subscribe to tech solutions and then try to work your marketing plan to include it.
IT driving marketing is just wrong. It might happen if someone gets properly excited over it, but really, how?
Your tech, or in some cases, your IT department, should still be able to work hand in hand with marketing, and although marketing should have complete control of direction, IT should have more control over the execution, I believe.
I think Profit Addiction put it quite well. IT is support, period. You build your business solutions based on what will fit, not what’s popular or “fun” to do.
If you think that an IT department or some random genius guy from that department has designs on running away with your marketing plan and taking over the entire system because they’re pursuing some insanely complex geeky moment, you’ve been watching too much Big Bang Theory. Most techs will not care what marketing strategy you implement – as long as you let them have their way with how they go about making what you want to happen happen.
I think what Shoe’s saying here is that your marketing goals must always challenge your technology. They should always be asking “how on earth will I do that?” and find new solutions instead of being the ones to say “Hey, there’s this new trick we found, and maybe it’ll be useful to you, too.”
At first I was confused when you said that marketing should cause trouble for tech. Huh? And then it made sense. Yeah, I get what you mean Shoe. Your marketing efforts should challenge the technology. Marketing should always be one step ahead, it should be reaching and satisfying lots and lots of consumers, not because OF technology but because it has to “break” technology. It has to reach that level where you can say, “ok, we need a new server/system/etc. because it couldn’t handle the sales/traffic/comments.”
Short but sweet post, Shoe.
Reminds me of this business associate of mine from a while back. He had a habit of overthinking everything, especially tech problems and solutions. He’d always worry about what would happen if one marketing effort caused the servers to become overloaded, or what would happen if nobody monitored incoming email. A lot of times many good ideas didn’t get implemented because he was so afraid of possible problems.
Hope you feel better, Shoe. Can’t imagine that surgery’s any fun.
We look forward to hearing from you after your recovery period, Jeremy!
Awesome post. I’m still learning about online marketing, and this post made me think a lot about my business. Thanks!
This is something my mentor in marketing has always told me- first, have a marketing goal. It’s only then that you begin to look into solutions and means. You don’t start the other way around, it’ll be like putting a cart before the horse.
Get better soon, Shoe!
Simply put, if you need new technology because your old system couldn’t handle your sales, then that’s success. If not, then you should try harder.
And I believe businesses should never depend completely on technology. Although lots of business owners are going hi-tech, and the whole world is pretty much wired.
Not depending on technology, that’s easy to say in theory but difficult to do. I’m sure if we conduct a survey right here about people’s items that they can’t live without most would say internet or laptop or iPhone or some other gadget.
Hmm. But doesn’t technology shape marketing? For example, the internet made it possible for entrepreneurs to develop new ways of advertising and marketing. Now there’s targeted advertising and easy-to-use ad templates. A bunch of new marketing ideas, like Twitter ads, Facebook ads, article marketing, etc. Without internet and technology we wouldn’t be able to come up with those.
I think what Jeremy meant was more on the business level. Generally, tech does shape marketing, but in the business level that’s not always the case. If you think about it, your marketing plans and goals would be limited. So the marketing team should always push the envelope when it comes to ideas and efforts.
Technology shapes marketing, but it should also support marketing. That’s basically it.
Technology shaping or molding marketing also means it could limit the growth of marketing, sales, et cetera. Think of technology as an expanding vessel, and marketing/sales is that smaller expanding thing inside it. Weird analogy, but it works for me. When marketing/sales are good, then all the better for technology.
Well said. Technology is the gauge of how successful marketing is.
without marketing, there will be no free stuff. which means no fun. same thing with technology.
LOL. Makes sense. People are usually giving away free stuff online not because they are feeling generous. It’s a marketing ploy.
Marketing absolutely must get involved in technology. The internet has changed the way we do business in every single industry, and these changes continue at lightening speed. To be an effective leader, every Chief Marketing Officer must understand emerging technologies so that they can predict the impact of digital and communication technologies and how these will impact their businesses. All marketers are obligated to understand the digital component of marketing, and should build bridges to the tech teams within their organizations.
Marketing and Technology have countless opportunities to work together. Think of how travel services have pulled together to get travelers who buy a plane ticket to then 1. Book a hotel 2. Rent a Car 3. Shop While Flying 4. Buy Tickets for local activities.
It is form of collaborative marketing that provides endless opportunity for cross promoting. You bet that marketers who came up with this brilliant concept truly understood the capabilities of technology. Marketers – Keep up with technology, or be left behind as other tech-savvy marketing teams come up with better solutions for customers who are ready and willing to buy.
Very relevant post. I don’t use technology as much as computer geeks and online marketers, but I do know how important it is to use technology in any business. In travel marketing for instance technology has made it so much easier to reach clients, to make information available, and to respond to their concerns.
Sorry, Shoe, but the comments here are more interesting than your post.
I’m kidding.
A lot of great comments tonight.
Chief Technology Officers, meet the Chief Marketing Officers. Now get together, strategize, and talk. The less of you there are, the easier this kind of thing should be to figure out.
“Business has only two functions – marketing and innovation.” — Milan Kundera
Tech supporting marketing — is this the same as marketing feeding technology? That’s how I see it.
That sounds off. But it could be. Marketing feeds tech to grow and challenges it so it can improve, while at the same time tech supports marketing.
Just to add to the discussion: Do you think it’s possible in this current age to have a successful business that doesn’t rely at all on online marketing? Say, a walk-in clothes store without any website, any Facebook page, any Twitter page or whatever. Can that be successful? I think it’s possible to run a business without using internet as much, but to make it known and sell stuff it’s going to be difficult.
It’s a must, definitely. Unless you’re living in a place with very few internet users. But still you can make money selling items and shipping them overseas, or… do what those affiliate marketers are doing. So there’s just no excuse.
This is a no-brainer. No. Business is better with technology, true fact.
Although technology can’t really be avoided. I have a couple of friends who own a small restaurant, and they don’t have a webpage or anything. A few months ago they started getting more customers, which left them wondering since they weren’t really doing any hardcore marketing. Their restaurant was just known to family and friends, friends of friends, co-workers — you know, that kind of marketing. It turned out a friend with a food blog blogged about them. So you see, they couldn’t really avoid the power of technology.
Using technology in business and marketing has lots of benefits. Sure, there are cons too I guess, but the pros outweigh the cons.
Don’t blame the marketing department. The buck stops with the chief executive. – - – John D. Rockefeller
Most firms have no clue of their technology and the investment in technology , they are not in sync with marketing. Technology has their own priorities which are different from marketing ……There exist a serious technology gap between marketing and technology heads
Fantastic Quote!
Most websites are not compatible with cell phones and this will be a huge problem do to the rise of the industry. If you website is not currently moblified, I highly recommend that you found someone to do this for you or you do it yourself by adding the code to your website
This is very true, but before all that you need to offer good content and services which will attract people. With proper marketing you will be able to bring more of these people.
Nice quote.I think that technology should always support for marketing and technology as an expanding vessel, and marketing/sales is that smaller expanding thing inside it.Without marketing, and ultimately sales, you have no business.
Many people talk about doing marketing online without even taking in consideration their capability in sustaining such a move, which involves technology. I can’t agree with her more. She’s spot on.
i’m not sure I agree with everything that you’re saying, but I like the way you express yourself in your beliefs. Just started following your feed.