Despite the layman’s misconceptions that marketing is designing a few pretty posters, slogans, and emails, there’s much more that goes on behind the scenes. It is, in fact, a complex process that first understands the needs and desires of the target group, and then speaks to them using a variety of tools to generate interest in and connection with a company’s product or service.
Marketing is a combination of art, data analysis, planning, and decision-making. Developing a successful marketing campaign can make or break your business. In 2018 alone, companies spent over $32.4 billion on marketing software.
In the article, Itransition discovers why companies are investing such huge amounts in marketing and how you can boost your campaigns with custom marketing software.
What Are The Challenges of Marketing Process?
Before diving into how custom marketing software can optimize your campaigns, we’ll explore the marketing process a little more along with its challenges, which are stated below:
1. Data
This is the who, what, where, and why behind the campaign. To understand your audience––clients or consumers––you first need to know who they are, and, more importantly, what makes them tick.
While on the whole, data will give you a general overview of who your target group is, increasingly there is a trend in marketing for personalization––targeted mailouts, SMM posts only seen by a select group, etc.––and this is usually done through data-driven marketing.
The challenge is having the capability of analyzing such large data sets. Currently, this is almost an entirely automated process, which produces data-backed reports. The job of the marketer is then to interpret those reports for business needs.
2. Planning
Any decent marketing campaign worth its salt understands that nothing happens without a plan. Planning is a time used to generate ideas, narrow them down into workable solutions, and develop a realistic roadmap.
The challenges that face the planning stage often include cooperation––it can be tricky to get all the necessary bodies in one office at one time to generate and refine ideas––and efficient planning, which necessitates a workable solution comprising of timelines, activities, and analysis.
3. Campaign
Now that the planning stage has been completed, it’s time to kick that plan into action. Like the previous stage, running a marketing campaign also brings together various company departments under a common goal, combining designers and copywriters, data analysts and project managers, and so on.
It’s a collaborative process, and the challenge is often how to undertake it effectively and quickly to make sure it hits the market at the right time––too early or too late and your campaign risks being out of context.
4. Analysis and effectiveness
While many marketing campaigns work on a cyclic system of plan-do-repeat, there is one very essential element we haven’t talked about yet, and that is analysis.
Think of this as data part 2. The analysis-driven evaluation stage draws from data insights into the success of the campaign—the number of clients reached, new potential audiences, open emails, posts that were read, actual sales, etc.
Similar to the initial analysis of data, the evaluation stage necessitates the understanding of vast amounts of data, creating a hurdle for the marketer.
How Custom Software Solutions Optimize Marketing?
On the market today, there are numerous tools designed to improve companies’ marketing efforts with data analysis systems, chart builders, team communicators, etc.
Many smaller companies find themselves reasonably satisfied with the stock marketing solutions, which include data analysis, content and SEO optimization, and other tools to ease the needs of the marketing department. But the middle, as well as large-sized enterprises, often seek custom solutions.
What Are The Best Marketing Software Available?
Let’s take a look at some of the marketing software available today:
- HubSpot is an online marketing tool that helps companies grow their traffic, increase conversions, and optimize their marketing efforts with drag-and-drop website building functions, workflow design, content management systems, SEO and data analysis and more.
- Exponea presents another marketing solution perfect for small businesses. Its marketing software focuses on customer experience, business-to-customer relationship building, and growing long-term customers for businesses. It covers CRM systems and sales funnel operations, among other features.
- Third on our list is RankActive, a company with a dedicated focus on SEO optimization and analysis, to help their clients target more effectively. It aids companies in discovering opportunities and building upon them for effective SEO solutions.
This is just software on the market today, which may be a good variant for small businesses, however as the company grows, tailored solutions may prove more suitable.
Is It The Right Time For Customization?
Building the efficiency of the marketing efforts requires software that works specifically to the requirements of your company. As your business grows, its needs will increase, which may mean an expansion in your staff and tech.
So, why customize your marketing software? Isn't the regular marketing software available online enough? While regular marketing software is effective, it is just that, regular. Just as your business is unique in its offering, so must be the solutions that it uses.
To develop your company, you need custom tools that address its exact requirements, and that may be anything from connecting current marketing software by creating integration solutions to building big-data analysis toolkits, and everything in between.
The first thing you need to do to get your custom marketing solution is to find a reliable software development provider and discuss your precise needs with them.
The next step is deciding which area of custom marketing software you require. Generally, this can be broken down into two categories––complete custom software or third-party optimization. Let’s learn more about it!
Things To Consider During Complete Custom Software Development
Taking your marketing efforts to new levels and building your own tailored marketing software solution is often the next step for companies looking to grow.
Whether developing entirely tailored standalone solutions or adding extras with custom integration to your company’s current systems, custom software can include the following:
- Customer experience and engagement: This lets you know exactly how your customers feel about your product or services, and how they engage with your current platform and marketing efforts.
- Productivity: Are you working effectively? You can increase the productivity of your marketing department with time management tools, KPIs, task makers, and unified communications.
- Digital content management: With a growing demand for content, you need effective systems for managing all that information and getting it online on time.
- Social technology solutions: Let's connect with your customers using digital matching platforms, API solutions, fully-networked enterprises, and solution network solutions.
- Omnichannel Commerce: To help you develop your commerce channels with custom solutions for merchandising, order management, and customer care.
- Business Process Management: Manage your internal marketing solutions, from customer relationship management to production and keep a digital watch on all your assets to ensure your business stays on track.
- Data analytics: Make your business data-driven with custom data and analytics solutions that can help you target your customer while assessing a number of other factors including profitability, risk, and customer behavior.
What About Third-Party Solution Customization?
Entirely custom software isn’t for every business, sometimes what’s needed is to optimize and combine your current marketing tools to create a more effective ecosystem.
Examples of third-party platforms to customize include Zoho Campaigns, Pardot, HubSpot, and Campaigner. They all vary in features and pricing plans available. But the former can be significantly extended with the help of smart customization and integration with other tools.
Final Thoughts
Custom software development for marketing automation offers almost limitless opportunities in marketing campaign creation, including highly targeted and personalized ones.
It can also include integration with other third-party tools that streamline your business processes, such as combing messengers with task managers and data analysis with presentations.
Also in case you have any doubts regarding the above-mentioned points or the process of marketing, just leave a ‘Comment’ and our team of experts will get back to you at the earliest.
By Sakshi Kaushik
Content Writer
A passionate writer and tech lover, she strives to share her expertise with mobile app developers and fellow tech enthusiasts. During her moments away from the keyboard, she relishes delving into thriller narratives, immersing herself in diverse realms.
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