Think Like A TechnologistThe Inevitable Intersection Between

Marketing and TechnologyLauren Curley - Landmark Property Services, Inc.

Spanning silos is the marketing challenge of our

time.1

David Aaker, Spanning Silos (2008)

Technologists are the intersection point between our brand and our

customer.

Who is the customer for technology?

Good software/technology aims to

solve a problem.

Technology can help you do things more

easily.

"A lot of businesses today are using tech to show that they're using tech."

--Scott Stratten, Author of QR Codes Kill Kittens

"Every time you use a QR code for your

business because you can and not because you should, whether your

market wants it or not, a kitten dies - a sweet innocent kitten."

Working in marketing today is like being a hamster on an accelerating

wheel.

Marketing’s transformation is driven by the enormous power and ubiquitous spread of technology. So pervasive is technology today that it is virtually meaningless to make distinctions between technology and nontechnology businesses and industries: there are only technology companies.

--Regis McKenna, "Marketing is Everything," Harvard Business Review

Marketing’s transformation is driven by the enormous power and ubiquitous spread of technology. So pervasive is technology today that it is virtually meaningless to make distinctions between technology and nontechnology businesses and industries: there are only technology companies.

--Regis McKenna, "Marketing is Everything," Harvard Business Review, 1991

There is still a significant skills gap, especially in smaller metro areas and smaller companies.

In a survey of the Virginia Apartment Management Association (VAMA) conducted in March and April 2014:

50% of respondents who make purchasing decisions for their community(ies) said that they have made the decision not to launch a new technology because they didn’t understand the technology or felt that they lacked the technical skills to successfully implement the technology.

45% of respondents who make purchasing decisions for their community(ies) said that they

launched a new technology without fully understanding that

technology.

By 2017, Marketers will spend more on technology

than IT DepartmentsGartner Study of CMOs published in 2012

We Don't Know What We Don't Know

In the VAMA survey, when asked to rate their knowledge of marketing on a scale of 1-10 (1 being poor and 10 being expert), the average respondent rated their knowledge of marketing as a 7.

Yet...

4 72% of respondents were unfamiliar with 19 commonly used marketing technologies available today (i.e. call tracking, lead management and responsive design websites).

4 72% of respondents were also unfamiliar with 21 commonly used technology terms (i.e. FTP, HTML and wireframes).

Where do we start?

Where do we start?

1. Embrace your customer by embracing marketing as a service

2. Reject silos through cross-disciplinary collaboration.

3. Create a data-driven customer experience.

4. Act like a technology firm.

5. Be curious.

Step 1:

Marketing as A Service

Your brand should be a problem solver in the life of

your residents.

Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact, and that is - everything around you that you call life, was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.

-Steve Jobs "One Last Thing" Interview, PBS (1994)

Step 2:

Reject Silos. Embrace Cross-disciplinary collaboration.

The future of marketing is about partnerships - inside and outside your

organization.

Make sure ALL of the right people are at the table

Step 3:

Create a data-driven customer experience

The ability to understand and use data is one of the best differentiators for a

company

Step 4:

Act Like a Technology Firm

Technologists and programmers have moved away from a strict reliance on the expensive, slow and often over-engineered planning stages toward agile and incremental development.

The Agile ManifestoWe Value:

4 Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

4 Working software over comprehensive documentation

4 Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

4 Responding to change over following a plan

"F**K It, They Changed It (Again)!"

Step 5:

Be Curious