The Integrated Marketing Organization - NewsCred · what’s really holding marketing organizations...
Transcript of The Integrated Marketing Organization - NewsCred · what’s really holding marketing organizations...
The Integrated Marketing Organization
Illustrations by Laura Beckman
How to Lower Content Waste,
Increase Collaboration, and
Turbocharge Performance
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insights.newscred.comThe Integrated Marketing Organization: A Complete Guide to Building Higher-Performing Teams
Introduction
Why invest in “integrated marketing” now? Isn’t it just a buzzword that’s been around for years? When we say there’s a critical mandate for building an integrated marketing organization, it boils down to increasing operational efficiency, increasing collaboration, and increasing performance.
A quick survey of the landscape paints a bleak picture: the
old established marketing models have broken-down, there’s
mounting revenue pressure and scrutiny on marketing
investments, and there’s a laser focus on minimizing risks
and maintaining security, especially in the new era of GDPR.
The diversity of customers and markets, alongside the
explosion of channels, content and products, makes it hard
to develop targeted and relevant messages. And among
enterprise organizations, there is also an alarming trend of
decreasing budgets and siloed, inefficient work practices.
It’s time to integrate marketing. Because the budgets are
high and the stakes even higher.
insights.newscred.comThe Integrated Marketing Organization: A Complete Guide to Building Higher-Performing Teams
The struggle is real
Integrated campaigns
are 31% more effective
at building brands
Kantar MillwardBrown
31%
45%45% of marketers feel they lack the
necessary talent, technology, and
processes to master omni-channel
brand marketing
CMO Council
insights.newscred.comThe Integrated Marketing Organization: A Complete Guide to Building Higher-Performing Teams
10%Just 10% of organizations
rate themselves as
“advanced” in operations
SiriusDecisions
25%Only 25% of CMOs’ digital media investment
reaches target audiences, representing
more than $20 billion of marketing waste,
inefficiency and ineffectiveness
Association of National Advertisers
insights.newscred.comThe Integrated Marketing Organization: A Complete Guide to Building Higher-Performing Teams
About this guide
As integrated marketing is incredibly complex and nuanced, this ebook uses a proven framework to help guide — rather than prescribe — how brands can define (or redefine) their marketing organizations. We’ll explore what’s really holding marketing organizations back from being fully integrated, explain how our benchmarking tool and methodology can evaluate your organization, and offer actionable recommendations for improvement.
You’ll learn
+ How to build a case for integrated marketing
+ The symptoms of a poorly-integrated marketing organization
+ How to conduct an integrated marketing maturity self-assessment
+ The key stages of integrated marketing maturity
+ The ADEPT Methodology for effective integrated marketing
+ How to build an integrated marketing measurement framework
This paper is geared for both executives and marketing leaders
who want to meet those challenges head on, ready to finally bust
down organizational silos and improve their programs.
insights.newscred.comThe Integrated Marketing Organization: A Complete Guide to Building Higher-Performing Teams
The case for integrated marketing
Integrated Marketing: The What and Why
Integrated marketing is the process
of unifying the marketing organization
to deliver a consistent and relevant
content experience to their audience
across all channels.
The case for delivering a powerful,
unified customer experience is clear.
A Gartner study found that campaigns
integrating four or more digital
channels will outperform single- or
dual-channel campaigns by 300%
from a performance perspective.
And when it comes to brand building,
the global research company Kantar
Millward Brown found that integrated
campaigns are 31% more effective
than un-integrated ones.
The integrated marketing approach
is also the key to marketing
departments transitioning from
cost centers to profit centers. By
working better together, marketing
departments both drive performance
and increase operational efficiency.
Why invest in integrated marketing?
+ Improve operational effectiveness
and efficiency across the marketing
organization
+ Break down silos and encourage
collaboration and efficiency
+ Champion omnichannel marketing in
the client organization
+ Position content as an asset that
should be managed like all business IP
+ Adopt a more strategic and
sophisticated approach to enterprise
marketing
+ Support the creation of a seamless
and consistent customer experience
Well-executed marketing operations
and integrated planning will bring
teams together, drive unprecedented
efficiency, and transform businesses.
Ultimately, the brands that embrace
integrated marketing — possible
more than ever with technology — will
be the most successful. As a result,
operational efficiency will become part
of the executive mandate for marketing
leaders.
insights.newscred.comThe Integrated Marketing Organization: A Complete Guide to Building Higher-Performing Teams
Still not convinced that building an integrated marketing organization will improve performance? Here are some of the signs your organization is failing to integrate.
The symptoms of inaction
+ Duplication of efforts leading to content waste
+ Role confusion leading to a lack of accountability
+ Business goals are not aligned to your marketing
investments
+ Collaborative efforts are not being supported by
your technology setup
+ No central place to store or access content
+ The marketing end-to-end process is not visible
+ Delays in deployment and publishing
+ Fragmented or disjointed customer journey
As a byproduct of competing priorities and pressure
to be first to market, most enterprises suffer
from one or more of these symptoms. Even teams
proactively trying to solve these issues often
have difficulty getting traction because of deeply
ingrained organizational silos.
Let’s reflect on why silos are so common (but also so
commonly despised).
insights.newscred.comThe Integrated Marketing Organization: A Complete Guide to Building Higher-Performing Teams
A brief history of silos
Many marketing teams were structured around
specific channels. The rise of “digital marketing”
fragmented not only the agency landscape but
the marketing function. Back in the day, we had a
television and a newspaper, then we moved into the
digital era which saw us split teams between digital
and out-of-home channels. Mobile was separated
out (at least briefly) at many organizations, and paid
social media responsibilities often rest with yet
another team.
These modern (read: siloed) marketing teams are not
set up for integrated marketing success. There are
so many situations where internal teams inherently
clash, including competition for budgets, attribution,
ideas and glory. There’s a belief that a culture of
healthy competition fosters creative ideas, but the
“team of teams” model has repeatedly demonstrated
that a culture of collaboration is more effective at
producing creative results and also sets the team up
for long term success.
OmnichannelMultichannelSingle channel
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We often make consumers the scapegoat for
the rise of ad blockers, low engagement rates,
and falling profits when the real problem is the
failure of legacy marketing operating models to
support the modern customer journey.
Reclaim centralized oversight of the marketing
function and full customer experience by
building out content operations within an
integrated marketing organization.
Team Technology Content Analytics
Technology Content AnalyticsTeam
Technology Content AnalyticsTeam
If you are really serious about integrated marketing, your organization needs to shift from a culture of competition to a culture of collaboration.
Siloed marketing teams
insights.newscred.comThe Integrated Marketing Organization: A Complete Guide to Building Higher-Performing Teams
To recap: integrated marketing is possible and
necessary, and the teams that are relentless in
the pursuit of this internal alignment are the ones
that will succeed in an era of content velocity,
global-local delivery, and omnichannel customer
expectations.
But how do you know you’re doing it well? Or how
do you improve when you’re not doing it well? We
developed the Integrated Marketing Maturity Index
(IMMI) to help brands assess their operations and
governance proficiency.
This assessment tool was developed from third-
party analyst insights and over a decade of field
work with enterprise customers, combined with
internal marketing and technical expertise. Using
IMMI, enterprise marketing leaders can assess
and benchmark their operational efficiency by
answering a set of key criteria questions.
Introducing NewsCred’s Integrated Marketing Methodology
IMMI AssessmentA score of 50 is the average benchmark
for success; anything higher is closer to
mastery. Investing in the foundations of
ADEPT will help you get closer to the top.
PRO -TIP
Take the assessment g
ADEPT and the Integrated Marketing Maturity Index
You may have some or all of the five ADEPT
capabilities. The important thing is to document
and prioritize your gap areas, while understanding
this is not a linear model; you may have alignment
and technology in place but slip in execution and
design, or vice versa. The idea is to ensure you’re
identifying both the areas of strengths and areas
for improvement across the ADEPT framework and
begin to optimize accordingly.
The IMMI tool is intended to serve as a leading
indicator to content operations success and how
effectively an organization is managing content.
insights.newscred.comThe Integrated Marketing Organization: A Complete Guide to Building Higher-Performing Teams
T Technology
The technology criteria relate to whether your
brand has adopted a secure and flexible planning
technology solution for long-term collaboration that
includes automation intelligence. Is there a clear line
of sight across content ideation, pitching, planning,
production, publishing, distribution, optimization
and measurement? Ultimately, technology should
help accelerate execution and build on desired team
behaviors such as collaboration and integrated
planning. This also includes flexible reporting on
campaign, content, and operational performance.
The IMMI is based on the five core capabilities of integrated marketing: alignment, design, execution, process and technology (ADEPT)
D Design
Examine your planning model. Do you have a
direction-setting body to act as brand custodian?
Are teams collaborating together to prioritize key
themes across different marketing disciplines? Is
there a shared calendar view of all activities that
tie into key campaigns? And is there a documented
marketing taxonomy and shared language?
E Execution
This execution element looks at the rigor of
following through on your plan, processes, and
guidelines. Is your team delivering on time and
at scale? Is there an adherence to best practices
relating to tagging assets appropriately to
metadata and taxonomy, auditing for relevancy and
redundancies? This includes identifying whether
your team is equipped to stand up marketing
operations and is trained on the functional
skills to execute successfully. Agile marketing
methodologies often come into play here.
P Process
The process section delves into the workflows
that guide your marketing execution, specifically
how sophisticated and complete these workflows
are and whether they are documented. Do your
workflows take into account different asset types,
approvals, compliance, and localization? Is there
also a process for analyzing campaign and overall
marketing performance?
A Alignment
Evaluate your support from the top. It needs to go
beyond executive buy-in; you need (or need to be)
an executive sponsor who will drive and champion
change. This mandate includes creating cross-
functional buy-in, or integrated planning just isn’t
possible. The marketing plan also needs to include
adequate budget and time investment for the
project team.
insights.newscred.comThe Integrated Marketing Organization: A Complete Guide to Building Higher-Performing Teams
Your IMMI maturity score correlates to a point on NewsCred’s Integrated Marketing Maturity Curve. The curve is a visualization of the eight stages of integrated marketing maturity and gives us both a way to benchmark and a blueprint for success. In terms of maturity, there are eight key milestones for integrated marketing which correlate to eight business value drivers:
Visualize your roadmap with the Integrated Marketing Maturity Curve
Integrated Marketing Maturity Curve
Executive
mandate
Collaborative
planning
Documented
taxonomy
Holistic
workflows
Integrated
technology stack
Empowered
governance
Asset
utilization
Execution
at scale
1 2 3
4
5
6
7
8
insights.newscred.comThe Integrated Marketing Organization: A Complete Guide to Building Higher-Performing Teams
The remainder of this guide will provide detailed descriptions of the eight milestones of integrated marketing success alongside practical recommendations to help improve your organization’s integration, efficiency, and success.
PrioritizationThere is no linear process for integrated
marketing maturity, because all organizations
are different. As marketing leaders and CMOs
you’re best positioned to make the call on
what gaps should be prioritized.
PRO -TIP
Integrated tech stack
Automates channel communications and
measurement
Empowered governance
Delivers strategic brand goals
Asset utilization + localization
Encourages marketing efficiency
Execution at scale
Organizes marketing operations for growth
Executive mandate and cross-functional buy-in
Facilitates cross-marketing collaboration
Collaborative planning
Streamlines marketing planning
Documented taxonomy
Ensures execution consistency
Holistic workflows
Accelerates marketing output
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First, ask whether there is alignment internally
and whether there is buy-in to move towards
integrated marketing. Because integrated
marketing requires breaking down silos and
increased cooperation you need an executive
sponsor and cross-functional cooperation. You
also need someone in a leadership role to drive
the change in case there are obstacles along the
way. There is no world where integrated marketing
can be successful without executive support.
Integrated Marketing Milestone 1
Executive mandate and cross-functional buy-in
If you’re the executive, it’s about finding your
champions and your cross-functional leaders who
will support you. And if you’re the champion, it’s
about finding like-minded peers and finding an
executive who can help you drive this program.
In this milestone, you’re assembling your working
group. This group then becomes the working group
tasked with uniting the marketing organization.
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REC OMMENDATION NO. 2
Launch a stakeholder engagement survey
When it comes to the wider team, you can carry out an anonymous
survey to invite teams to provide their feedback to the working group.
You can use these sample questions or formulate your own — whatever
works for you. Then it’s about engaging with key stakeholders.
Strengths
+ What are the strengths of your marketing
operations?
+ What capabilities, resources and talent are unique
to your team?
+ What do internal and external stakeholders
perceive to be your operational strengths?
Weaknesses
+ What are the weaknesses in your marketing
operations and execution?
+ What do other teams do better than you?
+ What do internal and external stakeholders
perceive to be your weaknesses?
Opportunities
+ What could do be done today that isn’t being done?
+ What is missing in your marketing operations?
+ What upcoming business changes will impact
operations?
+ Will these business changes affect you in a positive
manner?
Threats
+ What are the key obstacles in the overall marketing
organization?
+ What might cause problems in the future? How?
+ What is happening outside of the organization that
might impact your operations?
REC OMMENDATION NO. 1
Create a marketing operations SWOT analysis
At this stage it’s about alignment activities. One quick way to start a
conversation is to get together and do an integrated marketing SWOT
analysis, which of course stands for strengths, weaknesses, threats and
opportunities. This is a great exercise to start the conversation around
integrated marketing. Here are a couple of sample questions for your
situational analysis using the SWOT framework.
insights.newscred.comThe Integrated Marketing Organization: A Complete Guide to Building Higher-Performing Teams
Stakeholder survey template
How to score
0 Not doing it at all
1 Doing it, but not very well
2 Doing some of it but we need to improve
3 We’re doing pretty well
4 Doing this very well
5 We excel at this
What does your score mean?
0–10 Need to prioritize building a foundation for
integrated marketing
11–30 Core capabilities are there but need to take
gap areas to the next level
31–50 Focus on advanced-level optimization
/ 5
/ 5
/ 5
/ 5
/ 5
/ 5
/ 5
/ 5
/ 5
/ 5
/ 50
Score Marketing operations
Stakeholders from different departments, business units or markets are meeting regularly
to help to validate key ideas, prioritize efforts, and assess performance and operations.
There is integrated planning in place to ensure there is one central view with coordination
across teams.
There is a central bank or library for assets and this is being shared and repurposed
across teams.
There are documented guidelines and policies, and this is understood and adhered to by
people involved in the production process.
Performance is aligned to business goals and is monitored, analyzed and communicated
on a regular basis.
There is clear line of sight across ideation, pitching, planning, production, publishing,
distribution, optimization and measurement.
The production processes takes into account legal and other regulatory practices, and
includes clear timeline and approvals.
Time and cost involved in creating assets is being measured and monitored to ensure
operational efficiency.
There is a shared language across teams with a documented glossary, taxonomy.
There is a documented marketing strategy and/or playbook that everyone is using.
f Total/ 50
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REC OMMENDATION NO. 3
Lead a stakeholder workshop
Using the findings from your SWOT and stakeholder
survey, conduct a workshop session to outline the
current state and future state of the organization.
Here’s who needs to be involved:
+ Anyone responsible for making decisions on
content
+ Range of people, from executives to those
executing on content
+ People who are potentially on the “editorial board”
+ HR, PR, Marketing, Social, Lead Gen
You should walk away with some key priorities and
an action plan. The objective of this workshop is
to also align key stakeholders and get their buy-in
on the process. An effective exercise would be a
stakeholder poll and/or interview asking them to
assess how effectively they are managing content.
Build executive supportStart by building a working group of
like-minded peers, but it’s also critical
to have the active support and
involvement of an executive capable
of cross-functional influence.
PRO -TIP
As the champion for integrated marketing, use
the session to communicate what the business
case is and communicate to the organization who
needs to be involved, what they have at stake and
what the shared goals are.
Here are examples of what’s at stake:
+ Siloed marketing can hurt your brand equity
and result in an inconsistent brand experience
for the customer
+ Fall behind other brands and competitors who
are advanced
+ Content and budget waste
+ Team confusion/people do not feel empowered
to do their jobs
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Integrated Marketing Milestone 2
Collaborative planning model
Outlining a collaborative planning model gives your working group (and everyone you share it with) a tangible vision for how the company wants to coordinate internally and work outside of silos. Teams need to map this model out before they can put together processes and formalize the roadmap with real workflows and systems to ensure it’s happening.
The planning model should also help
the team establish a cadence and
rationale for launching campaigns,
with consideration for investment
allocation and calendar frequency.
The working group should hold
planning sessions, whether weekly,
monthly, quarterly and/or annually, to
coordinate, plan and execute together.
Creative
Channels
Content
Production
Evaluation
Brief
Lifecycle of an
Integrated Marketing
Campaign
insights.newscred.comThe Integrated Marketing Organization: A Complete Guide to Building Higher-Performing Teams
REC OMMENDATION NO. 2
Develop a content playbook of best practices
A playbook of best practices and guidelines
can serve as a compass for the team
throughout the execution process. Developing
the playbook itself helps to achieve alignment
and ensure consistency.
For global-local marketing, you should provide
best practices on localization — the process
of adapting content to better suit a local
market and its audience. This is more than
just translating content into another language
or even changing references to be culturally
appropriate as this would come as standard
with translation.
REC OMMENDATION NO. 1
Develop an integrated campaign brief
Start off with an integrated campaign brief.
You can use the following questions to build
one out:
+ What is the brand goal?
+ What is the business objective?
+ How will you measure the success of the
campaign (must be measurable)?
+ Who are the target audience(s) for this
campaign?
+ What is the budget and how is this
allocated?
+ What teams are involved in this
campaign?
+ What is the central campaign theme or
idea?
+ What are the key channels for
distribution, online and offline?
+ What target assets will be published as
part of this distribution?
+ What is the production workflow?
+ How did the campaign perform? What
lessons can you take for future planning?
insights.newscred.comThe Integrated Marketing Organization: A Complete Guide to Building Higher-Performing Teams
Don’t underestimate the role of a shared taxonomy in facilitating marketing collaboration. If you’re at an enterprise brand, executing a global-local strategy, working cross-functionally, or managing a mature content marketing program, you need a cohesive marketing taxonomy strategy across your integrated planning, marketing calendar, and asset manager.
Integrated Marketing Milestone 3
Documented taxonomy
Warning signsThere are clear signs of a
poor marketing taxonomy
strategy. Are your teams
wasting time searching
for approved assets? Are
your content analytics not
easily segmented by target
audience, format, or other key
journey information?
PRO -TIP
Establish a clearly defined language and labeling structure for
your marketing organization, and use the working group to put
governance in place to ensure it’s being used. This taxonomy
will help to foster cross-functional collaboration, understanding
and breakdown silos organically. The universal language enables
teams to work at a larger scale, streamlining processes for
efficiency and fast-tracking outputs.
The marketing taxonomy should support a shared understanding
of the relationship between strategy elements like campaign
themes, personas, and journey stages. As teams begin managing
an increasing number of cross-functional marketing programs
and a growing library of content, consistent metadata is vital for
accurate planning, organization, and measurement.
This integrated marketing maturity milestone is achieved when
everyone is tagging, labeling and filing assets and content
the same way. Start by prioritizing what areas to build shared
language around rather than tackling everything at once.
Documented taxonomy goes beyond shared language, it also
includes shared assets and shared data sources including
audience research and reporting.
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REC OMMENDATION NO. 1
Conduct discovery for your shared taxonomy
Conduct a preliminary brand review, including key stakeholder
interviews, website(s) review, and data/documentation review.
The objective is to work across teams to understand content
nomenclature, in order to create a shared language and
governance model for improved operational efficiency and
collaboration. Here are some key attributes:
+ Campaign themes
+ Business priorities
+ Brand values
+ Brand or content pillars
+ Audience segmentation
+ Customer stages
+ Markets
+ Formats
+ Team or business unit or market
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REC OMMENDATION NO. 2
Inventory shared data inputs
The key to breaking down silos is understanding the key
data outputs of each functional area — from market
research to reports. The problem is that much of this
data is stored in silos across disparate systems and often
analyzed using outdated attribution techniques that
ignore data from early in the journey.
Your inventory should start with identifying the collective
problems and requirements of the customer base along
with what data and insights are adding value to this
understanding, regardless of which audience segment or
business unit/team the data comes from.
Integration starts with effective identification of data and
how it can be shared across the organization. Some areas
you can look at are:
+ Market Research
+ Competitor Reports
+ Audience Demographics
+ Behavioral Insights
+ Customer Journeys
+ Organic vs. Paid Keywords
+ Campaign Results
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Workflows are one of the most under-scrutinized components of marketing operations. Building optimized workflows is a vital part of integrated marketing because workflows provide clarity and provide a way to standardize an operational efficiency metric. A workflow is a predetermined process path specific to each task as part of asset creation.
Integrated Marketing Milestone 4
Holistic workflows
As your organization builds integrated
marketing maturity, your workflows should
move from ad-hoc activities to more
sophisticated processes that take into
account different asset times, approvals
and global-local configurations.
PRO -TIP
In the marketing world, established workflows can
be a key differentiator between top-performing
content marketers and their less successful peers.
The CMI reports that “70% of the top-performing
B2B marketers rated their flow as excellent or very
good, compared with 36% of the total sample, and
14% of the least successful.”
Workflows encompass the steps that take you from
ideas to publication — they provide clear direction
for who needs to see each version and at which
stage. Setting up a structured approach to content
processes and workflows will enable the team to
execute marketing on a streamlined, ongoing basis.
This can be particularly beneficial for clients who
operate in heavily regulated industries.
This milestone (“holistic workflows”) is about
ensuring that every asset, regardless if it’s a
social post or a video, has its own workflow. This
requires inventory of the asset production process:
everything from ideation to sign off and approvals,
taking into account the assets that need legal and
compliance reviews.
The way workflows become holistic is by making
them centralized and agreed upon across functions.
You might need different workflows for different
assets, campaigns, and projects.
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Brands in regulated
industries are increasingly
creating dedicated legal
and regulatory teams with
the goal of rapid review of
time-sensitive marketing.
PRO -TIP
REC OMMENDATION NO. 1
Develop workflows for each asset type
Create an inventory of all asset types your marketing
organization creates and then map the stages in the
production cycle for each asset, prescribing checkpoints,
tasks and the ideal time required for completion.
It’s critical to provide estimated elapsed time for each stage
so there is transparency on the duration it takes to create
the asset type. It’s helpful to outline roles and responsibilities
throughout the whole execution process and including other
stakeholders and third parties such as agencies in the review.
Brief Write/create Strategy review Stakeholder review Publish
Asset type Which teams need to have
sight/work on this type?
+ Digital Marketing
+ Internal Comms
+ Legal
+ Translation
Translation is a third
party company
Infographics
Which teams need to have
sight/work on this type?
Exa
mp
le
insights.newscred.comThe Integrated Marketing Organization: A Complete Guide to Building Higher-Performing Teams
Having an integrated technology stack is a sign of maturity because it helps to automate your channel communications and measurement and gives greater overall visibility into marketing functions. The ideal marketing tech stack supports both digital marketing lead management and multichannel campaigns.
Integrated Marketing Milestone 5
Integrated technology stack
At this stage of maturity, there is
normally already a commitment
to integrating disparate tools
and technologies and removing
redundancies. There are many free
resources to help you assess new
technology vendors, but here are
some key questions to ask:
+ Does your current technology
tool and solutions support the
integrated marketing efforts?
+ Do you have a technology solution
that offers clear line of sight into
operational activities?
+ Can you measure and report on all
aspects of the marketing cycle?
Technology doesn’t deliver ROI —
but when used correctly, the right
technology helps marketers deliver
ROI. The best thing a technology
solution will ever do is make it easier
to achieve ROI on an effort that
is powered by insights. Look for
technology that accelerates execution
and builds on desired team behaviors
like collaboration and integrated
planning.
insights.newscred.comThe Integrated Marketing Organization: A Complete Guide to Building Higher-Performing Teams
REC OMMENDATION NO. 1
Conduct a marketing technology audit
This is a straightforward but surprisingly rare undertaking.
Do an audit of your organization’s tech stack and address any
redundancies. What’s the system of record for every team?
Does it allow you to integrate and invest in a system of record
that allows you to integrated your existing stack?
+ Content Management
+ Client Relationship Management
+ EDM and Marketing Automation
+ Event Management
+ Governance and Protection
+ E-Servicing
+ Measurement and Optimization
insights.newscred.comThe Integrated Marketing Organization: A Complete Guide to Building Higher-Performing Teams
REC OMMENDATION NO. 2
Configure data for operational efficiency reporting
To track operational efficiency, make sure your technology stack is configured
for reporting across three categories of metrics: input, output and performance.
Measuring integrated marketing efforts is about monitoring the relationship
between these metrics. The gold standard is to reduce both inputs and outputs
while increasing performance through integrated marketing.
Input
+ Average time to produce
each asset
+ Average time to complete
production stage
+ Average steps to produce
an asset
+ Hours per user
+ Active campaigns
+ Assets created vs assets
published
+ Percentage of assets
completed on time
+ Average additional steps in
asset production
+ Percentage of assets tracking
to on time finish
+ Percentage of assets used
across LOBs and markets
+ Pageviews
+ Engagement rate
+ Conversion rate
+ Leads generated
+ Revenue attribution
Output Performance
The input is the effort that
goes into the production
of all of your assets
Output is everything
relating to the delivery or
production of those assets
Performance is the
degree these variables
are driving success
insights.newscred.comThe Integrated Marketing Organization: A Complete Guide to Building Higher-Performing Teams
Governance refers to the practice of establishing clear accountability for digital strategy, policy, and standards based on roles, responsibilities, and decision-making. A governance model should be custom-fit for your organization’s unique challenges and structure, but the below process can provide a framework.
Organizations often find governance the most challenging
aspect of operations, another side effect of the
fragmentation of the marketing organization. Capgemini
reports that fewer marketers in 2018 than in 2012 feel roles
and responsibilities for digital initiatives are clearly defined.
Your governance working group — also commonly known as
an editorial board, content council or center of excellence
— should be in charge of ensuring consistency, alignment
and policies. The group is generally made up of executives
or leaders that are representative of the cross-functional
alignment your marketing organization needs.
Investing in governance can help to scale initiatives
(particularly important for those working across multiple lines
of business and markets), mitigate risks, reduce costs and
promote collaboration.
Integrated Marketing Milestone 6
Empowered governance
To achieve this maturity
milestone, it’s not enough
to have a working group.
The working group must
be empowered to enforce
standards for consistency and
alignment to business goals.
PRO -TIP
insights.newscred.comThe Integrated Marketing Organization: A Complete Guide to Building Higher-Performing Teams
REC OMMENDATION NO. 1
Develop a governance model
An organizational structure is closely aligned with content models.
Every model has its strengths and weaknesses, and knowing
them can help you mitigate risks and optimize for operational
efficiency. Here’s a rundown of the three archetypes, including key
characteristics, structural advantages and disadvantages.
The three archetypes
These archetypes are helpful in understanding your
model’s challenges and potential risk mitigation
tactics. Depending on the your brand’s current
marketing maturity, business goals, organizational
structure, resources, processes and personnel, you
may choose to adopt one or more of the following
optimization ideas.
Centralized Independent Hybrid
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Archetype: Centralized
In a centralized model, one team has full
ownership of the content. Centralized
organizational structures rely on this team to
make decisions and provide direction for the
company. This team sets the standards and
guidelines for marketing success. Generally,
they are the marketing department or a subset
of the marketing department and have their
own budgets, goals and KPIs.
Structural advantages
+ Marketing is easy to standardize
+ Expedites content publishing process
+ Easier to audit and manage content
+ Simplifies technology stack
+ Provides consistent resources for updates
Structural disadvantages
+ Generic assets/content not specific to LOB
or country
+ Bottleneck and slower to market
+ Limited exposure to SME resources
+ No budget allocation at the LOB level,
resulting in duplicate content
+ Prioritization is difficult across countries or
LOB requests/pitches
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Archetype: Independent
Structural Advantages
+ Everyone’s responsible and autonomous
+ SME resources on hand, and more integrated
content
+ LOBs own content, increasing content quality
+ Content relevance/timeliness
+ Better able to leverage timely content
creation opportunities
Structural Disadvantages
+ Can be competitive among different local
teams/LOBs
+ Impossible to police consistency of brand
+ Harder to scale
+ Difficult to leverage existing content across
the organization for repurposing
+ Marketing buy-in is low
+ There can be an inconsistent tech stack
+ Inconsistent tone of voice
+ Difficult to manage and very low visibility
across LOBs
Each LOB or local team has their own
marketing unit. Each team operates
autonomously with individual program/
marketing focus. Marketing is siloed and
very grassroots in nature. The teams are
autonomous, generally with individual
budgets, and the organizational structure is
relatively flat with diluted decision making.
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Archetype: Hybrid
Developing a new governance model may include
(but is not limited to) the following activities:
+ Conducting a deep dive of your marketing process
+ Identifying roles and responsibilities
+ Creating a planning model to integrate calendars
+ Identifying one-off “activations” versus “always on”
production
+ Determining attributes and meta-tagging
+ Understanding roles, responsibilities, and owners
+ Agreeing on a potential master view, process and
playbook
Governance is at the heart of integrated marketing
and focused on people (stakeholders and decision
makers), processes (guidelines and policies) and
platforms (the technologies and systems required to
execute flawlessly.)
Brands should invest in governance because it
accelerates and enhances other investments and
sets teams to deliver on their goals more efficiently
while managing risks, reducing costs, organizing
infrastructure, and increasing the customer
experience and engagement.
In this model, content is created by a global center
and then repurposed to local markets or lines of
business; this is also referred to as the global-
local model. There is a central (or global) resource
with localization, and decision making is pushed
down. This is a hybrid model that places business-
facing resources at the local or business-unit level
(business unit, line of business, local market) with
centralized content services.
Structural Advantages
+ Centralized structure for establishing strategy
direction and vision
+ Centralized group has broad representation for
facilitating collaboration and consensus building
(requiring local market (LM), line of business (LOB)
and Business Unit (BU) involvement)
+ Relatively easy to implement
+ Scalable and sustainable (over time)
+ Pushes down decision making
Structural Disadvantages
+ Requires local buy-in and involvement
+ Strategy needs to take into account both global
and local needs
+ Likelihood for inconsistent tech stack
+ Varying maturity of different LOB, LM, BU
+ Varying budget and staff resourcing
+ Implementation has to be rolled-out due to
custom approach of global-local
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REC OMMENDATION NO. 2
Establish a working group (center of excellence)
With an established governance model and buy-in, the
center of excellence (COE) should be able to align the
organization’s digital activities around the needs of the
customer and the goals of the businesses. This direction-
setting body gives direction and guidance across the
organization for content as a cross-departmental group that
assesses performance and sets standards for performance.
The COE mandate can be as far-reaching as global, and it’s
important to remember that while they do not have control
over other teams, they do have jurisdiction when it comes
to best practices. Ideally, this body should have cross-
functional representatives and buy-in.
Use these suggestions to build your COE’s mandate:
+ Improve operational effectiveness and efficiency across
the marketing organization.
+ Break down silos and encourage collaboration and
efficiency.
+ Champion integrated marketing in the organization.
+ Position integrated marketing as a business benefit,
creating a profit center rather than cost center.
+ Adopt a more strategic and sophisticated approach to
enterprise integrated marketing.
It’s important to distinguish
the roles and responsibilities of
the COE and to communicate
the working group is not a
fulfillment center for other
areas of the business.
PRO -TIP
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It is unrealistic to expect that
global and local teams will
work together seamlessly
from the beginning. It takes
time for them to plan, pilot,
iterate, and find the right
global to local balance.
PRO -TIP
REC OMMENDATION NO. 3
Consider a global-local model
Establishing a global-local model can provide a structured
approach to setting up content processes and workflows
that enable your team to execute marketing on an ongoing
basis. Essentially, it provides the systems, structure and
accountability needed to transform your brand into a
marketing center of excellence.
All stakeholders in a global and local program must fully
understand their role in strategy and production. These roles
and responsibilities should be signed off at global level and
then communicated to the local markets. Local markets
should be encouraged to be transparent if there are any risks
to them carrying out their responsibilities.
In many cases, a global content marketing program is
the very first collaboration between central and local
teams. In these cases, it also represents the beginning of
a deeper, internal transformation. By aligning on a global
marketing strategy, central and local teams are establishing
foundational processes across their organization.
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REC OMMENDATION NO. 4
Establish guidelines
B R AND GUIDELINE S
Every enterprise organization
will have their own brand
guidelines, from brand colors
and logos to tone of voice and
brand personality and values.
Brand guidelines help to create a
consistent brand experience and
can help to enforce brand memory
structures and brand salience.
EDITORIAL GUIDELINE S
The editorial policy covers a
definition of content types and
how content should be developed,
presented and formatted. The
editorial policy, like one that exists
in a traditional media newsroom,
should also have a style guide and
a tone of voice for all content.
There are different
types of guidelines
that a COE should
establish, including
brand, strategy,
asset, and editorial.
S TR ATEGY GUIDELINE S
Whether you call it a story filter or a
scorecard, guidelines help ensure that
all content is aligned to a strategy. A
strategy policy ensures all content
is mapped to strategic goals and
decisions like personas, campaign
themes, channels, and CTAs. Before
content is published, every piece
should undergo a quality control
checklist. This is a best practice but
will require support from content
leads to ensure that implementation is
taking place across the board.
AS S E T GUIDELINE S
Each asset that is part of your
communications engine should have a
consistent look, feel, duration/length
and treatment. In addition to this,
word limits should be strictly adhered
to for the purposes of consistency
across all asset formats and channels.
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Integrated Marketing Milestone 7
Asset utilization and localization
Proficient integrated marketing teams know not only know how to create content but also reuse assets so they’re not contributing to marketing waste. Digital assets should be repurposed in multiple formats across multiple channels targeting multiple audience segments. This requires a single source of truth for your approved assets: a library that everyone can access and where assets can be labeled according to your taxonomy. You can establish a working group that creates and shares templates, design assets, and reusable evergreen content.
REC OMMENDATION NO. 1
Audit existing content or assets
Conduct an audit to surface content that is R.O.T. (redundant, outdated or
trivial). Your audit will surface opportunities to improve content coverage and
performance; the main components of the audit should be a gap analysis and
a qualitative assessment. There are three types of audits you can conduct:
Full marketing inventory
A complete listing of every item including
digital and non-digital assets (including print,
downloadable files and videos).
Partial marketing inventory
A listing of a subset of your marketing program
(i.e., digital only). A partial inventory may include,
for example, the top few levels of a hierarchical
site or the past six months of articles. All
sections of the site will be covered.
Sample marketing inventory
A less detailed collection of example assets.
For digital inventories, you can use a tool like
Screaming Frog to crawl content pages and collect
available metadata that can be exported to a CSV
file. Use the CSV file to customize your own program
and then conduct a qualitative assessment based
on a deeper review on each piece of content. This
assessment should provide you with insights on
relevancy and quality of the asset.
The following template can help provide direction on
your qualitative assessment.
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Qualitative content audit template
Relevance
Does the asset meet the (targeted and
inferred) audience’s needs, goals and
interest? Is it relevant?
Voice
Does the asset consistently reflect the brand voice
and attributes? Does its tone adjust appropriately to
the context? Does the asset have a consistent style?
Write here Write here
Context
Where does the asset appear? What other asset is
also in that location, or linked? How easy is it for
someone seeking it out to discover? Is it easy to
scan or read? Is it in a usable format — including
headings, lists, images, tables, whitespace, etc?
Engagement
Does the asset use appropriate techniques to
engage and influence? Does it execute those
techniques effectively?
Write here Write here
Purpose
Why does this asset exist? Who is it intended
for? What action is it trying to influence?
Quality
Is the asset understandable? Is it organized clearly
and coherently? Is it accurate, correct and current?
Write here Write here
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Integrated Marketing Milestone 8
Execution at scale
Execution at scale means you’re optimizing your marketing operations for growth across the organization. This milestone is all about efficiency and effectiveness. Efficiency is about how quickly your marketing teams can do things; effectiveness is not just about efficiency and volume, it’s about whether each of these elements have the right level of ROI.
As your organization advances in integrated
marketing maturity, more teams will naturally join
the efforts — this is why the maturity curve actually
can be more of a wave with plateaus. As more teams
join, take into account the amount of time it takes
to onboard them. Each new team generally starts
at a lower point of the maturity curve, meaning
the overall efficiency of the business will pause
momentarily before accelerating again.
The link between maturity and efficiency
As new programs are launched lower in
the maturity curve, operational efficiency
across the whole business is intially
stunted, before growing again in stages,
as shown in the graphic above.
Integrated technology stack
Execution at scale
Executive mandate + crossfunctional buy-in
Comms
Digital
Content
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REC OMMENDATION NO. 1
Benchmark for operational efficiency
Benchmarking your organization helps chart growth progress and build a
roadmap towards the ideal state. Here are some questions you can use to build
program benchmarks as new teams join the integrated marketing efforts.
Current State
+ How long is it taking you to produce
assets?
+ What are the current sticking points or
roadblocks?
+ What stages are causing most pain?
+ What is taking too long?
+ What is being repeated?
+ Where are efforts being doubled?
Ideal state
+ How long should each stage take?
+ How many revisions should each asset go
through?
+ How many steps should we need to go
through?
+ How long do we need for legal approval?
+ How many stakeholders should be involved
in each stage?
+ Where do we need to spend the most time?
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Lieu Pham has more than 15 years’ experience in
strategy, marketing, and advertising across APAC,
EMEA, and North America. In her current role as
NewsCred’s Vice President of Strategy and Creative
Services, she develops the frameworks and workshops
for client success in both content marketing and
integrated marketing. Her expertise is in developing
actionable strategies for breaking down silos and
building better campaigns. She’s a regular speaker at
industry events and a mentor with She Runs It.
Lieu Pham
VP, Strategy + Creative Services
NewsCred
About the author
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Key takeaways
Well-executed integrated marketing can be transformative for
businesses, driving unprecedented efficiency and visibility that
brings teams closer together. NewsCred’s proprietary ADEPT
methodology and companion Integrated Marketing Maturity
Index can help you benchmark your organization’s marketing
governance, processes, and operations — all with the ultimate
goal of increasing marketing performance.
Here’s a summary of the tactical recommendations that
surround the eight milestones of integrated marketing. These
recommendations were designed to provide marketing leaders
with practical change management tactics and actionable
strategies for increasing an organization’s integrated marketing
maturity. The roadblocks to execution are often people-related —
fostering a true culture of collaboration (not competition) is really
key to successful integrated marketing.
NewsCred predicts that investing in integrated marketing now
will give brands first-to-market advantage and that boosting
operational efficiency will become a valuable KPI for marketing
teams. We encourage marketing leaders to break down silos,
support agile teams, and embrace true collaboration — ultimately
unifying both marketing and the customer journey.
Here’s your roadmap to a more-efficient and better-performing integrated marketing organization.
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INTEGR ATED MARK E TING MILE S TONE 1
Executive Mandate and Cross-
Functional Buy-in
+ Develop a marketing operations SWOT
+ Launch a stakeholder engagement survey
+ Follow up with a stakeholder workshop
INTEGR ATED MARK E TING MILE S TONE 2
Collaborative planning model
+ Develop a campaign brief
+ Build a content playbook of best practices
INTEGR ATED MARK E TING MILE S TONE 3
Documented taxonomy
+ Create a shared marketing taxonomy
+ Inventory your shared data inputs
INTEGR ATED MARK E TING MILE S TONE 4
Holistic workflows
+ Develop workflows for each asset type
INTEGR ATED MARK E TING MILE S TONE 5
Integrated Technology Stack
+ Conduct a centralized marketing
technology audit
+ Configure data for operational
efficiency reporting
INTEGR ATED MARK E TING MILE S TONE 6
Empowered governance
+ Develop a governance model
+ Establish roles and responsibilities
+ Establish a global-local strategy
+ Build and enforce guidelines
INTEGR ATED MARK E TING MILE S TONE 7
Asset utilization and localization
+ Create a central asset library (utilizing
the standardized labeling strategy)
+ Audit existing content and assets
INTEGR ATED MARK E TING MILE S TONE 8
Execution at scale
+ Benchmark for operational efficiency
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