Your success in EMEA: 5 challenges, 5 solutions.

Transcription

1 Your success in EMEA: 5 challenges, 5 solutions. Like many global enterprises, you might have centralized key marketing functions over recent years, with previously distinct functions including brand, advertising, PR and events brought together alongside new dimensions including database management, and digital, search, social media and insight, some marketing-orientated, some coming from a sales perspective, some more technical angle or IT-dependent, some a mix of all three. As a US-based operation looking for impetus in EMEA, your challenges will be around co-ordinating existing, central resources with your regional team so that all benefit. Consistency and communication are key.

2 1 Inconsistent goals The increasing fragmentation and diversification of channels is multiplied when spanning continents. As a result, teams grow more specialized. Fruitful integration becomes harder to manage as goals become unclear, data fractured and messaging potentially diluted. The ability to balance and prioritize resource, and communicate from a single perspective to individual prospects, which is a realistic possibility, becomes impractical and inefficient. Clarify the big picture Not only Where do you want to go, and how will you get there? but also How will each team and individual involved contribute toward this? Without clear direction, each silo will remain focused on its own agenda and goals, which cannot deliver optimal value in the long-term. By defining a single, common organizational goal and strategy, everyone knows where they stand, and can contribute on that basis. Each team will have its own specific lead measures, but the overall end goal will be known and consistent for all, irrespective of geography. 2

3 2 Digital silos The emergent nature of digital marketing and the technical skills involved have contributed to the disparity of new digital channels and roles. SEO, website, social media, online media and pay-per-click become necessary but difficult to control and co-ordinate. As above, overall ownership of strategy can be difficult, resulting in each digital silo putting its own strategy together in isolation. So a social media and community management team could be running a competition, the IT team could be conducting a keyword audit, while the PR agency has been focusing on media coverage. Transparency and collaboration Integrating enterprise stakeholders and making activity visible for all to share has to be the goal. Collaborative activity that encourages crosspollination and shared utilization results in deeper audience engagement and increased value to the enterprise. The whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts. 3

4 3 Inconsistent or low quality content With content marketing central to successful Demand Generation, you can t afford to make mistakes. You need to manage dispersed production, co-ordination with required subject matter experts and translation resources, centrally and locally. Across business units, sectors, functions, departments and regions, it s a significant challenge to manage all communications and content creation while maintaining consistency of brand, quality and relevance of output and value to each individual prospect, wherever they are geographically and in their buyer journey. A content marketing framework and strategy Key to overcoming the challenges of dispersed content production is to evolve the wider organizational culture, and to give individuals from broad backgrounds the support and guidance they need to carry out their content marketing activity. The priority should be to make tools available to all that maintain brand and encourage collaboration, along with a focus on educating and driving best practice throughout the business. Where possible, seek to standardize and simplify processes that help to minimize inconsistencies. 4

5 4 Disparate data In the era of big data, organizations can access as much information as they need on their audience, and gather more as a part of the dialogue with this audience. By definition, in diverse markets data will be held across a variety of systems, in a variety of formats and language protocols, each one containing different fields or types of data. This scenario is a major barrier to personalized, customized and triggered communications. Cut-through, engagement and relevance are undermined, and the power of targeted communications diluted. This is only compounded as a generic batch n blast communications approach becomes the default that speaks to the largest proportion of prospects in the least personalized way. A unified marketing automation strategy In order to deliver dynamic communications most effectively, with the right content and message at the right time, a marketing automation platform is key. This provides the infrastructure that unifies inputs and data points in a single, usable environment. In turn, this drives communication of the most relevant and timely information to your audience, dependent on where they are in the buying cycle and on local market conditions. 5

6 5 Choosing an EMEAbased agency To support your EMEA strategy and your regional team, you might be considering a marketing communications agency. In LBDGA, you get a Demand Generation specialist, one of a very few in Europe, that also has a pedigree exclusively B2B-orientated. We work with a number of global, US-based enterprises, helping them to make the most of the revenue opportunities in EMEA by bringing together strategic and creative excellence, an innate understanding of Demand Generation and marketing automation principles and processes, and an unerring focus on helping clients to meet known customer needs and increase sales. To find out more about our approach to Demand Generation in EMEA, visit or emea@lbdga.com 6

7 You may also enjoy reading: Download > European Legislation Making Demand Generation Work in EMEA Guide Modern Marketing and Demand Generation ebook Download > Download > Download > Telephone: +44 (0) Milton Keynes: Ledger Bennett DGA Tungsten House, Warren Road Little Horwood, Milton Keynes MK17 0NR London: Ledger Bennett DGA 1st Floor Centric House Strand, London WC2R 0LT About Ledger Bennett DGA We are a B2B Demand Generation agency that uses sales and marketing know-how to help customers increase revenue by deploying Inbound Marketing, Content Marketing and Marketing Automation strategies. Our highly focused Demand Generation programs drive our customers business performance, helping them to: n Generate more opportunity n Convert that opportunity into sales n Retain customers and grow their value Using more measurable and cost effective techniques than traditional full service marketing agencies we are able to maximize business revenue in the modern world where the internet has fundamentally changed the behavior of the buyer. 7