3 Martech Applications

Firms need only to master a handful of applications. With proper training, these applications can be easily mastered by your employees, except for

data analytics where you will need to hire. In the thousands, they cover

the entire Sales and Marketing Function:

4 The Integrated Offerings

The best tools are those put together by a partnership between 2 or more companies to pool their respective products, as with Salesforce in sales (CRM) and Google in Marketing (Google Marketing Platform), even if

both claim to have the other's products:

1.4 MARKETING CHANNELS - THE CUSTOMER JOURNEY. As the table below shows, ad tracking tools enable businesses to follow practically every move their customers make online along the entire sales cycle or customer journey:

1.5 MARKET RESEARCH - DATA ANALYTICS. Data analytics tools can now collect primary and secondary data on almost every move billions of users make on the Internet from any mobile device. The biggest sources of information are the mega social media and eCommerce sites with billions of users, such as Facebook and Amazon. But just about anybody can subscribe to the myriad of app tracking tools to collect such data, not only on visitors to one's website but also on these mega sites. This can be run in a few seconds and then aggregated and visualized using such easy-to-use business intelligence and data visualization tools as Microsoft's Power BI or Salesforce's Tableau. Moreover, data can be captured in all formats

Needless to say, the combination of user data and online ads has become a multi-billion dollar business. It is both Facebook's (ad sales $98B) and Google's (ad sales $209B) primary source of revenue for 2021

1.6 COMMUNICATION CHANNELS - THE BACKLINK. This is where the customer's journey is ultimately supposed to end, after all of the above mentioned communications tools have been used (advocacy/retention/attribution, programmatic advertising, data analytics): to get him to your website. Surprising as this may sound, the Internet works by....word-of-mouth, expressed by a hyperlink to your website, which users, liking your product, would share and recommend on a social media site. The more your website's link is referred to on the most visited sites, the more visits you'll receive on your own website. Only at the very end will visitors, your potential customers, google you for more information.

To get sales leads, the Internet's MO is as follows:

           Content. Make a great product at the right price, provide

          seamless service, and have great content on your website

          Multichannel. Connect, cold call and communicate at the right

          place, through those channels where your target customers spend

          most of their time,ensure that those users who like your product

          will promote you by posting your link to friends to visit you

          Clicks It is the number of clicks on your strategically-placed

          links which will bring you the high number of hits on Google

          you crave for, not the other way around

          * in Google's search algorithm, your website link is called a

          "backlink" in that users click to link back to your website

2 The Red Line - User Privacy

Users are beginning to push back on what they feel is a violation of their privacy. Businesses have begun to adapt their offering accordingly. For example, Apple users can now limit this abusive form of ad tracking on their mobile devices, stopping on its tracks any form of ad tracking whatsoever when they go online (Facebook can track your every movement not only on its website but across all apps)

As a result, we may be witnessing a return to the type of marketing research we conducted back in the old days, where we would ask a sample of representative users to be followed on their customer journey, this time

on the Internet

1 Martech Fundamentals

1.1 COMMUNITIES. On a par with traditional media and online search and advertising, online user Communities present on Social Media and other eCommerce websites now carry enormous weight in shaping consumers' buying behavior. It is in this digital version of customer groups that customers find product reviews they can trust from their network of "friends, families, fans and followers" known as the F-factor

Community-Focused Marketing has become a new discipline of sorts, where the fundamental methods of market analysis, segmentation, positioning, and differentiation have been refreshed, by adding new digital tools, such as Data Analytics, to gain insights on the behavior of billions of members spread out across these online communities, individually and instantaneously

1.2 INFLUENCER MARKETING. Businesses now widely use 3 tools to try to generate sales leads, attract, acquire and retain customers within these communities. These 3 tools are Advocacy, Referral, and Attribution. They form what is now called Influencer Marketing

(see villagemarketing.com and Amazon's Influencer program)

1.3 SEARCH AND PROGRAMMATIC ADVERTISING. The most noteworthy innovation in online advertising has been in the area of Programmatic Advertising. While the other major ad formats (Search, Video, Banner, and Social Media) give no other choice to advertisers than to go through one website in a many-to-one relationship, Programmatic Advertsing allows them to bypass it through an ad exchange marketplace, in a many-to-many relationship between ad publishers and advertisers. Ad agencies, big and small, now offer an integrated suite of services combining content ("creative"), data and programmatic campaigning across all channels (see here the houses that Martin Sorrell built, WPP and S4 Capital )

However, all online advertising today is "programmatic", whether it is placed indirectly through Google's Search website or directly on all

websites in general. As briefly explained, both Search and Programmatic Advertising run on the same software, the Ad Server, which allows businesses to shop for ad space and place their ads anywhere in a fraction of a second (less than 200 milliseconds), at the very moment a visitor is viewing a page on the website. Because the probability that a viewer would click on the ad is so low - 2% of clicks to page views is good but rare - hundreds of ads must be served every day. A typical visitor on the most popular sites is served about 150 to 200 ads daily. Multiplied by the number of Internet users, this can easily translate into hundreds of billions of ads being served to millions of websites. To process such a volume of ads and ad space, advertisers and publishers must pre-program ahead for each ad campaign and ad offering, hence the term "programmatic" being used

How Programmatic Advertising Works. Programmatic Ad Exchanges are organized as auctions with advertisers acting as bidders of ad space and publishers acting as providers of ad space on their websites. Intermediary firms have sprung up to offer their services to both parties to the transaction:

               Demand-Side Platforms (DSPs) which allow advertisers to buy

               publishers' ad space (inventory) available on multiple ad

               exchanges in real time

               Supply-Side Platforms (SSPs) which enable publishers to

               sell their ad space, filling them with ads and receiving revenue

               in real time

The transaction is automated and happens in milliseconds. Preparation is therefore key for the advertiser who must provide beforehand to his buyer, the DSP, his budget limits and targeting parameters. Below is a step-by-step description of the transaction process:

MARKETING ANALYTICS       

Business Intelligence

Data Visualization

Device Integration

Mobile & Web Analytics

MARKETING OPERATIONS

Budgeting & Finance

Workflow (process)

Agile Operations Management

Collaboration (team)

Talent Management

Audience/Marketing Data

Customer Data Platform

Data Management Platform

Marketing Analytics          

Advertising & Promotion:

Display & Programmatic Advertising

Native and Content Advertising

Search and Social Advertising

Video Advertising

Public Relations

Social & Relationships:

Advocacy, Loyalty, Referrals

Call Analytics

Community & Reviews

Conversational & Chat

Customer Engagement

Events, Meetings & Webinars

Social Media Marketing

PRICE

Pricing Intelligence

Market-based Pricing

AI Competitor Pricing

Dynamic Pricing

Price Optimization

Profitability & Growth Pricing

PLACE

Multi-Channel Marketing

Ecommerce Marketing

Ecommerce Platform

Retail Marketing

Sales Automation, Enablement

Affiliate Marketing

PRODUCT

Content  Marketing

Email marketing

Interactive Content

Sales Lead

Mobile Apps

Personalization

SEO

Video Marketing

Experience Design

PROMOTION

MARKETING STRATEGy (the 4 Ps)

2. LEADS

Lead Engagement (bots,..)

Appointment Scheduling

Video Meetings & Selling

Presentation & Demos Creation

Conversation Optimizaiton

Prospect Gifting

Messaging (emails,..)

1. CONTACTS

Web Visitor ID

Web Targeting & Purchase Intent

Web Insights & Relationships

Social Media Capture

Mobile Capture

Web Capture

3. PROSPECTS

Customer's ROI & TCO

AI Guided Process

Digital Sales Rooms

Opportunity Conversion

SALES STRATEGY (Sales Cycle steps 1 to 6)

4. CUSTOMER ACQUISITION

Pipeline Reviews

Digital Signature (smart contracts)

Contract Proposals & RFPs

Configure, Price, Quote

Unified Customer View

5. SALES MANAGEMENT

Sales Compensation

Quota & Territory Assignment

Sales Forecasting & Reporting

Gamification

Pre-Sales Management

Salesforce Skills Development

6. CUSTOMER Retention

CRM Database

Unified Activity Entry

CRM System Modules

customers as

advertisers

Marketing Fundamentals

The F-Factor

Search Advertising ($170B)

Advertisers

& Their Ad Agencies

Publishers

Programmatic Advertising ($14B)

Advertisers

& Their Ad Agencies

Publishers

User Privacy

Customer JOurney

The Martech Decision

5 The Martech Decision

Once we've gained a basic understanding of HOW the few digital marketing tools work as described above, deciding on the WHERE, WHAT, AND WHO becomes quite simple:

          Where - The User Apps (in fact the Website) The apps are the

          digital marketing channels. The ad publisher sells ad space on his

          website through his app, i.e., Google's Search and Facebook's

          Social Media websites are apps anyone can download. Each app

          has an interface, the Application Programming Interface (API),

          which acts as a tollgate advertisers must pay for to place his ad.

          They will choose the website with the audience profile which

          matches their targeted user demographics and psychographics.

          The latter is provided by the publisher with the help of Big Data

          firms

         What - The Ad Content Ad Agencies have adapted

         their traditional line of work, namely Content Creation, Content

         Personalization and Content Delivery to new digital formats.

         In Content Creation, the new formats are video and mobile

         marketing. The major innovation in Content Personalization is

         its Interactive Content component. In Content Delivery,

         Content Delivery Networks (CDN) are now able to deliver

         seamlessly your digital ad anywhere to millions of websites in real

         time, matching your targeted audience profile

        Who - Communities The websites or apps of the FAANGs, telco

        operators and eCommerce retailers now have their own community

        section. For example, the Apple community in Reddit (of

        Gamestop fame) has more than a million members

Table of Contents

1. Martech Fundamentals

     . Communities

     . Advocacy, Referral, Attribution

     . Programmatic Advertising

     . Customer Journey "Touchpoints"

     . Data Analytics

     . The Backlink

2. The Red Line - User Privacy

3. Martech Applications

4. The Integrated Offerings

5. The Martech Decision

Data Analytics

Who

Communities

What

Content

Where

Apps

HOW

Platform

buyers of ad space

suppliers of ad space

Google

Platform

Data Management Platforms

(DMP)

Supply-Side Platforms

(SSP)

Ad Exchange Platforms

Demand-Side Platorms

(DSP)

Advertisers, with the help of Ad Agencies and Publishers connect to Ad Exchanges, including Google's own exchanges, to buy and sell ad space. Advertisers use Demand-Side Platforms (DSP) and Publishers use Supply-Side Platforms (SSP), directly or through service providers, to engage in an auction on Ad Exchanges (see table below). Ad Networks sell unsold ad inventory for publishers. They are not programmatic. 2 platforms, the Data Management Platform (DMP), providing the data tand the Ad Campaign Platforms run by Ad Agencies, provide campaign advisory and data analytics services

Major Digital Ad Formats or Technologies

Search Advertising 40% of Market

Google Ads, Google Search Results

Display Advertising 60% of Market

Banner Ads, Video Ads, Social Media Ads, Interstitial Ads,

Classifieds, Connected TV,  Programmatic

Search Ad Servers

Programmatic Ad Servers

The Ad Server, used in both search advertising and programmatic advertising, represents the software backbone used to collect user information and to match it with the ad placed by the advertiser:

STEP 1: USER DATA COLLECTION

- his profile provided by his devices' unique IP Address, his mobile GPS location, and his demographic profile (date of birth is compulsory) when he registers as a member on Google, Facebook, Amazon,...

- his interests and shopping history provided  by a log of all of his website visits

STEP 2: AD MATCHING

The ad is placed, matching the information collected on the user's profile and site visit information

Technically, the ad server is able to collect data on the website's page title, page content, on JS, CSS headings and meta tags. Keywords and their associations to the  website's HTML fields are generated by the ad server's algorithms

Step 2. The F-Factor

Step 3. Customer as Business Partner

Step 4. Customer Acquisition

Promotion

Product

Place

Price

Friends

Families

Fans

Customer

Advocacy

Customer

Referral

Customer

Attribution

Step 1. The 4 Ps

customers as

salesmen

multi-channel

analytics

Customer

Engagement

Customer

Value

Proposition

New

Customers

Marketing

Mix

(what)

Communities

(who)

The Tools

(how)

The Sale

New

Leads

New Followers

Customer

Value Delivery

Facebook and Instagram Affiliate program for its "creators"

Influencer Marketing

The Google/Salesforce PArtnership

Martech

The Marketing Technologies

Note: all of these applications are nothing more than computer programs put into a standard mobile app form, which users can click on their smart devices to access the Web platform