Marketing technology has evolved quickly over the past few years and so too has the number of point solutions available on the market.

Scott Brinker, a leading authority in the industry, suggests there are currently now over 1,000 marketing technology vendors, as demonstrated in his 2014 version of the Marketing Technology Landscape graphic.

Aside from navigating the sheer number of solutions available, marketers are facing another challenge: each of these point solutions has its own unique data syntax and language, making it difficult to integrate them – and thus connect the various touchpoints throughout the consumer journey.

The good news for businesses looking to take control of their technology and maximise marketing ROI is that they can now build their own bespoke marketing cloud, incorporating a range of functions from advertising and analytics to social, CRM and retargeting.

In addition, marketers can select the best solutions on the market, combining applications from the major cloud vendors with thousands of other point solutions from a wide range of providers, and allow them to share a centralised source of data.

Building a custom marketing cloud is a straightforward and effective way to address two of the greatest setbacks that digital marketers have faced in recent years:

  • Enjoying real-time interactions with customers

One of the main benefits of creating a custom cloud is the ability for marketers to take action in real time, continually optimising campaigns based on meaningful data. Building a custom marketing cloud enables businesses to do this without relying on traditional data warehousing techniques, which can be expensive and extremely slow, often taking up to two days to deliver useable data.

Once applications have been seamlessly connected to the cloud, marketers can begin to take action in real time – informed by up-to-the-minute data – to optimise their marketing campaigns and achieve maximum ROI.

  • Driving profitable omni-channel campaigns

The second major benefit of building a bespoke marketing cloud is the ability to execute truly cross-channel campaigns. Relationship building is essential to modern marketing and consumers expecting meaningful, relevant interactions with businesses across all devices and channels.

A marketing cloud is a key component for any brand
 set on making cross-channel, and indeed omni-channel campaigns become a reality. It can allow for audience segmentation, cross-device visitor data stitching, and profile enrichment, all of which help to provide the consistent, personalised experience the customer is looking for.

Many marketers are opting for proprietary marketing clouds to assimilate their digital marketing solutions. While each of the large cloud solutions have their benefits – with acquired solutions offering a suite of integrated products that work together to enhance marketing performance – no one proprietary marketing cloud can completely fulfil the unique marketing requirements of each individual business.

The ability to create a custom marketing cloud is placing marketers in control of their technology, and through the synchronisation of data between the chosen applications, marketers are able to combine a wide range of solutions to best meet the individual needs of their business – with each application communicating across a shared data layer.

Building your own marketing cloud and leveraging the best solutions on the market is the optimal, most flexible approach to modern marketing and to realising the potential of each and every digital marketing campaign.

Now is the perfect time for brands to look through the mist and haze of ‘off the shelf’ proprietary marketing-cloud solutions and consider building their own in preparation for the next era in marketing, where true cross-channel campaigns can be optimised in real time – driven by meaningful data – to achieve maximum ROI.

Lindsay McEwan

Lindsay McEwan

Contributor


Lindsay McEwan, General Manager EMEA at Tealium.