What Can You Learn From “Marketing in the Round”?
Earlier this year Marketing in the Round: How to Develop an Integrated Marketing Campaign in the Digital Era was published – and it’s the first book I’ve read that applies the holistic approach of integrated marketing communication with online marketing tactics.
My next couple of posts will be observations from the book and how reaching for this methodology gels with everything else you’ve ever been told.
Go for the gold, be happy with silver.
If you’re familiar with SmartMPM, then you know that we practice marketing measurement for integrated campaigns. We expect our customers to approach their efforts with an eye to their marketing mix, at least enough to have set a common KPI across a few channels for comparison’s sake.
Authors Gini Dietrich and Geoff Livingston haven’t introduced any concepts that are foreign to us in that regard. What Dietrich and Livingston have introduced is a way to execute these familiar concepts in a disruptive way that, when stuck, would establish department credibility and demands results, buy-in, and longevity.
They call it the Marketing Round. And for all the blood, sweat and tears you would invest retro-fitting this model into your business, you would see a return that garners the fame and distinction of being the organization’s powerhouse of efficiency and revenue.
When we join forces, we can save the world!
It’s a goal worth reaching for. Even if you aren’t the picture-perfect case study for the book, you’ve still accomplished more than the average bear, and forever changed your marketing landscape. If you were just another cost center before, now you’re a results-driven, proactive, cross-trained marketing machine.
What’s more, SmartMPM is the perfect accompaniment for a strategy like the marketing round. Every time you report on goals you’ve worked toward as a union, you strengthen the position of the department through diligent tracking and measurement of your joint efforts.
Marketing powers activate!
Next: What does the marketing round have to do with agile marketing?
It’s great to see a measurement group who likes the book so much. I have to give the kudos to my pen pal, Gini, who just rocked the house on that section of the book.
And as she says, it’s always interesting to see the different takes on the book. This is by far the funnest review I’ve read. Thanks for taking the time to read it!
Funnest? Rock on! Just wait until we post the one about marketing in the round being akin to agile marketing. It has the word “ScrumMaster” in it!
Brooke! Thank you! I’m with Geoff…great review! The other night I was talking with some friends about this new chief marketing technologist title that is popping up inside larger organizations. It’s because marketing and IT are becoming even more closely aligned and someone needs to be the “hub” for making sure the two departments play nicely together. I think we’ll see more and more of this kind of integration as the web forces us to be more flexible and nimble.
Definitely! We’ve been prepared for that integration for some time. SmartMPM is a product of Smartbridge, and our larger business is IT consulting for large orgs that need help creating that ‘hub’. I certainly love it here – most of us are marketing-IT ‘bilingual’, I cherish it.