A good tussle with a worthy opponent can be satisfying and fun - but ultimately can get in the way of the greater good. This is especially true when traditional enemies are actually working towards a common goal, and there is no better example than the age-old feud between IT and marketing.
No-one knows why the feud started. Perhaps a hungry marketer mistakenly ate an IT coworkers’ lunch and it snowballed from there. What we do know is that marketers have a tendency to treat IT as servile tech wizards – marketing need data and they need it yesterday, if not sooner. Meanwhile, IT tend to treat marketers as flaky creative types, swanning in from business lunches with no real understanding of the efforts involved in maintaining the back-end of the business.
These days, as the areas of marketing and IT have never been more intertwined. It’s important that IT and marketing realise that, not only do they need to work together, they are on the same team collaborating to obtain the same goals.
Fundamentally different worldviews
In order to keep up with the increasingly sophisticated ways companies can digitally approach customers, there is a constant demand for new programs, new software and new algorithms.
IT have a much bigger awareness of the tensions that this can create for a business as a whole. They understand how implementing that new beaut program means in terms of the bottom line — how much it will cost the business, how it will interact with other systems, how it can scale, and how installing this new system could disrupt workflow. They also have a very good idea of what can be done and what can’t.
However, as HubSpot notes, because these programs can measure data so accurately, the onus is now on both IT and marketing to ensure that the right software is implemented. Speed and reach are now critical factors in whether companies are winning or losing customers.
IT must consider customer service
IT now has to be a more customer-focused department — but the marketing team can help with that!
One way is to include them in a buyer persona workshop. Knowing who the ideal buyer is for the business can really clarify an end goal for IT actions. It also helps to create a common vision with marketing. Another way is to have a single go-to platform that both departments can access. This not only helps to foster transparency, but being across the same data in the same context can help IT identify the direct benefits.
Marketers must be increasingly tech savvy
Marketers have to share the load as well. No longer is it enough to be creative — in order to get that reach, the role of the marketer has to be immersed in the tech world.
A good marketer needs to know how to interpret very complex amounts of data. They also need to understand what to ask IT for in order to get it. IT can also be very good at finding new ways to use existing platforms for marketing purposes, and how systems should be integrated to get a 360 degree view of your customer, their wants and needs.
When two become one
While there might be still be a little way to go until the relationship is at the harmonious level it needs to be, all signs suggest that for IT and marketing, there is movement in the right direction.
Brand chemistry is a b2b marketing agency winning your customers' hearts and minds through inbound, brand, content, lead generation and digital strategy. Our marketing specialists achieve stellar results with the latest lead generation techniques.