IT departments are increasingly falling into a so-called ‘website wilderness’ as they fail to align technology with the ever increasing demands of online marketing campaigns.
This is according to Rackspace Hosting’s research amongst 250 IT decision makers in several regions including the UK, Northern Europe and South Africa. The results reveal that businesses are not engaging effectively on marketing or aligning formal objectives with business goals.
The consequences following the global economic nightmare have no doubt affected marketing budgets, but the majority of the cuts are affecting offline rather than online marketing programs.
If anything, online campaigns are becoming more and more complex as a new breed of marketer evolves to cope with this downturn; one which is able to identify new opportunities and stretch budgets by embracing the Web 2.0 landscape.
The boom of social networking means that new audiences are interacting with brands online, through a number of web-based channels including Twitter and Facebook.
Yet the surge in online campaigns means that now, more than ever, marketing and IT have to be closely aligned. Having the IT in place can avoid the costly impact of wasting dwindling marketing budgets.
It was a shocking fact to see in our survey that 49 per cent of IT decision-makers are not involved in the delivery of online marketing campaigns, highlighting a disconnect between the two.
Our research also showed that 64 per cent of UK respondents expect to see further investment in online marketing over the coming year.
The evolving marketing landscape is now challenging the fundamentals of marketing, as new channels to increase brands are being embarked upon, and the IT departments have no understanding of how to support them from a technical perspective.
The stark disparity was similar across Northern Europe, where it was revealed that 44 per cent of the stated online marketing would be a big focus, but 45 per cent did not expect to get involved in it.
Ecommerce continues to boom and retailers are in a frenzy to push brands over the Internet as spending is set to increase online by at least six per cent this year.
To cope with these increased demands, it is vital that IT supports online activity from a scalability and performance point of view. IT must be central to online marketing activities. In particular, it should be used to:
Ensure websites can handle surges in traffic so that an embarrassing slip-up such as a site crash can be avoided, preventing potential brand damage
Ensure site traffic is not malicious or able to infiltrate security.
In addition to the disconnection between IT and the delivery of online marketing, it was found that only 20 per cent of UK businesses and 32 per cent in Northern Europe are investing in blogs and web forums.
This could put businesses at a competitive disadvantage as the use of social media as a channel to communicate with customers is increasing in many sectors.
Marketing campaigns are now under pressure to engage with a growing online community who want more from brands and use the Internet as a platform to engage directly with them.
The online ambitions of marketing departments need to be supported by the technical expertise of the IT department for the benefit of the whole company. Technology has evolved over the years in such a way that businesses can have almost any service adapted to support their marketing needs. So, for businesses not to use this to their advantage is completely misguided.
It is for this reason that CMOs must tap into the expertise of IT departments, and IT decision makers must become engaged in marketing strategies.
The challenge for IT people is to look to new ways of working such as cloud computing and hosted applications to allow businesses to save money through investing in the right technologies in order to enhance campaigns.
In particular, I would expect to see a review of strategies in line with the economic downturn.
Outdated views of technology and a disconnect between IT and the wider organisation will present a risk for businesses in 2009.
Set against a backdrop of economic uncertainty, making mistakes in IT strategy could prove costly for businesses to repair.
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