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B2BM
April 2009
34
Research
≤
Go to www.b2bm.biz/research
IT and marketing:
The great divide
The growing gap between marketing and IT is a significant challenge for B2B brands,
says Fabio Torlini, marketing director at Rackspace Hosting. He explains how to avoid
falling into ‘website wilderness’
I
T departments are increasingly falling how to support them from a technical businesses and 32 per cent in Northern
into a so-called ‘website wilderness’ as perspective. Europe are investing in blogs and
they fail to align technology with the The stark disparity was similar across web forums.
ever increasing demands of online Northern Europe, where it was revealed This could put businesses
marketing campaigns. that 44 per cent of the stated online at a competitive disadvantage as the
This is according to Rackspace marketing would be a big focus, but 45 per use of social media as a channel to
Hosting’s research amongst 250 IT cent did not expect to get involved in it. communicate with customers is increasing
decision makers in several regions Ecommerce continues to boom and in many sectors.
including the UK, Northern Europe and retailers are in a frenzy to push brands over Marketing campaigns are now under
South Africa. The results reveal that the Internet as spending is set to increase pressure to engage with a growing online
businesses are not engaging effectively on online by at least six per cent this year. community who want more from brands
marketing or aligning formal objectives To cope with these increased demands, and use the Internet as a platform to
with business goals. it is vital that IT supports online activity engage directly with them.
from a scalability and performance point of
The online boom view. IT must be central to online Avoiding costly pitfalls
The consequences following the global marketing activities. In particular, it should The online ambitions of marketing
economic nightmare have no doubt be used to: departments need to be supported by the
affected marketing budgets, but the technical expertise of the IT department
majority of the cuts are affecting offline for the benefit of the whole company.
rather than online marketing programs. Technology has evolved over the years in
If anything, online campaigns are such a way that businesses can have
becoming more and more complex as a almost any service adapted to support
new breed of marketer evolves to cope with their marketing needs. So, for businesses
this downturn; one which is able to identify not to use this to their advantage is
new opportunities and stretch budgets by completely misguided.
embracing the Web 2.0 landscape. It is for this reason that CMOs must tap
The boom of social networking means into the expertise of IT departments, and IT
that new audiences are interacting with decision makers must become engaged in
brands online, through a number of marketing strategies.
web-based channels including Twitter and “The surge in online The challenge for IT people is to look to
Facebook.
Yet the surge in online campaigns means
campaigns means now more
new ways of working – such as cloud
computing and hosted applications – to
that now, more than ever, marketing and IT
than ever marketing and IT
allow businesses to save money through
have to be closely aligned. Having the IT in
place can avoid the costly impact of
have to be closely aligned”
investing in the right technologies in order
to enhance campaigns.
wasting dwindling marketing budgets. In particular, I would expect to see a
It was a shocking fact to see in our Fabio Torlini, marketing director at review of strategies in line with the
survey that 49 per cent of IT decision-
Rackspace Hosting
economic downturn.
makers are not involved in the delivery of Outdated views of technology and a
online marketing campaigns, highlighting a Ensure websites can handle surges in disconnect between IT and the wider
disconnect between the two. traffic so that an embarrassing slip-up – such organisation will present a risk for
Our research also showed that 64 per as a site crash – can be avoided, preventing businesses in 2009.
cent of UK respondents expect to see potential brand damage Set against a backdrop of economic
further investment in online marketing over Ensure site traffic is not malicious or able uncertainty, making mistakes in IT
the coming year. to infiltrate security. strategy could prove costly for businesses
The evolving marketing landscape is to repair.
now challenging the fundamentals of The need for digital dialogue rackspace@rocketcomms.net
marketing, as new channels to increase In addition to the disconnection between IT
brands are being embarked upon, and the and the delivery of online marketing, it was 1. Forrester Research, ‘Future of Online Retail’
IT departments have no understanding of found that only 20 per cent of UK report, March 2009
B2BM APRIL 09 – www.b2bm.biz
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