Marketing Automation’s “Boots on the Ground”

Marketing Automation’s “Boots on the Ground”
from Dslyecxi.com’s Tactics, Techniques & Procedures Guide

This is the sixth in a series of excerpts from Allinio’s white paper Net-Centric Marketing & Information Superiority.

Human Intelligence

As in warfare, the benefits of technology for Marketers do not make Human Intelligence (HUMINT) obsolete; the direct observation by humans of an event or environment is just as critical as ever.  As always, the better the HUMINT is, the greater the probability of a desirable outcome will be.  Digital video recording of a focus group should not replace live visual observation of that focus group; Customers are human and most likely desire or enjoy interacting with other humans.

Human interaction and observation of customers should always be utilized when possible; in the commercial sector, Sales and Marketing are the main sources of HUMINT and by far, Sales is probably the greatest source of information, especially on the individuals involved in customer relationships.  The challenge is taking the highly anecdotal and subjective data from the Sales channel, aggregating it, and mining patterns and strategic information from it.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) applications are still the best platforms for recording and tracking the observations of individual relationships, but often it requires the discipline of an enlightened Sales organization to input the data.  Eventually the logging of those and observations in the form of notes or interviews could be instantly analyzed for keywords that are alerted to others when they occur so the information may be shared with enterprise stakeholders as quickly as possible.

The emerging technologies that are becoming available to Marketers should be adopted to augment HUMINT – clearly surveillance cameras don’t get tired, the volume of data gathering and storage potential by ISR systems for Marketing will be cost effective in the long run.

This is the sixth in a series of excerpts from tAllinio’s white paper Net-Centric Marketing & Information SuperiorityClick here to read the previous excerpt onlineStay tuned to this blog for the next excerpt.

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