In this increasingly digitized world, most business functions depend heavily on online and digital tools; perhaps none more so than marketing, where most of the work is now done online through social media, advertising, and email.
It’s become clear that marketing and technology teams need to work together to drive organizations forward and serve customers’ needs. Having a CTO who understands how technology and marketing complement each other means that, ultimately, there is a demand for products and services that are developed.
Here are four ways marketers and CTOs (Chief Technology Officers) can work together to support a brand or organization.
Communication Is Crucial for Tech and Marketing Teams
Communication is the thread that runs through everything. Without it, projects don’t progress, goals don’t get achieved, and customers’ needs are not met. At the very least, the marketing and technology teams should regularly meet to update on shared projects and discuss technical issues affecting customers.
Regular communications between marketers and the CTO ensure that everyone understands what developments are a priority and that teams work together to achieve shared goals. It also means no one is surprised by development requests, marketing teams tend to move at a much faster speed than tech teams, so this prevents last-minute requests that are difficult to accommodate.
Make Working With Data Easy
Marketers use multiple technology platforms, real-time analytics and big data to carry out their roles. This means having a good working relationship with the CTO and technology team is essential. There is currently a strong focus on hyper-personalization and developing content and products that solve customers’ pain points. Both these drives are underpinned by technology, meaning that collaboration between the two teams is crucial. A strong CTO will understand this and drive the relationship between the two teams.
To Develop Products Customers Need
The area where the importance of the working relationship between marketing and technology becomes most apparent is product development. A skilled CTO understands this and can help marketers develop mobile apps, manage web technology and innovate on behalf of customers.
Working with a dedicated software development agency or fractional CTO agency can be helpful in cases where it doesn’t make sense for an organization to have a dedicated CTO or tech team.
For example, Band of Coders, a full-service software development agency that offers fractional CTO services, recently worked with their partner, Inbox Marketer, to improve and maintain the website of Sirius FM. Working in place of a CTO, Band of Coders redeveloped the website to provide Sirius FM with a solution that fit the needs of their subscribers and brought their Canadian portal up to date.
Synchronize Team Workflows
If the marketing team needs a landing page for a campaign and the tech team is only available after the deadline, that’s an issue.
It’s helpful to have both teams synchronize their workflows. At its simplest, this means that both teams follow the same project management cycle so that they speak the same language and share their development schedules.