If you’ve ordered household products from Amazon Prime, hired a bi-weekly cleaning service, enjoyed a delicious home-cooked meal from Blue Apron or hitched a ride to the airport, the bar or back home with Uber, you’re already a part of the Do It For Me (DIFM) revolution. But most of that DIFM is for personal use. What about for the business owner? Can someone do it for you too?
Running a business – taking care of clients, finances, product updates and enhancements, regulations, public relations, sales, marketing – is a full-time job. And it’s one that most small to medium-size business (SMB) executives don’t always have time for, even when the rest of their team is rolling up their sleeves and pitching in. So it’s no surprise that DIFM is on the rise in the B2B world. However, odds are that you probably don’t need a Blue Apron meal for two delivered to the office (or maybe you do). What you need is, more help executing your strategy.
Think back to your first software-as-a-service (SaaS) purchase years ago. Now count how many SaaS based technologies your business is using today and how many you’re actually using to their full potential. Not many right? This is where DIFM for B2B comes into play.
Anthony P. Lee explains the phenomenon in a recent blog post on TechCrunch, “Why Do It For Me is the Next Big Thing when he says, “We call it the Do-It-For-Me Revolution, or “DIFM” for short. DIFM is more than software. DIFM combines technology automation with specialized labor to deliver a complete solution to a business problem. It’s as much about people-powered customer service as it is about code-powered efficiency.” Lee goes on to explain that DIFM services are emerging in several SMB industries including accounting, marketing, legal, HR/benefits and security.
With the opportunity for such a robust martech stack, juggling all of your SaaS-based solutions can take up too much of your time and resources and have a very mediocre outcome. Most marketers have previously used a “DIY” or do-it-yourself approach, where they license a marketing automation platform and operate it in-house. Many others want to take advantage of marketing automation to grow their business but do not have the resources to operate the platform in-house. Showing ROI from a system you don’t have time to learn but felt the urgency to invest in is rather impossible. Sometimes, you just need someone to do the heavy lifting for you.
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With a DIFM approach for martech, the goal is investing in a vendor with a DIFM team (or often called a managed services team) that understands that there is no such thing in a “one size fits all” marketing program and takes the time to tailor a DIFM service that meets your marketing goals. Some of the DIFM services marketers can benefit from include:
Designed email and landing page templates Nurture campaign creation and execution Lead scoring profile development and implementation Event management and execution A/B testing completion Campaign reports creation and management Overall marketing strategic consulting Instead of thinking of your SaaS investments as software AS a service, it’s time to start looking for more software WITH a service options. Technology is only going to continue to grow. In fact, Scott Brinker published his annual report for chiefmartech.com that showed the marketing tech industry has seen an average annual growth of 170%, increasing from 100 companies in 2011 to nearly 3,874 in 2016. Gartner also claims that 50 to 65% of marketing executives anticipate spending more on marketing technology in the coming year and that CMOs will outspend CIOs in 2017.
The marketing technology stack is not a trend, it’s here to stay. And companies need to do their homework before making investments. Each company’s marketing technology stack should be different and structured to meet their unique needs and and objectives. Before diving into more technology investments just to keep up, think about which tools will help you accomplish your goals and build your stack with the appropriate resources. Finally, don’t be afraid to ask for help. Technology no longer has to be DIY. Marketers shouldn’t depend on the technology alone to do the work for them. Martech investments take time and resources to implement so it’s time to start looking for DIFM options that will prove a substantial return on investment and continue to grow your business.