I’ve been in a couple of discussions recently that have made it clear that we need to differentiate between digital and digital marketing. According to Wikipedia,
Digital marketing is an umbrella term for the targeted, measurable, and interactive marketing of products or services using digital technologies to reach consumers. The key objective is to promote brands through various forms of digital media.
The key terms here are “products and services”. We’re at a point now that customers are not choosing based on specs (most likely due to parity), but basing their decisions on how they feel about brands. That feeling comes from many places – retail, direct sales, customer service, and even digital. It has never been more important to focus on the brand building component of marketing – and we’re seeing some of the more innovative brands making that jump.
It’s the End of ‘Marketing’ As We Know It at Procter & Gamble
Digital marketing has to evolve beyond marketing, and it has to support every department within a company. By supporting the wider organisation, it can consollidate assets and functional responsibilities, enjoy efficiencies of scale, and give the customer once consistent view of the company. I cannot stress how important consistency is to the customer – it reminds me of how I am still getting seven different edms from a particular tech provider, in multiple languages, even though they have all my profile details.
Here’s how I see the end-to-end ecosystem from the perspective of a company.
[aesop_image imgwidth=”100%” img=”http://nazeem.me/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/digital-marketing.png” align=”center” lightbox=”off” captionposition=”left”]
As you can see, the digital team should be the interface through which the company engages with the customer on the digital channels. To do this, Digital has to look beyong marketing metrics. It needs to start considering things like sentiment and buzz. It needs to create content that makes people feel – not just publishing it because you can.
To do this, Digital must also demonstrate impact for each part of the business. It must convince management that the reputation of the company is more important than it has ever been, and that the company’s narrative is created in real-time by conversations they are not even aware of. That’s the hardest part to communicate – but that’s where data comes in. A good listening tool, and the analytical skills to transform that data into insights, will have more of an impact than fifty case studies ever will.
To be continued….