How to Stay Competitive with Digital-First Marketing  

Long a staple of business and marketing executives, nowadays the five-year plan has all the relevance of a coin-operated payphone. Even an 18-month plan is pushing it!  Business is now more unpredictable than ever and the global situation can change on a dime. Only nimble organizations that are willing and able to re-tool or adapt accordingly will win in our please-me-now society. That means a methodical, long-term approach – especially in my world of marketing – can be seen as, at best, a waste of time. And at worst?  A death sentence.

So the truth is that agility is a key requirement for success in marketing today: our target audiences are moving quickly, and so must those who seek to engage and serve them. The customer journey is no longer a linear path from Point A to Point B. It’s a winding road, with plenty of twists and turns, stops and starts, along the way. Marketers must have the tools and mindset to keep from getting lost in the woods.

Today, we must choose to deal with shorter plan cycles, quick, hard-hitting campaigns, and nearly instantaneous feedback — all fostered by a “digital-first” approach to marketing that did not exist a generation ago. By understanding and accepting the relevance of socially-driven channels and always-on mobile devices, we can join our customers on their ever-evolving user journeys. And if we don’t, they will continue on their individualized paths and leave us in the dust.

Marketing that Suits the Customer

It wasn’t always this way. Not long ago, like so many organizations, my team’s marketing approach was  heavy on “outputs” and light on “outcomes.” In other words, as marketers, we were all eager to applaud ourselves for the quantity of marketing programs we produced, to support a long-term plan, rather than measuring them on their ability to drive real-time business results.

By contrast, today, digital technologies are the fundamental drivers of the marketing transformation many companies have embarked on.  And those technologies are the preferred manner of communicating with today’s customer – be it B2C or B2B-focused.

Ah-ha moments arrive sporadically, but always persuasively, and they are always important to understand the impact of any campaign. For instance, customer surveys and other analyses may reveal that you were marketing to your targets when, where and how you as a company wanted to do so. But by digging deeper into data, you may find that your audience actually prefers a vastly different and more customized approach. The point is: people want to be marketed to — but on their terms, not those of the marketing department.

Digital-First To-Do’s

So, in order to be competitive in today’s marketing environment, one of the first things you must do is hire a data “scrum master.” If you are not familiar with the term, don’t worry. Borrowed from the software industry, it symbolizes the significance of taking a digital-first approach to marketing. (A digital-first marketing approach will allow you to reap more business-driving actions and, when you face a challenge, have the data and insights necessary to learn about it sooner, and immediately recalibrate.) And a scrum master can really help you reenergize product development and marketing efforts by facilitating the flow and exchange of that data.

For those just beginning a foray into digital marketing, here are a few tips on how to make the most of those efforts:

• Start Slowly. If this is new territory for you, don’t try to boil the ocean all at once. Focus on a few key areas where you can make use of insight-driving data. Measurable success – in the form of money saved or income generated – can fund the next project. Before you know it, you’ll be running at full speed.
• Dive into the Data You’ve Got. If a massive investment in big data and advanced analytics is unlikely, take a fresh look at the data you already have. No doubt, a data scientist or scrum master can unearth some findings that will propel numerous smart projects or campaigns.
• It Takes a Village. Break down the silos inherent in many organizations, and encourage all internal stakeholders to board the digital train: IT, Operations, Marketing, Sales — everyone can benefit from a digital-first approach. Additionally, each can contribute to successful endeavors by focusing less on turf wars and more on the common good.
• Measure Better. Too often, especially in the marketing world, we measure success in terms the rest of the business does not understand or care about. Instead, set goals that are important to the business and measure accordingly. Fortunately, the growth in digital technologies makes it easier to track and access timely and relevant data.

Welcome to the new world of agile, digital-first marketing. Grab those five-year plans off the shelf, dust them off…and toss them right into the recycling bin! A more adroit approach that focuses on details and consumer needs — rather than on a multi-year, fixed “big picture” — will help to keep you competitive, current, and relevant in the marketplace nowadays.