Below is my interview with Patricia Stamas-Jacoby, Publications Editor at Frost & Sullivan, in their Digital Marketing eBulletin. This is part 1 of 2. Read part 2. We discuss how digital transformation catalyzes a social selling evolution of content marketing and social media.
A key takeaway: Marketing is no longer just a cost center. It can drive business transformation thanks to the social selling evolution.
Frost & Sullivan: What is your working definition of digital marketing?
Matthew Royse: Digital marketing is an umbrella term used in many different ways, depending on the context. Simply put, it is the shift in the “value prop” of marketing to digital.
Marketing can better reach its target audiences by utilizing digital technologies. These include websites, email, and social media. Other methods are online ads, e-commerce, and various forms of digital media.
The world is becoming digitized. Businesses’ value lies in using digital to their competitive advantage. This enables them to grow and better serve customers or clients. The marketing team should be leading the charge to digital.
Marketing has become a critical part of today’s business model. The most successful companies today are highly useful. They provide valuable products and services to their target audiences, which will become a part of their customers’ daily lives.
What is your organization’s working definition of digital marketing?
Every company defines digital marketing differently. We document our digital marketing strategy on one page to communicate our perspectives clearly. We outline the following on one page: our digital marketing strategy summary statement. We also present the current and future state of our digital marketing.
Our strategy timeline, top five digital marketing initiatives, and underlying beliefs and assumptions about digital marketing. We treat the one-pager as a living document. Our digital marketing strategy evolves as our people, processes, and technologies change.
What are your thoughts on where digital marketing is heading?
Like social media, digital marketing will become part of everyone’s job description. Social media was initially a separate area with social media specialists and strategists. Now, it has become part of everyone’s job description.
The same will happen for digital marketing. Digital marketing will become marketing because successful marketing today requires marketers to be hybrid or T-shaped professionals.
Marketers should specialize in one area, such as social media or content marketing. They should know enough about search engine optimization, online advertising, influencer marketing, and marketing programs. Understanding these and other marketing functions helps them grasp the holistic view of marketing.
Marketing is becoming more data-driven and automated, but it still needs the human element. The creative part is telling great stories.
Companies that position themselves as helpful stay at the top of mind. They must also be seen as useful in customers’ minds. One way to stay top of mind with customers is through social selling and its evolution.
Can you share your insights on how B2B (as opposed to B2C) organizations should leverage “social selling?”
Contrary to popular opinion, B2B organizations have a bigger opportunity to utilize social selling than B2C. There are more decision makers in a purchase decision. The purchasing process takes longer. More money is in a purchase. The buyers are typically more informed with tons of research.
Content marketing and social media have become critical to sales. Social selling is a hybrid of these two crucial functions.
Social selling is a revolution for sales. The old sales model involved cold calls, qualifying leads, and sales demos. The new model involves education, social networks, and engagement.
According to the Corporate Executive Board and OgilyOne, 60% of B2B customer research is conducted before contacting sales. Also, 71% of salespeople believe their role will radically change in five years.
Sales is looking for a marketing partner to help with this transition. Marketing wants more insight from sales on what works and what doesn’t.
According to the Sales Management Association, two in three companies don’t have a social media strategy for sales. However, 80% of sales teams would be more productive with a greater social media presence.
According to Sirius Decisions, 60 to 70% of all company content goes unused. Social selling can help your company better understand what content your sales team shares with clients. It also shows what they share with prospects online and via social media. As marketing successfully learns what content sales use, it can create better and more targeted content.
Can you outline the next phase of mobile marketing?
The next phase of mobile marketing is where a company puts its mobile experience first. This poses a challenge for many companies. Legacy thinking and systems are part of the issue. Organizing the data to be real-time and more manageable for consumers is also challenging. Brands understand the importance of transforming to a mobile-first, digital strategy.
Yet, they are unprepared for how quickly they must adapt to make this happen. At large companies, many changes need to be made to people, processes, and technologies in a short amount of time. That is why smaller companies have a competitive advantage—they don’t have the legacy technology and processes in place.
As a result, larger companies are creating their own enterprise “app store.” This strategy allows them to adapt more quickly to changes in the marketplace.
What are your insights on moving from multichannel marketing to omnichannel marketing?
People can now engage with a company in a physical store. They can connect via the website, mobile app, or social media. This fuels the shift toward omnichannel marketing to provide a seamless customer experience across all interactions.
Where companies often go wrong with the customer experience is a lack of integration between teams. Bad marketing experiences occur at the consumer/end-user level when the technologies, people, and processes are not integrated.
What are your thoughts and good or bad experiences with integrating marketing across the organization?
Yes, marketing should be integrated. That is one of the most critical aspects of marketing today, but often the most difficult. Marketing needs to ensure that their department integrates first, and then work on improving integration across the organization. For example, contact centers have a wealth of information for marketers. They know the types of questions customers ask.
Do the contact centers record that information so marketing can create helpful content to answer those questions? It sounds so simple. Yet, it is rarely done.
Another example is whether marketing/PR teams are prepared if the company gets hacked. Do they have a crisis communications and disaster recovery plan in case it occurs? If so, can the company communicate it quickly?
Integration and strategy will be key to digital marketing and good customer experiences. There must be a shift in mindset to see marketing as more than a support role. Marketing is no longer a cost center but drives business transformation.
Marketing organizations should consistently have a seat at the business table and the C-suite and board levels. This presence is necessary to drive digital transformation conversations and its value proposition to the company. It also explains why its budget should grow.
In summary, digital marketing and heightened customer expectations change the modern marketing organization. Marketing has become more holistic, aligns more closely with the business strategy, and is responsible for the overall customer experience.
One company to learn from is Target. They built a successful digital marketing department. They did not put their marketing teams into groups or silos. Instead, they brought everyone together as one big marketing team. This helped Target tell a cohesive brand story. It also attracts top talent, which is an example we can all learn from.
Read the original “Discussing Digital Marketing” article.