Your organization can't succeed in digital if all its operations aren't properly aligned. With this simple guide, you'll be on the right path in no time.
For the right and wrong reasons, companies large and small are shifting marketing emphasis toward the digital channel, but along the way they are realizing gaps in strategy, staff, partnerships and infrastructure they hadn't anticipated.
Whether your company is on a pragmatic evolutionary digital marketing path or making a dramatic shift in strategy and spend to play catch up, you need to make sure that the organization is prepared to support the effort. Otherwise, you risk falling into traps with execution and support or, worse, missing the intersection between the brand and consumer.
How often does the missed intersection happen?
When Forrester dedicates bandwidth to speak to Web 2.0 blunders, including names like Whole Foods, Dell, Burger King, Johnson & Johnson, Target and Apple, you begin to wonder if there's been an epidemic.
UGC and branded content also have their own set of challenges, so firms sometimes have a difficult time managing the go/no go decisions involved in using these strategies. Take a look at a few high-profile meltdowns:
- General Motors. The Chevy Tahoe UCG campaign backfired and was then shut down. After the great success of Doritos' consumer-created Super Bowl campaign, big brands' eyes were opened to the possibilities of user-generated advertising. Unfortunately, Chevy missed the mark with its first foray into UCG when it ignored potential backlash from the eco-conscious side of the planet.
- Bud.tv. Based on the theory that "everybody loves our ads," Anheuser-Busch created its own online branded content channel that is dying a slow death on uniques and has yet to find its resonance with viewers or consumers.
So what does it mean for your company to be digitally aligned?
The dynamics of the industry, brand/product lifecycles, your consumers and the digital maturity of your organization will all dictate if you're on course or not. But first, you need to find a starting point to evaluate your current position and assess where you need to be.
The best way to start is by examining your alignment plans in three key areas: strategy, the organization and your partners and infrastructure.