Organizational considerations
The second key toward digital alignment is making sure your organization has the right infrastructure of executive air cover, the right people in place and the right tools and partners to do the job.
The primary constraint within an organization is its digital maturity. To a certain degree, interactive marketing is a discipline with a lot of moving parts, with skills and knowledge that can only be gained by doing the job.
Today, it takes more than being an individual that "gets it;" you need a team that "lives it" to convert a strategy into action.
Assessing the right blend of skills that you'll need (typically industry- and strategy-dependent), assembling the team with the idea in mind that some of the training can be done on the job with the appropriate internal resources, while other more strategic or technical support may require a hire from a competitor or agency.
Finally, ongoing training is a must, as this is a fast-paced and constantly evolving segment of marketing.
The planning legacy mentioned above translates to a broader call for change in organizations. As the online world becomes more layered, it must become more complex to manage the current structure that exists within each client, partnering agency and publisher leveraged.
Evidence of the demand for change in agencies and publishers is demonstrated with myriad layoffs, restructurings and acquisitions in large agencies and publishers (Publicis restructure, Google acquisition of DoubleClick, Microsoft purchase of aQauntive, and Fox restructure of the interactive media group) in addition to well informed research.
On the client side, for consumer and B2B firms, digitally led, multi-channel marketing and ecommerce initiatives break form, function and culture of the traditional sales, brand, direct/trade, promotional management silos from an organizational perspective and roles for staff. Some companies have recognized this by integrating prior stand-alone interactive marketing groups into brand teams. This is a good first step, but you generally still need support to connect stand-alone efforts into a common strategy.
With the vision and downstream impact as the context, marketers should objectively assess and scorecard their company's appetite and ability to execute in the digital channel to prioritize their initiatives and manage risk.
Some core questions to ask and answer:
- Do you have executive level sponsorship for the vision?
- How interactive savvy is your leadership team?
- Is interactive an integrated or stand alone marketing discipline?
- What digital tools does your firm consider mainstream, emerging and experimental?
- Are you still relying on a "one size fits all" agency, or have you initiated relationships with an integrated team of resources to flexibly support your vision?
- Are your business objectives and marketing strategies supported by the technical infrastructure and initiatives?
- Does your corporate web presence feel like a constellation of disparate micro sites or a digital marketing platform?
Without the right type of support, even a world class strategy will fall flat. By understanding the constraints and limitations of your organization now, you can begin to strategically build the right team and give them the support they need to execute.
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