In 2016, our industry continues to rapidly shift from TV-led to digitally led marketing, making it more important than ever for marketers to reimagine their approaches to marketing and take steps to move the industry forward.
To kick off the new year, we’re sharing a page from our Marketing Leadership Playbook week by week, to help set marketers up for success in this digitally led era. This post marks the second of our Marketing Leadership Playbook blog content series “Reimagine (Almost) Everything.”
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In Post II of our series, our CEO Sarah Hofstetter drives home the importance for marketers to move from seeing digital as only one channel of their marketing strategies, to embracing digital as a mindset for their organizations. “It’s been more than 20 years since the first banner ad, but only recently have seasoned marketers internalized the inherent importance of digital…and recognized the opportunity to change the way their businesses and marketing teams are organized,” reports Sarah.
Sarah shares common barriers to digital success – such as keeping digital at the “edge” and being stuck in traditional ways of doing business – and tips to help marketers evaluate what’s right for their organizations. By clarifying business objectives and looking beyond the complexity of digital integration – being an advocate for organizational change, organizations can gear up for success in 2016.
Marketer Takeaways:
- Clarify Business Objectives: Sarah’s first tip is to, “clarify the objective and North Star – identify where the organization wants to be and how to achieve that outcome.” She touches on P&G Fabric Care’s ‘always on’ environment which started with a plan to build loyalty and efficiency, and ultimately led to measurably better work from Tide and Downy.
- Recruit the Right Talent and Teams: Find talent that can embrace change and run with it. It has nothing to do with age or experience level – it’s all about mindset. According to Sarah, “Marketers should demand interaction and knowledge sharing between brand managers and analysts, tech gurus and platform experts, to get smarter solutions.”
- Advocate for digital integration: “When leadership makes digital and integration a priority, so does everyone else,” says Sarah. It is up to C-level executives to champion organizational change by inspiring others.
- Identify what capabilities can be Done In-House VS. Outsourced: “If a particular capability is core to its operations versus core to its marketing, is it worth considering incubating it from within?” asks Sarah. Marketers should reevaluate which functions of their organizations would be better incubated or fostered in-house versus outsourced by looking at the strengths and weaknesses of the company’s culture and capabilities.
To download the full Playbook click here. To read more on how to reimagine digital as an organizational mindset, scroll to page 6.
In case you missed it, be sure to check out Post I of the series: “Reimagine (Almost) Everything: Establishing New Success Metrics.”
Cover photo via DPX.