Digital marketing and marketing for the digital world is not the same

For the past 10 years there has been a boom on creating Digital marketing teams, plans and strategies. Every big company in the world created a Digital team that sit in different parts of the organization, sometimes in Marketing, sometimes in Communications, sometimes in IT... all aimed at the same goal: get up to speed in the new digital opportunities coming from an increasingly connected audience.

The world has changed quite dramatically in these 10 years for us marketers. The decline of print, the change in consumer behaviour and the buying decision processes, social media as a way to engage and communicate with audiences, etc. This has brought a whole range of challenges for the marketers, who have tended to assign most of these to the "Digital" team.

This week, the World Economic Forum is discussing the Fourth Industrial Revolution, where Digital has come centre-stage to show how it has disrupted many businesses: from Airbnb, to Uber, to Google, to Fintech. There are so many examples of how Digital is transforming the world of business. And this is no exception to the marketing world. Words like programmatic, retargeting, ad networks, etc. were not even in the dictionary when I started working in this field.

The truth is, marketing as we know it has changed forever and it is now Digital. It is no longer enough to have a Digital team that does that work, because EVERYTHING IS DIGITAL NOW. So what you need is to reshape and rethink the whole marketing function to serve that digital world, rather than continue trying to create a separate team that deals with it.

The new marketing organization is Digital, but it is not a team within it. There is a massive difference in this nuanced wording. The world needs to go from having a digital marketing plan and a marketing plan, to having a marketing plan that uses digital across all of its areas including sales, account development, customer services, communications, events, etc.

It is about rethinking all your marketing through a digital lens, because even the most traditional advertising like a billboard or a print ad in a magazine have a digital connection. The relationships with clients have transformed thanks to the digital channels and the all the interactions with them need to be thought in a different way through the Digital lens.

I have many things to say about this topic, but in the interest of adapting the content for the Digital world, I will keep it short and snappy. There will be more thoughts and insights coming on this space, so please leave comments on topics about this article that you would be interested in and watch out for future posts on this topic.