CMO.com Highlights: Digital Maturity is Key to Online Marketing Success

The focus of last week’s dis­cus­sions on CMO.com dealt with the vari­ety of chal­lenges that have to be jug­gled in order for online mar­ket­ing to be suc­cess­ful. Dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion is the path to dig­i­tal matu­ri­ty. Yet, many cor­po­ra­tions strug­gle with imple­ment­ing the changes to cor­po­rate cul­ture and organ­i­sa­tion­al struc­ture to make dig­i­tal matu­ri­ty through effec­tive inte­gra­tion pos­si­ble. A suc­cess­ful mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy is often the com­bi­na­tion of sev­er­al func­tions, includ­ing brand jour­nal­ism, social media, and sup­ple­men­tal offline mar­ket­ing, as well as focus­ing on reach­ing cus­tomers when and where they are in real-time with rel­e­vant, per­son­al­ized messaging.

Shaf­gat Islam, the CEO and founder of News­Cred, began the week by dis­cussing brand jour­nal­ism and the cur­rent trend of com­pa­nies hir­ing high­ly skilled brand jour­nal­ists. Organ­i­sa­tions are dis­cov­er­ing that a com­pelling under­ly­ing sto­ry for their brand has a way of break­ing through and get­ting the atten­tion of con­sumers who have count­less oth­er mes­sages com­ing at them all the time. There is a chal­lenge, how­ev­er, for brand jour­nal­ists to con­tin­u­al­ly be cre­ative and prove they’re worth the invest­ment. Despite this chal­lenge, the brand­ing needs of many organ­i­sa­tions means that the demand for brand jour­nal­ists is high as a key skill of the inte­grat­ed mar­ket­ing team.

Noel Eves, Head of Cus­tomer Acqui­si­tion for Graze shared some insights with the CMO.com team. The UK start-up, which sends per­son­alised snack box­es to cus­tomers’ homes or busi­ness­es, faces the chal­lenge of deal­ing with ris­ing dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing costs as they try to expand their cus­tomer reach. Eves dis­cuss­es the role of social media in Graze’s mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy, point­ing out that cus­tomer acqui­si­tion often occurs as a result of offline mar­ket­ing strate­gies, but con­tin­ued con­ver­sa­tion with those cus­tomers tends to move online. He makes a strong point that offline and online mar­ket­ing need to align as part of an effec­tive inte­grat­ed mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy. As Graze moves to gain cus­tomers in stores and in the U.S., their focus on the future is to con­tin­ue to inno­vate and keep their mes­sage cut­ting edge.

Our video inter­view of the week fea­tured Jez Framp­ton, Glob­al CEO of Inter­brand. Framp­ton brings an impor­tant reminder to mar­ket­ing pro­fes­sion­als that brand mar­ket­ing is about peo­ple before it’s about the mes­sage an organ­i­sa­tion brings. Tap­ping into what peo­ple care about is more effec­tive than the medi­um through which a mes­sage is shared. Mar­keters can learn much from Frampton’s talk about the inter­nal struc­ture and atti­tudes organ­i­sa­tions must adopt to be effec­tive in their mar­ket­ing strate­gies. The key take­away here is that your cus­tomer is a crit­i­cal part­ner in devel­op­ing your mar­ket­ing strategy.

The Ash­es Series drew to a close on Sun­day with Eng­land hav­ing sur­pris­ing­ly won back the urn! The Adobe Dig­i­tal Index team shared some sur­pris­ing insights about the social media habits of crick­et fans in Eng­land. Look­ing specif­i­cal­ly at this summer’s Ash­es Series, a time when fans were most active social­ly. What was inter­est­ing, how­ev­er, were the spe­cif­ic times dur­ing the Ash­es when fans were most active on social media. Social media use increased when match­es were actu­al­ly occur­ring. All this should give mar­keters pause when adver­tis­ing through social media. Find­ing cus­tomers where they are and at key times is vital to reach­ing them with our mar­ket­ing efforts. The veloc­i­ty and imme­di­ate nature of social mar­ket­ing dri­ves an absolute require­ment that the mar­ket­ing team be all-inclu­sive and able to respond at the speed of social media.

The week end­ed with Jon Bains, the found­ing part­ner of What and Why, dis­cussing some of the com­mon rea­sons why an organisation’s dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion strate­gies fail. The over­all mes­sage of his piece is that dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion presents plen­ty of chal­lenges, but there are strate­gies an organ­i­sa­tion can take to increase the like­li­hood of suc­cess. The most impor­tant fac­tor to con­tribute to an organisation’s suc­cess in dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion is buy-in from every­one in the organ­i­sa­tion. Bains’ dis­cus­sion real­ly high­lights the need for organisation’s to get their peo­ple work­ing togeth­er to be effec­tive in their mar­ket­ing strategies.

We invite you to read and engage with our exclu­sive posts on CMO.com and learn from some of the strate­gies of the most advanced dig­i­tal mar­keters in the Euro­pean region. Let us know what you think.