Traditional agencies find it difficult to cross over from off-line marketing and communication to digital marketing and communication because of types and levels of skills required to be a great marketer in the digital space, they differ vastly from those off-line skills.
When marketing offline, you have the luxury of time to get approval for any communication. You also generally have well constructed messaging frameworks and brand guidelines which you can follow and check off.
In the digital world you are required to react much more rapidly to a far wider set of circumstances. The issues and opportunities that you are responding to, could easily be outside of the predefined organisational guidelines, therefore as a communicator, you have to have the strategic instinct and ability to think on behalf of the brand on the run. Given that what is on the Internet will stay there forever, this could represent a high reputational risk to the organisation.
Whilst many agencies and organisations understand that their younger (cheaper) employees are much more tech savvy than their older colleagues, they also need to realise that the level of sophistication required in terms of brand alignment in the digital world with its vast eclectic audience, generally requires maturity and experience.
This leads to a disparity in pricing between what corporate customers expect from their communication agencies and what digital agencies have to charge, because they can't always hire inexperienced juniors to do the work, they need to invest in strategic thinkers at the operational level and at the brand/customer interface. |
The creation of data around target audience behaviour and the use of digital media to converse with consumers is definitely going to change the way marketers work, however I fear that we are going to face the same challenges we did in explaining why investment in the brand was necessary to the financial guys, when motivating for the marketing budget.
The link between business growth and the use of digital tools could be perceived to be tenuous in the beginning and it is up to us marketers to understand the exact measurements or financial ratios that we are going to use to demonstrate the effectiveness of all things digital.
This will require us developing some of the skills that corporate financiers have and quantifying our conversations in the board room. I think that this is an incredibly exciting challenge to those traditionally right brain thinkers in the marketing department. |
I agree with you that using Social media without thinking it through properly and investing enough resources, can be very detrimental, but there are times when not using Social Media is equally damaging.
When managing your on-line reputation, if you are not part of the social media-sphere, or part of your audience community, you have little credibility and even less likelihood of being able to talk to your audience and maintain your reputation.
Much of the work around Social Media is about building long term communities and investing time in getting to know them.
- Kate Elphick |
| Definitely food for thought. One other trend I am seeing is a lot more activity on FB since the economic crisis. People seem to have a lot more time on their hands. |
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