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.
The post CMO.com Highlights: Digital Maturity is Key to Online Marketing Success appeared first on Digital Marketing Blog.