What would a marketing campaign look like today without digital? Before you answer that question, consider that modern marketers are continuously evolving their strategies to increase their brands’ visibility on search rankings, social media and email, not to mention integrating mobile-friendly initiatives into the mix.
What’s more, further consider that before marketers can effectively employ these digital tactics, they must utilize marketing technology, such as marketing automation, big data analytics and customer relationship management (CRM). For instance, a modern marketing campaign would utilize marketing automation for the distribution and management of emails.
Indeed digital and technological marketing has become ubiquitous, and in response Adobe, the marketing cloud giant, compiled its 2015 “Four Advantages of a Planned Approach to Digital Maturity” report based on a survey of 957 digital marketers in the U.S. and Canada.
The report breaks up the digital marketing landscape into two eras. The first was an era of innovation, when marketers initially dipped a toe into the pool of social, mobile and customer-oriented tactics.
The second era is one that the marketing realm in just entering into today, according to the Adobe report, which reads, “The second era is just taking shape, but it’s about knowledge, process and maturity. Above all, the new era is focused on the customer. After years of assembling new capabilities, marketers can use them in concert to achieve business goals.”
As such, the Adobe report goes on to exemplify the qualities of digitally mature organizations that currently excel in marrying digital and technological methods to effectively communicate with consumers, streamline business processes, and maintain relevancy in a rapidly evolving industry.
According to the experts at Adobe, digitally mature organizations plan ahead for the future in a number of ways. For instance, organizations that maintain a big picture focus when planning business structure, hiring and training employees, implementing marketing processes and adopting technologies will garner more profitable results in the long run.
With that said, the report reveals that only 45 percent of survey respondents maintain formalized plans for maturing digital marketing initiatives in the future. In fact, only 19 percent of respondents expressed that they’ve made specific plans and investments to mature their digital marketing strategy.
So what steps does Adobe suggest marketers take toward becoming digitally mature within the next few years? For starters marketers ought to …
- Build an adaptable business structure that enables employees to become unified in working toward achieving one business goal, rather than multiple narrow goals. For instance, in 2016, your company’s goal may be to engender greater impact on your consumers, with each department playing a unique role in achieving this result.
- Provide continuous learning opportunities so that employees can hone their skills and evolve with the marketing landscape, thereby becoming more adaptable, agile contributors to your brand.
- Invest in emerging technologies that can help improve and streamline marketing workflows, e.g., marketing automation platforms that can automate administrative tasks such as posting social media statuses and sending email marketing messages. What’s more, integrating big data analytics technologies to garner a more complete view of consumer engagement will be instrumental in maturing any company’s digital initiatives.
- Keep the customer top of mind when implementing new tactics, best practices and technologies. Always consider how your methods with affect your business’s performance from a customer view, since part of becoming digitally mature is employing tactics that will gain you positive impact amongst your key targets by way of the digital channels they use the most.
Now is the time for your business to implement new strategies to start evolving into a digitally mature organization. If you need advice or guidance throughout your journey, however, don’t hesitate to ask for a helping hand.
