If brands readily acknowledge the efficiencies and impact bought by integrating digital marketing, why then is the implementation process so slow? Only 6% of of respondents thought that their digital strategies were already integrated. 35% of respondents indicated that the technology required to achieve a truly integrated digital marketing strategy was too complicated. There are also structural issues at play: 24% said that their team wasn’t set up to run an integrated digital marketing strategy and 15% stated that disparate data was the problem. The digital marketing community continues to struggle in convincing marketers that their efforts should be managed and optimized holistically in order to maximize rewards, regardless of the time commitment or expense in implementing.
Despite that more than 9 out of 10 organizations are not yet using a centralized approach to their integrated digital marketing efforts, it is promising to highlight that 90% of the respondents surveyed indicated that there is some degree of interconnectivity and communication among channel owners within marketing department. This means that marketing departments recognize the interdependence among digital channels and acknowledge that no point solution works alone to drive a conversion, which is also a testament to the need for sophisticated cross-channel attribution.
What does it all mean ?
1ne: Before investing more money into digital marketing managers should ensure that their organizations are aligned to both integrate digital marketing and that they have the talent to identify opportunities and gaps in their overall digital marketing strategy.
2wo: Digital marketing should be fully integrated into the marketing mix. Stop trying to justify digital marketing “alone”.
3hree: Digital marketing is changing so rapidly that you need to be able to optimize digital allocations on a short notice to ensure your dollars provide maximum ROI.
4our: Dispell the perception that digital marketing is less expensive than off-line marketing. You need to invest in analytics, talent and creative to keep digital marketing fresh and relevant.
5ive: The best digital marketing people are not geeks who know how to code; rather, they are people who have marketing backgrounds and understand how consumers use the Internet. In short they are people who can marry brand objectives with user needs and wants.
