Digital Marketing is the key ,but getting the right organizational design is the key for success

2016 will be a year that unfurled the power of Digital in consumers’ buying process – in Marketing, experience management , e-Commerce or payment. The digital proclivity of the Indian consumers is on the rise and now an unidirectional process.

While the traditional mass media still remain powerful, Marketing & Consumer relationship management cannot be done without an in-built digital approach. But differences in a clear  grasp of the new age Media brings in complexities right from the stage of Marketing Organisation design.

From large organisation to small, there is a tendency of splitting the Marketing Organisation between Traditional Media and Digital champions. It almost ends up with Marketing to support the brick and mortar sales targets while Digital Marketing goes for managing online presence, social media and supporting all e-commerce related sales.  

It stems from considering Digital Marketing as completely different from Traditional Marketing rather than being a separate media and a slice of life for the same consumer. Digital is a Media where consumers may stay in a different avatar and ease – but its ultimately a different media channel. The rules of engagement may be different – the strategic purposes of engagement for the brand remain the same.

If the Marketing Organisation is already sub-optimised to Consumer  Communication division, then the segregation will further weaken the consumer relation with the brand. But this can be an excellent opportunity to re-align Marketing division to strengthen the strategic delivery of the group.

If Marketing indeed is already a critical strategic division,  its important to maintain uniform Strategic aegis but split at the Media management level into Digital & Traditional. 

It now becomes easier to synergise two separate media without losing out on the grammars for either. Traditional Marketing media will remain communicative and will play on the stages of AIDA (Awareness , Interest , Desire , Action) , as it has always done.

Digital Marketing will play with a stronger focus of building Advocacy and Engagement for the consumer with the brand but with same brand goals. 

With this Marketing Division design, the complete Marketing will flow right from the organisational strategy to the final Communication strategy with an uniform goal. The segregation will occur at the media management level where the tools of communication, evaluation processes, responsiveness to the consumers will differ at process level.  This is the section of Marketing that will need a consolidated champion and an integrated approach : 

Once the strategic brand goals are defined, the two different teams will create the activity calendar for each of the media with a clear utilisation of Measurement tools. There will need to be two separate renditions of the following – one for Marketing and another for Digital Marketing with a clear linkages of objectives, content management, communication interplay etc : 

The Digital media as a Customer marketing relationship tool is now uncontested. But to get the best out of the same, the correct Marketing Division design is a must. With so much changes happening in the technology space and VR / AR almost knocking on the door to become the next stages of Marketing tools – organisations no longer have the luxury of going wrong with their Marketing responsibilities by maintaining a wrong organisational design.