Times change, people change, and one day we wake up, look around, cock an eyebrow, and realize that we’re not in Kansas anymore.
All of a sudden, it doesn’t make sense to remain adherent to an old norm, and it’s necessary that we embrace the new marketing demands of a world that is now overtly digital.
Welcome to the Digital Age
Within the past ten years there’s been a marked shift into an almost entirely digital world. Traditional marketing efforts, such as print advertising, shows and exhibits, television, cold-calls, door-to-door etc., worked well in a day and age where there was no other way that the public could learn about your company.
However, the rise and expansion of the internet has fostered a digital community, and most people are more than happy to shut their doors to the salesmen and do their own research online.
You see, even your Grandpa has an iPad.
In fact, that’s what most people do every day. They have their smart phones, tablets, laptops, and computers that give them access to any information they could possibly want.
Instead of adding a digital marketing component, instead of finding an “SEO company,” instead of trying to minimally incorporate digital elements into your marketing strategy – you may need to warm up to the idea that you could need a complete marketing strategy overhaul.
Traditional Marketing Models Can’t Keep Up Anymore
Currently, the majority of large corporations have ‘segregated’ marketing teams. There is the marketing team, and the ‘digital’ marketing team.
Not only do these teams have separate budgets and separate methods, they often have separate messages and appearances. The digital marketing team generally will report to the overseeing marketing team to some degree, but ultimately, they are separate silos.
Unfortunately, with the shift from obsolete marketing strategies to the digital age that has occurred within the past ten years or so, this manner of segregation isn’t really working for businesses anymore.
The rift between teams creates a confused brand message, a jumbled voice, and a lack of unification and alignment. Consumers these days? They notice things like that. And they don’t like it.
The Holistic Marketing Team
This digital world allows consumers to access every digital breadcrumb ever left by a marketing team. This has created an expectation on their part that your marketing campaign and the face of your company will be unified and consistent.
Whether they are sitting in their bed surfing the web on their iPad, on a bus as they commute to work, tuning out of a meeting while shopping on their mobile phone, or spending their lunch break researching on their computer, customers are expecting to see an authentic, engaging, and unified brand experience.
This expectation means that marketing teams must converge together.
While large corporations might have difficulty collaborating and combining various marketing departments, good internet marketing companies should be able to offer you an already-unified digital marketing team that is ready to work together to take your company to the next level.
Using a blend of various marketing strategies allows for an incredible opportunity of greater creativity and better targeted marketing campaigns. Cross-collaboration and the input of the various marketing angles serves to provide a whole new level of authenticity to your brand.
But, most importantly, all veins of marketing should look the same.
Now, when we say look the same, what we mean is
- the same brand story
- the same voice (or message)
- similar design structure and theme
Naturally, the actual appearance of the various outlets are going to vary somewhat (for example, an phone app isn’t going to be identical to a website), but the main points and overall appearance needs to be aligned.
This holistic approach to marketing is what businesses need in this new digital marketing world. With the vast majority of the first world population having access to and regularly using two digital devices, if not more, businesses need to realize that it’s time to merge all their marketing under one creatively dynamic, stable, and marketing savvy team.
No one said that this new era of marketing would be easy…
As we’ve entered into this new era, we’ve all noticed something. Digital marketing is not easy. The enormity and scope of the digital world is truly vast.
Consider the traditional marketing methods a tree trunk and digital marketing the spreading branches and towering crown that sits upon it. Because of this, it takes a professional team of highly experienced internet marketers to navigate their way through the digital jungle.
Thanks to constant updates by search engines, such as the recently released Google Panda, many of the rules and requirements of internet marketing are consistently changing, keeping even the most dexterous marketer on his/her toes.
This is why we’ve developed a marketing team that has a blend of different skills and experience. Technical promotion experts, analysts, web content pro’s, social media marketers, and conversion rate experts all join forces with your marketing team.
As your business moves forward into this new world of digital marketing, our focus is on joining your company to help guide it to online success.
Read more: Everything I Know About Marketing I Learned In Kindergarten
