The great marketing divide

A segregation is occurring in Marketing.

There is Digital Marketing, and then there is Marketing. The New and the Old. New marketers vs old marketers. Those who do digital, and those who don’t. Those who understand numbers and technology, social media, web development, programmatic advertising, bots, SEM, SEO, agile, inbound marketing, content generation, automation, ad blocking, predictive analytics… and those who understand branding, advertising, traditional media, direct mail, copywriting, event management, point of sale material, copywriting, positioning, outbound marketing, and allegedly can’t be bothered about learning the New.

A wedge is driven at the heart of Marketing.

And there is proof. Looking at how the interest in both factions are trending, it is clear. Whilst there are still far more searches for the term “Marketing” than there are for “Digital Marketing” which is a subcategory, if you isolate them and look at their individual growth rate, Digital Marketing is trending up exponentially, and Marketing is going the other way.

And many organisations, sensing the trend, invest in the New by creating a Digital Marketing team. So you end up with two teams, a Marketing team and a Digital team, often with separate reporting lines, all gunning for the attention of the same customer, thereby breaking the customer journey. The internal structure dictating the external delivery.

Sounds familiar?

Well, maybe it’s about to change. Maybe the change has already started.

A very wise friend said to me recently: “Several years ago, people talked about things being electronic. Electronic alarm clock. Electronic radio. Now mostly everything is electronic, so no one says electronic anymore, it’s assumed. The same will happen with digital. People won’t talk about digital soon, it’ll be assumed”.

At the CIM Digital Summit 2016 a few weeks ago, although the event was about Digital in name, many of the conversations were about branding, customer experience, innovation, change, engagement and content. Ok, we did also discuss the growth of algorithms, bots and ad blocking. But there was a definite sense that digital is actually about… the customer! Perhaps the greatest sign of integration is that the CIM – the Chartered Institute of Marketing – called its main annual event the Digital Summit.

I think they are right. Marketing IS digital, and digital IS marketing.

Ultimately, Marketing, Digital Marketing, and business in general, is indeed about focusing on the customer, the value proposition, the end-to-end journey, and making sure you get all of that right, and that you deliver more value than it costs you to do so, thereby generating profits while driving advocacy and market share growth. The holy grail. At O2 we used to say that if you do what’s right by the customer, the business will sort itself out. Perhaps there’s more to it, but it sounds to me like a good place to start.

Whenever fighting factions are gunning for the attention of the same customer separately, you only end up with a broken journey, and that can only be bad news for companies.

When we say ‘Digital’, we really mean embracing innovation and developments which improve the way we can enhance the customer experience. It is true that technology has entered the world of marketers now, more than it has ever had. And it is true that I never thought my software engineering background would catch up with me when I moved in Marketing many years ago. But so what? Time for marketers become technology savvy, learn new skills. That’s what life is about, no?

And while it is of course important for companies to acquire new digital skills by recruiting “born digital” marketers, which is a rapid way of embarking on the trend, investing in the digital development of its existing workforce is just as important.

And most certainly, focusing on creating an integrated marketing organization is essential. For the sake of the customer.

Keen to get your views. Do you see a divide? Do you think it’s time for the old and the new to make peace and to forge a new integrated future? 

J-M Maltais is a marketing professional, focused on leading digital transformation, putting the customer at the centre of company strategy and making marketing a commercial function. Email [email protected]. https://twitter.com/jmmaltais