Making a marketing digital transformation stick

Now that I finished my interim mandate at Pearson after 21 months, and implemented with the support of the team what most would qualify a successful digital transformation (marketing attributable revenues more than tripled YoY), I can objectively look back and ask myself:

What were the real catalysts of the change, what were the few things that really made it stick?

We did so many things to push the change agenda forward. From changing people’s objectives to moving to new systems and platforms. We did so much that we even restructured the department twice in 18 months! But what are the elements without which the plan could have still worked, and the ones which were totally essential to make it a success?

After much deliberation, my conclusion is that the following four elements were the key in making it stick:

1-   A total commitment from above

2-   A drastic shift in mindset and culture

3-   Tracking and transparency of performance

4-   A complete overhaul of people’s objectives

A total commitment from above

Let’s be honest, change is uncomfortable. And even though consciously people might be supportive, you can’t criticize them for perhaps unconsciously being hesitant. And as the leader of the team, you are constantly questioned and challenged – and that’s fine, you want an ambitious and somewhat bullish team, but you can’t let it get to the point where it derails the programme. If the team knows that what you are trying to put in place doesn’t have total support from your boss, and his/her boss, the resistance will grow and you will start to find it extremely hard to get the team to do anything different.

So if you don’t feel you have unparalleled support from your seniors, better tackle that head on first. I’ve been lucky at Pearson to benefit from excellent support from my sponsors and this was the single most important factor of success. Now support doesn’t mean that they agree with everything you say. What it means is that once you get to the point where you agree, there’s total commitment to the way forward.

A drastic shift in mindset and culture

Now I could write quite a few pages on how you shift the mindset and culture of a department, but let me mention a few things that really worked. Obviously the smaller the team the simpler it is, but let’s agree the below is when you have a relatively large team.

1. A strategy that clearly states what the team is about and what it should focus on. Too often strategies are made intellectually and communicated intellectually. But you need to place a significant effort on how to communicate your strategy simply. Think of it like a marketing campaign – what’s your headline? Strategy needs to be communicated emphatically and simply. An intelligent strategy simply delivered.
2. Quickly bringing in new people that are aligned to the future you are trying to create. Unfortunately, that’s only half the battle won because unless you achieve critical mass of change agents, you still won’t succeed. It’s like trying to light a fire in the rain. But without a few role models, people you can trust, driving change is a very lonely road and will simply wear you down. So go through your first 90 days, figure out what you want to do, and then bring some external blood in the team, even before you start executing change.
3. Investing in your people’s development. Marketing is changing so much now, every year there’s a new trend, a new better way of doing things, new software, new channels, better and more effective ways of reaching your customer. And you hear companies talk about recruiting ‘digitally skilled individuals’, and yes of course that’s important, but expensive and hard to scale. Upskilling your team will motivate the troops and create an “always learning” culture which prepares you better for whatever comes in the future.
4. Putting the customer at the front of everything. I know it’s a cliché, but it is the golden ingredient. If you want to motivate your team, remind them who is the person they are doing what they are doing for, the customer. Make it ok to be out of the office, not necessarily working through a to do list, but meeting customers and spending time with sales and customer service people. After all, maybe half of what they’re doing isn’t wanted by the customer, so it could save them time.
5. Offer everyone deep respect. Change exposes people’s weaker sides and black spots. They need to feel that it’s ok not to know everything and that what we are on is a journey. As the leader, leading by example here is important, openly sharing that you are building the bridge as you’re walking on it, that you don’t have all the answers but that you have total faith in the future and that if everyone gets together, we can be confident about succeeding. The days of cocky-know-it-all-and-know-better-than-you leadership are over, and in fact only create a fear of trying new things, which is the opposite of what’s needed.

Tracking and transparency of performance

Digital marketing is not only about being able to perform marketing through digital channels such as social media and search engine marketing, it’s also about being able to measure the heck out of everything. With not only data availability having drastically improved over the last few years, but also data visualization tools, it has become much easier to present marketing’s performance in a clear and transparent fashion.

It’s essential to put in place a Marketing Dashboard that is shared openly, for several reasons:

• Demonstrate Marketing’s return to the business. Every company needs to carefully invest its budgets in areas that provide the best return. Unless marketers take it upon themselves to prove their value add factually, they will continue to be under pressure when budgeting time comes. By clearly communicating on a regular (or dynamic) basis the value generated from marketing activities and the exact value of the investments that are made, the Return On Marketing Investment (ROMI) is clear and the way marketing is perceived changes from that of a cost centre to a profit centre. Conversations with Finance and number-savvy CEO’s are much more easily managed and in fact, further investments can be justified and obtained.
• Highlight the relative performance of teams. Humans beings are naturally competitive and this attribute should be prevalent in any marketing department. By having a dashboard that shows each team’s performance in a consistent and easily benchmarked way, you stimulate healthy competition which will push the department’s performance upwards.
• Fix reporting and process issues. Once a transparent way of constantly communicating team performance is in place, the teams’ whose performance are affected by process and reporting gaps will work hard to resolve these issues. This helps building one version of the truth. Also it allows to highlight and remove cumbersome manual processes.

A complete overhaul of people’s objectives

The advantage of being able to measure whether campaigns work or not is that we can then confidently stop what doesn’t work, do more of what works. Constantly and dynamically. Be agile.

Search #agilemarketing in Twitter. It’s everywhere. And there’s a good reason for that: it’s the best way of optimizing ROMI.

So the rigid days where objectives were written as a list of tasks or projects or campaigns are over. We can now as marketers target ourselves on outcomes – revenues, lead generation, sales, subscriptions, renewals – and put in place flexible plans of activities that are constantly optimized in order to achieve those targets.

Why is this important in driving change? Because what gets measured gets done. Giving people a clear goal is the easiest way to get them to change their behavior. If people have always done certain things in a certain way, and as a result of not changing they miss their targets which impacts on their performance and ultimately their bonus, they will soon figure out a new way to get back on track.

I was congratulating an employee of mine recently about her amazing progress and the fact she completely smashed her target. Her answer to me was: “Well, it’s the first time I’ve ever had a target, now I know what I’m aiming for, I do what I need to do to get there.”

Simple, but effective.

Conclusion

Some will argue that I have completely missed tools and technology from my list, and that surely, to achieve a digital transformation, it has to be in the top four. I don’t think so. Digital transformation is about change, and change is about people. If you put the fundamental drivers of change in place, you will create a system where things such as technology projects and the adoption of new tools just become BAU, part of various ideas and options to enhance marketing performance.