For many brands, ‘digital’ is still viewed as a channel in marketing. This completely misses the point that digital technology has changed the lives of customers and brought about the evolution of industries.
To appreciate this, just take a look at Uber, or Airbnb. Over-used examples perhaps, but Uber and Airbnb have become the poster children of modern business because their business models are built around digital.
They didn’t develop market concepts and then consider how to promote them digitally. Their services recognise that today’s customers manage more and more aspects of their lives digitally, and need services that work with that – which means digital.
Digital has changed the landscape of business. A startup challenger with a big idea, an appreciation of technology and the acumen to make a business work can become a market leader. Rapidly. Uber went from launch to a $60bn company in just six years.
It’s clear then, that only broadcasting through email, social and paid search is completely missing the point when you ask yourself what digital can do for your business as it’s only the tip of the iceberg.
Getting digital right
Grasping the opportunity fulsomely means doing more than appointing a digital marketing manager and waiting for the profits to roll in.
The right approach isn’t to put digital in place and then work to improve it. Brands need to reach a full understanding of what digital can do for the entire business, and they need to develop the foresight to anticipate what it might do to their industry.
Their competitors, for sure will be looking into it. It takes a shift in mind-set, a culture change within the company to embrace the digital opportunity. This needs to be driven by the CEO with full involvement of the whole executive board.
Unfortunately, this is where things can come unstuck. Of the senior leaders who responded to a recent AVADO survey, 84% said they were expected to play a role in the digital skills transformation but only 20 per cent knew how to get started.
It would seem there is a realisation that something needs to be done, but not the knowledge of how to do it. In other words, there’s a skills gap.
Lacking the right skills
A ‘digital skills crisis’ in fact, according to the MPs of the Commons Science and Technology Committee.
In its report, it cites the 745,000 additional workers the UK will need with digital skills between 2013 and 2017 and the fact that 90% of new jobs today require digital skills. It’s a crisis that affects the entire UK economy, the report tells us – to the tune of a £63bn a year cost in lost potential for additional GDP.
There is much cause for action. The report goes on to say that, “stubborn digital exclusion and systemic problems with digital education and training need to be addressed as a matter of urgency in the government’s forthcoming Digital Strategy.”
The challenge for marketing in all this is likely to be a big one. Marketers know that digital channels are essential to engaging the modern consumer. According to research commissioned by Google, a quarter of consumers use smartphones, or some 2.5 billion people.
However, despite the recent dominance of mobile over desktop, only 54% of marketers are confident in their ability to use mobile marketing, according to a poll by business intelligence company, Incite Group. Perhaps just as surprising, 15% said mobile marketing didn’t apply to them and less than 18% that mobile marketing is critical to their current marketing mix.
Don’t be passive
Customers aren’t passive. They choose brands based on how they speak to them, not the information in broadcast marketing messages. Social media isn’t an advertising channel, it changes the way businesses interact with customers and gives the opportunity to increase customer engagement.
The skills gap exists in the ability to develop overall digital strategy and to manage digital within the business, to understand marketing strategies in the face of digital disruption and to champion digital business leadership – without which, businesses will stay ‘traditional’ and be overtaken.
Industries have been disrupted by digital for years; to survive, businesses should adopt a digital transformation learning approach that helps them get ahead.
Online, interactive learning, such as Squared Online, AVADO’s programme in partnership with Google, supports leadership development as well as the acquisition of digital marketing skills through virtual group projects on strategic business challenges.
Brands that don’t adopt a digital outlook will be left behind. It’s an approach that has to be lived and breathed by all members of the organisation, and it begins by building digital transformation skills.
Source: Marketing Tech News
