Getting digital buy-in

In my previous post I mentioned the “we’re all marketers now” phenomenon, as outlined by McKinsey. It made me think about how daunting a prospect this could be for many marketing professionals out there. Making the transition from a sales-focused organisation to a marketing-focused organisation can be a painful process, so how, and why, do you do it?

Now, clearly this is not a particularly new idea, and there are plenty of companies out there who do it very well. The reason I wanted to focus on it in this blog, is because the rise of social media and digital marketing means that the marketing approach makes so much more sense in this new world. If your customer is always connected, your company needs to be prepared for that.

There are two predominant pain points in this transition, which to some extent overlap, and which marketers need to be aware of. The first is that when a marketer walks up to someone not in marketing and says “you’re now involved in digital marketing” it often doesn't go down too well. People are busy, and don’t want to be palmed off with other people’s work. Yet it needs to become part of their daily workload, and management and marketing need to work together to discover the best way to to this.

The second, connected, point is that the majority of people outside the confines of the marketing department don’t fully ‘get’ digital, and digital marketing. There is a huge internal communications campaign that needs to be done to get everyone on board and trained up to become a digitally enabled, marketing-focused organisation. We've all heard the “I’m putting a man on the moon” anecdote, and this even more relevant in today’s market.

For anyone struggling to get buy-in from their peers or seniors on the need for digital to be an organisational effort, I have two resources I think you need to be aware of. The first is a great little presentation called The Ultimate Guide to Explain Digital (To Your Colleagues). It breaks down how each department can (and should!) contribute to the digital marketing effort.

Secondly, my good friend Peter Thomson has written an excellent book on just this topic. It’s called Tickle: Digital marketing for tech companies. Although, it’s definitely not just for those in the tech sector. It goes into detail about how digital marketing-focused organisations operate, and how to achieve the all important buy-in from the top.

As a marketer, getting the whole company of board with digital can seem like an insurmountable task, but it is incredibly important to the success of the organisation. It is fast becoming expected that a customer will get the same experience of the company whether they are interacting with them online or offline. With the right support and resources, it can help catapult your success. Good luck!