Download Traditional Marketing?

on the Job
Can Digital Marketing Replace
Traditional Marketing?
Pradeep Chopra says it is important to embrace digital marketing
as a part of overall marketing strategy
A
ccording to eMarketer, digital advertising spend will
increase to over USD 137 billion globally in 2014. This is a
phenomenal growth of more
than 14 per cent over 2013 spend. Interestingly, this will account for more
than 25 per cent of global media ad
spend. By 2018, digital advertising
spend is expected to be around one
third of global spend on advertising.
Considering this growth, marketers are significantly worried about the
future of traditional marketing. Many
have started to believe that digital
will replace traditional. On the other
hand, a large number of professionals
including business owners are still
thinking if they should invest in digital
or not. Like in any other industry, this
combination of over optimism and
fear about digital marketing is natural
and part of the evolution.
It is evident from the figures shared
that digital will not replace traditional
marketing but is complimentary to it.
For those who are really serious
about exploiting the opportunity of
digital media for personal or organisational growth, it’s important that
these common myths about digital
marketing don’t sway them:
1.Digital Marketing is all about
technology: Unfortunately, a large
number of business owners including marketing directors consider
digital marketing technical and
expect their IT teams to manage it.
This treatment is one of the biggest
reasons of failure of digital marketing initiatives. Since they are
unaware of the potential of this new
medium, they don’t consider that
digital has to be an integral part of
their business strategy.
While technologies play a role in
38 CFOCONNECT  September 2014
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success. Unlike software development, where requirements can be
captured to the finest details and
hile
there’s very high degree of certainty,
technologies play
digital marketing if outsourced to an
agency must be treated differently.
a role in expanding
Active involvement of key stakethe opportunity of
holders, especially that of the mardigital marketing,
keting team is critical for the success of digital marketing even
digital marketing
if it is outsourced to an external
has to be owned by
agency. The relationship between
Director of Marketing the company and the agency has
to be more of partner relation vs
or CMO with
a typical client-vendor relation. In
addition to providing understandactive involvement
ing of the customer’s concerns and
from other key
their behaviour to the agency, the
company play active role in strategy
stakeholders
content creation and
including CEO, COO development,
regular reviews.
3.Content is not a big deal: In case of
and CFO.
digital marketing, content speaks
on behalf of the company. A large
expanding the opportunity of digital
number of digital marketing inimarketing, digital marketing has to
tiatives fail because organisations
be owned by Director of Marketing
underestimate the requirement of
or CMO with active involvement
the content. When outsourced, they
from other key stakeholders includexpect the agency to take care of it
ing CEO, COO and CFO. In case
fully.
of digital marketing campaigns,
content in various forms including In addition to the volume and
quality of the content required,
videos, pictures and presentations
managing various types of content
speak to customers on behalf of
based on platforms used is mostly
the organisation. While technology
underestimated. This failure in
can be and should be leveraged to
planning for the content is one of the
improve the effectiveness of content
major reasons of failure of digital
and expand its reach, the role of
marketing campaigns whether done
marketing team cannot be miniin house or outsourced. It also leads
mised.
to crisis situations especially in case
2.Digital Marketing can be completeof real time customer engagement
ly outsourced to an agency: For
campaigns on social media.
the similar reasons shared above,
a large number of organisations 4.Everything is measurable in digital
media: Measurability is one of the
outsource their digital marketing
biggest advantages of digital media.
to external agencies and expect
However, over the years, it’s overthem to be solely responsible for the
on the Job
sold both by individual practitioners
and digital marketing agencies.
Unfortunately, expectations around
measurability have become so unreal today that a large number of
organisations are unwilling to invest
in digital marketing unless they are
given the guarantee of success. It
does not only kill the opportunity of
getting a new customer for a digital
marketing agency, it actually ends
up depleting the opportunity for the
company as it ends up not investing
into digital in absence of guaranteed
success including by their internal
team.
While measurability will continue
to be one of the key advantages of
digital media, marketers cannot ignore the qualitative side of it and the
fact that success in digital requires
experimentation especially in the
current evolutionary stage of the
industry.
5.I don’t need to learn Digital Marketing if I am outsourcing: One
of the questions we constantly
encounter when we speak to a business owner or to a senior marketer
about the relevance of our digital
marketing training programs for
them is ‘Why do I need to learn this
medium when I can outsource it or
build an in-house team to take care
of it?”
T
answers for if they are really serious
about managing successful digital
here’s a
marketing campaigns.
6.We should leverage social media
significant amount
because everyone else is talkof resistance when it ing about it: While one should be
comes to embracing abreast of the latest happenings
within digital space and should
new-age media for
be willing to experiment with new
traditional marketers. avenues, decision to leverage a
platform within digital should not
This mindset comes be solely based on its popularity.
It should actually be based on the
in their way of
business objective and target audiacquiring relevant
ence. For eg. if a B2B organisation
wants to generate leads digitally, it
skills for them to
should definitely consider LinkedIn.
deliver success…
Having conducted many corporate
trainings, we regularly hear from
CMOs and brand managers about
their mistake in choosing an ap There’s a significant amount of
propriate digital media platforms
resistance when it comes to embracfor their organisation.
ing new-age media for traditional
The future obviously belongs to
marketers. This mindset comes
in their way of acquiring relevant integrated marketers especially in
skills for them to deliver success of large organisations. Doing digital
their digital marketing campaigns marketing or not is no more a queswhether they are doing in-house or tion. Instead of seeing digital as a
outsourced to an agency. What kind threat, embracing it as a part of overall
marketing strategy is the
of people they should hire, what
only way to be successshould they expect from their interful in the digital world. n
nal teams and their agencies, what’s
the role their internal team and they
themselves need to play are some of
Pradeep Chopra is
CEO, Digital Vidya
the key questions they need to have
September 2014  CFOCONNECT 39