By Sally Falkow
A new study from the CMO Club and Digiday uncovered a gap between how people use social sites and how we’re marketing to them on those platforms. They started out looking for something completely different – the gaps in the capabilities and perspectives amongst marketers, agencies and publishers, but found that another gap existed:
The real glaring gap is the massive divide between consumers’ online activity and the current digital marketing practices used to reach and engage them.
Digitally empowered consumers are engaging with content and brands in real-time and on their own terms across channels and devices. Firms across the current digital landscape are struggling to evolve and execute cross-channel and real-time interactive digital marketing programs to become more relevant to these consumers, says this report..
Only a quarter of agencies, marketers and publishers are engaged in cross-channel digital marketing and a scant 15% on average do real-time interactive marketing.
Key Challenges in Digital Marketing
So what is preventing marketers from being in sync with user behavior online? “Overwhelming complexity” and a “lack of unified measurement” are identified as the key challenges preventing the industry from being properly aligned with the consumer.
- Consumers are moving freely across channels and devices, interacting with brands and content in real time
- They have ever-rising expectations of relevant, unified, customized and rewarding digital experiences
- Consumers are flowing to those companies that “get it,” and leaving dry those unable to quickly and intelligently adapt
- The fragmented digital marketing landscape adds undue complexity and inertia to digital marketing capabilities
- The lack of unified measurement makes it difficult to gauge campaign success
- There is an urgent need to move from multi-channel to cross-channel marketing
About half of the agencies polled feel they are doing well in these areas, but marketers are reporting only about 10% satisfaction with their digital marketing efforts.
The complexity of the digital channels is affecting these areas of marketing:
- Focusing on the customer: The consumer perspective is often lost in planning. There is a need to be more consumer-centric, to incorporate the consumer mind-set based on actionable insights and unified views. (Keep tabs on availability of my new book Social Media Intelligence due out in September)
- Content strategy and generation: it’s vital to use the customer view to plan and deliver relevant content.
- Creative: there is a real need to up the game and provide richer, more engaging experiences with digital creative.
- Relationships with digital partners: innovation and rapid technology advancement elevates the need for specialist skills. Direct relationships with skilled digital partners are a necessity.
What do senior execs think is the answer? Real-time intelligence and customer insights that an be integrated into the planing and execution of their digital strategy
“Real-time intelligence and unified automation are two evolutionary forces that, in union, provide the basis to enhance digital marketing execution, and thus, help bridge the current digital divide. These two forces are reshaping the digital
landscape and, over time, will enable the industry to consolidate and evolve towards more real-time adaptive markets, with real-time efficiencies and fair value discovery.”
Pulsepoint Digital Divide Report. Download the full report here
