The Transformation of Marketing

When will we drop the adjective digital?

Much has been written about digital marketing, but the trends suggest that at some point the qualifier will be gone and we're just doing marketing.    So, what has to happen to be just a marketer rather than a specialist?   Here are some thoughts:

Digital marketing works on a consumers internal clock not the external calendar driven by business plans.  To be a marketer we need to...

• Understand pull as well as we understand push
• Allow the communication cadence to be dictated by the individual
• Abdicate control and trust the systems to serve what the consumer needs
• Subordinate the media calendar to a supporting rather than guiding role
• Migrate our thinking from we know 'when' to adapting to cues whenever they occur

Digital marketing functions in a guessable rather than the addressable world of name, address and phone number.   To be a marketer we need to...

• Act with incomplete and uncertain visibility
• Know the nuances, strengths and limitations of technology
• Think more about context and intent
• Focus on the persona not the person
• Shift from knowing a person to understanding behavior

Digital marketing applies to a world where people are the media.  To be a marketer we need to...

• Actively participate and be diligent about it
• Leverage what people actually care about
• Think more about the types of help we can offer
• Recognize that we won't always know what is said
• Move from placing messages to facilitating sharing

Digital marketing is the world of interaction; and everything is interactive.  To be a marketer we need to...

• Ensure our message is consistent and the experience seamless
• Surround consumers in order to help them choose
• Rethink how and where messages work
• Organize around goals, not channels
• Play 3-D chess, not checkers when developing strategy

Digital marketing is about engagement, relevance, and experience: and those are all driven by content.   To be a marketer we need to....

• Develop a framework for understanding how content actually works
• Document how need states vary by channel, device and location
• Model content consumption habits not only media
• Optimize content serving, not just channel attribution
• Tell superb improvisational stories 

Digital marketing is about data, lots of it.   To be a marketer we need to...

• Associate all data for a consumer in order to find the 'ah ha' and 'oh no' insights
• Deploy data-driven business rules rather than debate them in a meeting
• Work at the compressed time caused by seamless interactions
• Reduce complexity by defining what we're trying to achieve first
• Sense and respond based on probability, not certainty

It seems that the good digital marketers do all of the above, and probably a lot more that I've missed.   They are likely to be the CMO's of the future not just the CDMO.

Each of the above points could be the subject of a chapter in a book and maybe there is a something in that idea....