Marketing Ecosystem: Direct-to-consumer

What does the landscape look like?

The marketing landscape is cluttered.  Just look at any of the Lumascape diagrams (here is their one for social) and we're astounded by the sheer numbers of players involved and thus the complexity of it all.   A spate or recent discussions about partnerships, competition, positioning, and offerings all led for the need to put some sort of structure together that covered the major types of players as well as their respective offerings as it relates to direct-to-consumer marketing.  

Here's a synopsis of where we ended up...

The offerings were divided into consulting versus implementation and the players were allocated to one of four types.

• Management Consulting - focused on crafting unique solutions based on a practice
• Business Consulting - delivering the infrastructure, including organizational, to execute
• Agency, Boutique Firms - charged with taking a brief and transforming it into campaigns
• Platform Providers - providing the execution and tracking tools

Now it is clear that a given company may span up and over in order to grow and increase its own value proposition, e.g. enterprise platforms adding professional services.  And it is likely that start-ups will look at one of the deliverables from a fresh perspective as a way to define their white space. 

The implication is one needs to understand the core business itself when looking at a company from the outside, either as a potential client or a competitor/partner.  Depending on the frame of reference, there will be trade-offs and distinctive points-of-view.   Certain options provide unique or exclusive solutions while others provide economies of scale.  

There are a few dimensions missing from this view, maybe another post...