The Future is Now – is your Marketing Department ready?
If there is one common consensus within the existing marketing community it’s that in 2020 marketing must be based on the consumer journey. If we don’t put our brands and products where consumers are visiting, we fail. Same as it’s always been..
Exactly where the consumer is going to be is another question altogether, but we can be sure that the majority of consumers will spend a lot of time and money on the internet. So let’s be there for them.
However, while that may be the foundation for many a marketing strategy it doesn’t necessarily answer the question of how your Marketing Department should be structured to achieve this. In order to help with that, we lay out some basic assumptions below and then hypothesise what this means for a Future-focussed Marketing Department.
Basic Assumption 1: The Consumer will predominantly be shopping online in 2020
Basic Assumption 2: Consumers will see your brands and products in line with your Paid/Owned/Earned Media strategy
Basic Assumption 3: Brands need to find consumers and follow their journeys online – customer data must be at the heart of marketing
Basic Assumption 4: The essence of marketing is growth
Basic Assumption 5: The only constant is change – structures must be agile and ready to adapt
Building a Marketing Department fit for the 21st Century.
We know now that there are three basic principles upon which all structures should be based –
Principle 1: Keep your hierarchy flat
Principle 2: Avoid silos at all cost
Principle 3: Encourage and facilitate communication
If we keep these principles in mind we can start to look at marketing department structures in a whole new way…
Proposed Structure 1: The three core elements of marketing
Content + Media + Data
CONTENT; It is essential not to confuse the message with the messenger when you structure your department. Another way to think of this is don’t mix up the content with the media it sits on. Build a team who is creative and open and ask them to create content, either internally or externally.
MEDIA: The people who create interesting and engaging content won’t be the same people who understand the data-based intricacies of online consumer journeys. Although you might not want to bring an online buying desk in house you should have experts who know what is happening in the world of digital.
DATA: And there is a third group of people who can analyse this data and tell you which content in which medium is working best. You need an in-house team who can give you real-time feedback on what works and what doesn’t.
So this becomes a virtuous circle of content + media + data allowing all your marketing to work seamlessly together across the three new departments.
Proposed Structure 2: The three routes to market
Paid / Owned / Earned
No media presentation in the 21st century is free of the POEM model. But that doesn’t make it wrong – in fact, if that’s what the consumer is seeing, why not reflect that in your marketing department?
PAID: a team entirely devoted to creating, producing and placing content on third-party paid-for media. Old-skool advertising with up-to-date technology allowing you to be where the consumer is looking at all times.
OWNED: makes sure that all your own real-estate, both real and virtual, does a job of selling. Build a team who is responsible for the budget and knows where all the best sites are. Make sure the website works hard and sells hard.
EARNED: it’s PR, but not as we used to know it. Social Media, Influencers, Buzz, Commentators, Experts and everyone else who might care about your brand, product or service. Makes sure you have a team who can link all this together and make it work.
Proposed Structure 3: Traditional 3-Tier Hierarchy
Brand => Product => Retail
Historically the go-to basic structure with a brand team, a product team and finally a retail or Shopper team. Unfortunately, the truth is that communication is very difficult between each of these different and disparate tasks, creating silos and losing any synergy.
BRAND: The brand team tends to rely heavily on external agencies, mostly the ad agency, which then gains disproportionate control of the brand. Often seen to be out of touch with the real product and retail needs, it is easy for the brand team to live in an Ivory Castle.
PRODUCT: The product team on the other hand can easily lose sight of the consumer requirements and start to focus on what they CAN produce in terms of NPD, rather than what the market needs.
RETAIL: Often seen to be at the bottom of the food chain, the retail/shopper team is left to manage the requirements of both Brand and Product in the retail environment, with much less resource or attention.
You’re right – we don’t think much of this model. Don’t do it, but thanks for reading to the end…
