The road to personalization success as promoted by marketing technology vendors, analysts, and others – all ostensibly with a dog in the race – is usually paved with rough, long, expensive toll roads. Here’s what you need to know to deliver on the promise of personalization.

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In his latest blog post, my buddy Mark Demeny, Director of Content Management Strategy at Contentful, discusses personalization. For every CMO who heavily invested in a web content management (WCM) system with the capability to personalize the experience of a website visitor, his question is worth considering: “Is the hype around personalization dead?”

Like digital transformation, personalization isn’t an “Easy” button to instant revenue. The scenario preached by martech vendors where prospects and customers, hypnotized by hyper-personalized experiences jump headlong into acquisition, conversion, and retention buckets, cash in hand, is less than practical.

“Personalization is effective only when it is core to the experience across channels and is not just using gimmicky tricks to sell to a customer.” – Mark Demeny, Director of Content Management Strategy at Contentful

The Promise of Personalization

The fact is, personalization isn’t magical at all. It’s hard work, time-consuming, and expensive. The lack of upfront strategy, the inherent complexity of marketing technology used to implement personalization at scale, and the persistent disconnect between a company’s business and marketing goals make the likelihood of achieving a personalization initiative a long shot.

As Mark says, to get value from personalization (and the technologies that make it possible), “…you need to have a clear people, process and technology strategy to take advantage of those elements and avoid falling for the hype – and there is no magic bullet (and that includes “AI”).”

He continues, “While personalization is falling flat in a marketing sense, personalization has been used extremely effectively in a product management sense – if your customer experience is a product or being run as a digital product (with product managers, roadmaps, etc.), then you probably have many of the organizational structures and skillsets in place to be successful.”

I’ve suggested that when marketers build out a marketing technology stack using a plethora of different tools, they need product manager skills. But they’re marketers, not product managers (or IT managers), so the stacks they build don’t necessarily deliver on the promise.

Since the experience is the product, maybe Mark’s on to something here; one answer to the challenge of making personalization work might be a product management approach. The problem is marketers don’t usually make great product managers (and IT people don’t typically make great marketers). 

There’s often a lack of organizational structures and skillsets in place you’ll need to take this approach. Sure, you might make a new hire or two or perhaps borrow the expertise from other areas of the business. But both options would require a solid business case and some selling to management to bring to life.

Martin Eriksson makes a good point on the Mind the Product blog: “Product managers simply don’t have any direct authority over most of the things needed to make their products successful – from user and data research through design and development to marketing, sales, and support.”

Personalization Takes a Village

That means it would indeed take a village to bring to life the product management approach to personalization. From my vantage point working in and with some of the largest organizations in the world, the villagers that comprise today’s corporate teams function in silos; they don’t often wander beyond the fortifications that surround their hamlets, except to forage for food or the occasional brief social encounter. Sound familiar?

Let’s face it; we’re in a bit of a pickle. We’ve spent a boatload of money on people and technology; we’re using only a fraction of the features and functions we’ve paid for (or in the case of a SaaS solution, we’re paying for). And we’re buying even more marketing technology to fill the gaps left by the lack of strategy that should have preceded any martech purchase. And we’re no closer to personalization nirvana.

Customer Experience, Content, and Data

I think there’s an argument to be made that the combination of customer experience, content, and data are the ingredients required to activate and sustain a practical personalization strategy. Understanding who your customers are, what they want from your brand, and how to give it to them is the holy grail of any marketing plan. That’s where you start.

By deeply understanding the customer experience and mapping the journeys of prospects, customers, and the workforce (because they have journeys, too), you’re able to create content that connects with their needs, wants, and desires – content they want to consume and share.

But it’s not just customer experience, content, and done. You’ve also got to leverage the valuable bubbling cauldron of data you’ve been collecting, whether it be:

• First-party Data – Data you’ve collected about your customers or audience that you own and manage. It can be implicit data (e.g., behavioral) or explicit data (e.g., something the prospect or customer has shared).
• Second-party Data – Someone else’s first-party data you’ve bought, borrowed, or bartered.
• Third-party Data – This is rich behavioral or demographic data aggregated from many different sources.

When you connect your customer experience, content, and data strategies, you’re building a compelling competitive advantage that goes beyond cost, product, and service differentiation. 

The Road to Personalization

What if you worked on those strategies first? What if you put some time and effort into setting some SMART business and marketing goals? Then, defined what success looked like along with KPIs and a measurement plan? What if you did a little research into the who, why, and why of your target audience(s)? What if you broke down some of those silos and collaborated with other business units? Finally, what if you developed and aligned customer experience, content, and data strategies?

The answer is the same for any organization, whether it’s B2C, B2B, B2B2C, or some other combination of letters and numbers. First, you’ll have more clarity of purpose in your marketing efforts. I’ve seen way too many marketing organizations taking a “ready, fire, aim” approach, and the results are not conducive to long-term employment. 

Second, you’ll have a more meaningful understanding of your target audiences, including the problems they’re trying to solve and how to meet their needs. Spending the necessary time, effort, and brainpower on developing and activating robust customer experience, content, and data strategies will produce significant customer engagement, conversions, and loyalty.

The road to personalization success as promoted by marketing technology vendors, analysts, and others – all ostensibly with a dog in the race – is usually paved with rough, long, expensive toll roads. I’m not saying it’ll never happen for you, that you should give up. Not at all. What I’m saying is you need to have the right mindset (personalization isn’t magic), well-crafted and implemented customer experience, content, and data strategies, and a method for measuring success so you can measure, analyze and optimize.

Don’t Travel the Road to Personalization Alone

Just as important, please consider that you don’t have to make the trip alone. There are plenty of qualified partners out there you can engage with to help you through each step of the process. Similar to vetting your marketing technology choices, the same due diligence, strategic planning, and research should guide your partner selection.

 

 

Creating digital and customer experience success requires more thinking and planning, not more expensive marketing technology. Here’s what you need to know.

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In the Sitecore ebook titled “5 hard truths for marketers driving digital experience,” there was an observation that the role of the marketer had changed significantly in the last few years. It said that marketers find themselves “…on the front line driving better customer and digital experiences.”

That last sentence is partially correct. In my experience speaking and working with thousands of global marketers over the years, I’ve found the desire to provide better customer and digital experiences present. Still, to be accurate, I’d change the line to “…struggling to drive better customer and digital experiences.” Here are the “five truths” laid out in the Sitecore ebook, along with some thoughts on each.

The C-Suite is just not that into you

“In business terms, you can often be speaking completely different languages. What is the value of impressions or clicks to a business? Surely sales are the only thing that matter? C-Suites often don’t understand the resources or efforts necessary to deliver effective digital experiences, so they are naturally going to focus on metrics with simple, provable outcomes, at the expense of marketing.”

Indeed, most C-level executives are myopically focused on measurable outcomes that drive EBITDA. There’s no disconnect here; every marketer I’ve ever encountered understands that when the company makes money, paychecks are issued, and everyone keeps their jobs.

What’s causing the so-called CMO confidence crisis in the C-suite is the simple fact that a majority of marketers don’t have a measurement plan. They’re doing plenty to move the needle; the problem is they don’t measure those efforts effectively (or at all). And they can’t prove ROI, which is why marketing organizations are often viewed as cost centers by leadership.

As my favorite sage on digital marketing and measurement, Avinash Kaushik says, “The root cause of failure in most digital marketing campaigns is not the lack of creativity in the banner ad or TV spot or the sexiness of the website. It is not even (often) the people involved. It is quite simply the lack of structured thinking about what the real purpose of the campaign is and a lack of an objective set of measures with which to identify success or failure.”

What are you trying to accomplish, and how will you measure success or failure? Brilliant and significant. Try it and see how your credibility and value proposition with everyone in your organization, not just the C-Suite, grows exponentially along with your success.

Personalization is not a one-size-fits-all

“There is no one-size-fits-all solution for any business. The idea behind personalization is it is unique. What works for one person/sector/business will not be suitable for another. Working out what works for you is a major challenge.”

The over-hyped promise of reduced costs, higher efficiency, and more revenue when you personalize your customers’ experiences has created a sense of FOMO in marketers the likes of which we haven’t seen since the pet rock and more recently, with social media. Creating personalized experiences is the talk at marketing conferences around the world, and research in the wild supports the suggestion that prospects and customers prefer personalized experiences.

Further, if you buy-in to the studies (in large part published by organizations that make money selling personalization services), personalized experiences can be a boon for the bottom line:

• 80% of customers are more likely to purchase a product or service from a brand that provides personalized experiences. [Epsilon]
• The top five benefits of personalization include increased visitor engagement (55%), improved customer experience (55%), improved brand perception (39%), increased conversion rates (51%) and increased lead generation and customer acquisition (46%) [Evergage]
• Personalization can reduce acquisition costs by as much as 50%, lift revenues by 5–15%, and increase marketing spend efficiency by 10–30% [McKinsey]

IMHO, the “major challenge” is that riding the personalization wave comes at a cost – a cost most marketing organizations never really consider. You’ll need the right people, you’ll have to do some work, it’ll take time, and you’ll have to invest substantial dollars. There’s no “Easy Button” or Magical Martech solution when it comes to creating and delivering remarkable personalized customer experiences, despite what you read and hear from marketing technology vendors

It’s worth repeating; for personalization initiatives to have any chance of succeeding, you’ll need the right people, you’ll have to do some work, it’ll take time, and you’ll have to invest substantial dollars. That’s the reality of personalization. Depending on your strategy and activation methods, which include technology, the quantitative measures of each of those things will vary – sometimes significantly. As the Sitecore ebook says, there is no one-size-fits-all solution for any business.

AI alone won’t save you

“AI is just a tool, like your computer or notepad. There might be a time in the future where you couldn’t possibly imagine working without it, but it needs you a lot more than you need it. If you’re struggling to come up with new ideas, or convert plans into reality, AI won’t help you.”

If I read one more article confidently assuring me that, “AI is the future of marketing,” I’m going to pinch someone. Really hard. First, it was customer experience, and then personalization, now it’s machine learning, artificial intelligence, IoT, and let’s not forget account-based marketing. It’s exhausting.

Most of the marketers I work with are struggling to keep up with a customer who moves faster than their brand. If they had to make a list of things on which to spend their precious time, money, and effort to move the needle, artificial intelligence wouldn’t be on it.  Marketing technology vendors or consultants who tell you the answer to your marketing quandaries is AI probably have a bridge they want to sell you, as well.

AI for marketers is at a nascent stage, at best. Consider building knowledge about AI today, but wait another few years before investing budget and effort in major AI initiatives. Focus instead on developing your business, marketing, and technology goals to help you acquire, convert, and retain. The rewards from that investment today will likely be much higher than an investment in AI.

If you have a major jones for the AI thang, after developing your business, marketing, and technology goals, consider doing some research on chatbots. There might be a fit within your strategy for AI-powered conversational chatbots that use instant messaging to chat in real-time, any time, with site visitors or customers. It’s an excellent way to ease into AI.

• Autodesk leveraged the Watson Conversation platform to build a virtual agent that resulted in a 99 percent improvement in response times, “…cutting resolution from 38 hours to 5.4 minutes for most Tier 1 inquiries.” [IBM]
• Gartner predicts that chatbots will power 85 percent of all customer service interactions by the year 2020, becoming a mainstream customer experience investment. 47% of organizations will use chatbots for customer care, and 40% will deploy virtual assistants.

For the record, I’m a big fan of using machine learning, artificial intelligence, predictive and prescriptive analytics, and other approaches to automate processes and drive marketing success. My son recently wrapped up four years at The Ohio State University, getting his data analytics degree and is preparing to enter a Master’s program. He’ll echo what Sitecore and I are saying, that AI has its place. But it’s not the panacea the market is making it out to be.

Your content crisis won’t solve itself

“Content is king in marketing. But with so many different channels, sectors and individuals to target, you can’t create content fast enough, especially with a finite number of people and budget.”

You could create content (and publish everywhere) fast enough, but you’d need a well thought out content strategy to serve as the foundation for your efforts. It’s not that there are too many channels, sectors, or customers with whom to connect your content. The reason most marketers can’t get speed and scale from their content endeavors is that they have no plan, no content strategy.

Plus, they’re buying empty marketing technology promises from vendors promising magical outcomes. The latest and greatest “customer experience platform” isn’t going to change the fact that you’ve got to do some work to create the real magic that drives results. 

• 65% of the most successful content marketers have a documented strategy vs. 14% of the least successful. [Content Marketing Institute]
• The biggest challenges for content marketing are reportedly lack of data and lack of strategy. [DMA]
• 98% of senior marketers believe having a content strategy is essential for their success, but only 55% have a documented strategy. [Contently]

That work includes understanding your market, your customers, developing business, marketing, and technology goals, and having the right people on the bus to activate the multiple strategies that will drive tangible results (revenue). Buying a bunch of Magical Martech isn’t a replacement for doing that work. As strategy consultant, Will Sullivan so rightly says, “It’s not magic, it’s martech.”

Just a few years ago, Econsultancy said: “Unused content in B2B digital marketing will soon be a $50bn problem for the industry and for CMOs keen to prove ROI.” That’s a lot of cabbage. And they were right. A robust content strategy is a roadmap to success that helps you avoid content waste and a lack of ROI. Your content strategy will:

• Define how content will be used to meet business goals and satisfy user needs. (substance)
• Guide content decisions throughout its lifecycle, from concept to deletion. (structure, workflow, governance) 
• Set benchmarks to measure the success of the content. (measurement)

[H/T to Kristina Halvorson]

I’ll bet $20 bucks right now that most of the people reading this do not have a formal content strategy in place at their company (I’m not wasting time on a survey – we all fib when we do those things, anyway).

So please, don’t shortcut when it comes to content strategy. That goes for customer experience strategy and data strategy, as well. It’s a triple play that’ll change everything for your business and marketing efforts.

Customer data is your kryptonite

“Marketing collects vast amounts of data from customers, but often doesn’t fully utilize it. In fact, 72% of us want to do more with the data we have. We all have so much raw customer information just sitting there, but we either don’t trust it, or don’t realize the potential it has.”

I don’t think this failure to make use of (monetize?) customer data has anything to do with trust in the data or recognizing the potential of the data a company owns.  As the Sitecore ebook says, most companies want to do more with the data they have – do more with data in general. However, as a 2019 HBR article said, companies are failing in their efforts to become data-driven.

The HBR article references NewVantage Partners’ 2019 Big Data and AI Executive Survey. Here are some results from the survey:

• 72% of survey participants report that they have yet to forge a data culture.
• 69% report that they have not created a data-driven organization.
• 53% state that they are not yet treating data as a business asset.
• 52% admit that they are not competing on data and analytics.

This survey addresses the higher level, organizational approach to being data-driven, and the results are alarming, to be sure. But let’s drop down below the corporate level and look at this from a marketing organization POV and talk a bit about the two leading data platforms marketers have been using for the past few years to aggregate data, build audiences, gain insights (e.g., patterns, trends, intent), and create personalized experiences.

Data Management Platforms (DMP)

Data management platforms have been the customer data management tool most used by marketers. DMPs aggregate first-party, second-party, and third-party data and promise to help marketers better understand their customers, including what influences them to make purchases. DMPs do this by storing and analyzing (often using AI) campaign data, segments, demographics, psychographics, and much more.

Demand-Side Platforms (DSP)

A demand-side platform (DSP) is a real-time bidding system that connects media buyers with data exchanges and supply-side platforms through a single interface. DSPs use the insights from the DMP and serve as the middleman between media buyers and publishers, providing a repository through which they can buy and sell targeted ad inventory.

Sounds great, right? The challenge is that DMPs are expensive, complicated, and require specialized skills to select, implement, and operate. Again, there’s no magic here. Becoming a data-driven marketer and using tools like a DMP requires well-defined business, marketing, and technology strategies, the right people, time, lots of work, and a substantial investment.

Many marketing organizations using DMPs have struggled to achieve ROI, often resorting to hiring consultants or in-house talent to manage their DMPs. It’s not about a lack of trust in the data or recognizing the potential of the data a company owns. It is about buying technology based on a promise that doesn’t deliver – and doesn’t serve the needs of the business.

Do you see a pattern developing here? As for DSPs, marketers are using them to programmatically buy display, video, mobile, search, and other types of ads. DSPs can deliver excellent results when driven by a well-defined business and marketing strategy, but you must choose your DSP partners carefully.

Enter the Customer Data Platform (CDP)

The customer data platform (much like DMPs were) promises to be the holy grail of customer data management. A single source of record for all customer data. A persistent, unified customer database with integration to other systems and aggregated data that are cleaned and combined to create a single customer profile.

I know, I know – you’ve got to have one of those CDP things. But before you rush off and buy yet another marketing technology tool, take a deep breath. It’s early in the CDP evolution, and right now and as with AI, I suggest a wait-and-see approach. Customer data’s not your kryptonite. Over-hyped marketing technology is your kryptonite.

When it comes to making sense of your data and using it as a tool to connect more deeply with your prospects and customers to drive revenue, there’s no Magic Martech, no “Easy Button.” Your first step to putting your data to work for your company and your customers is to develop a robust data strategy. There are no shortcuts; you’ve got to do the work.

How to Drive Better Customer and Digital Experiences

Here’s the one hard truth you should not only accept, but incorporate into the way you work. If you want to drive better customer and digital experiences, which lead to increased acquisition, conversions, and retention, it’s going to take some time, you’ll need good people, you’ll have to do some work, and it’ll require an investment.

Customer Experience Strategy

Like a good meal, remarkable customer and digital experiences take time. The upfront thinking contributes as much to success as the doing. Take all the time necessary to develop and activate a robust customer experience strategy, and you’ll not only forge ahead of your competitors, but you’ll also be less frustrated with the outcome.

Content Strategy

Equally important, your content strategy will help you and your team clearly define how content will be used to meet business goals and satisfy the needs of your users. From initial content idea to sunsetting, a content strategy will help guide your content decisions during the content lifecycle. Just as important, don’t forget to put a plan in place to measure the efficacy of your content efforts.

Data Strategy

Data strategy has traditionally focused on the storage and retention of data. With a desire for marketing organizations to become more data-driven, there’s a new foundational approach to data strategy, which includes acquiring, storing, managing, sharing, and using data. The folks at SAS describe the complexity of data strategy in five snackable components:

1. Identify – Identify data and understand its meaning regardless of structure, origin or location
2. Store – Persist data in a structure and location that supports easy, shared access and processing
3. Provision – Package data so it can be reused and shared, and provide rules and access guidelines for the data
4. Process – Move and combine data residing in disparate systems, and provide a unified, consistent data view
5. Govern – Establish, manage and communicate information policies and mechanisms for effective data usage

According to research from Econsultancy, in partnership with Google, marketers who were able to crush their business goals indicated that two things are crucial to success: support from executive leadership and a clearly defined and documented data and analytics strategy.

In my work with clients across different verticals, I see this becoming more critical to success. Organizations that invest in developing, documenting, and making data strategy part of the core of organizational culture far exceed the performance of those that do not. If you don’t have the in-house expertise to explore, develop, and implement a clearly defined and documented data and analytics strategy, find a consultant who can help you figure it out.

The short-term investment will far outweigh the long-term benefits, which include empowering your marketing team to improve the customer experience, personalize content development and distribution, and maximize ROI on your investments in people, processes, and technology.

Creating a Program for Digital and Customer Experience Success

Creating remarkable digital and customer experiences requires thinking and planning before you start doing. If you want to amplify your acquisition, conversion, and retention efforts and blow the doors off your competition, you must first clearly establish (preferably in writing) your most important business, marketing, and technology goals. 

Defining your content, customer experience, and data strategies come next. Think “narrowcasting” when determining these essential strategic roadmaps; your goal is to deliver the right content to the right prospects snd customers, at the right time, within the context of their customer journey.

Having a strategic data-driven content strategy along with a robust customer experience strategy helps ensure you’re putting your best content and customer experience foot forward when engaging with your target audiences. Finally, let’s remember that technology alone is not the answer to driving digital and customer experience success. While technology plays a part, there’s no “Easy” button when it comes to applying technology, and this is especially true of marketing technology to activate your strategies. 

If you want to drive better customer and digital experiences, which lead to increased acquisition, conversions, and retention, remember: it’s going to take some time, you’ll need good people, you’ll have to do some work, and it’ll require an investment. And if that all feels a bit overwhelming, don’t be discouraged. While you’re reading this, your competitor likely just bought another marketing technology tool instead of doing the real work!

“Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.” – Peter Drucker

The agency of record model is shifting to using smaller and mid-sized specialty agencies. The benefits include more specialized knowledge, increased value, more creativity, and better market knowledge. Is it time to fire your agency of record?

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The Agency of Record (AOR). It’s been the driver of agency revenue since before David Ogilvy decided to hang out a shingle. But that model is changing. The 2019 AdAge Agency Report declared, “U.S. agencies had the weakest growth since the ad market emerged from the recession.” 

It’s no longer just a TV and print world, and for those who wish the “Mad Men” model was still en vogue, it seems that clients are way smarter these days. As for the customer’s most brands want to engage with, they’re untethered, digitally savvy, incredibly demanding, and in control of their experiences. It’s a whole new ball game.

No more interruptive promotions, because they’re not listening. They want to be engaged on a one-to-one basis, not via some hokey mass media blast because last I checked, not everyone likes vanilla ice cream.

The Agency of Record

The “agency of record” approach is how advertising agencies sought to bundle the services most brands were buying; TV, radio, print, outdoor, and after some time, “digital” work. Chief Marketing Officers liked the idea for several reasons, not the least of which was the illusion of having “one throat to choke.” This model found its way into the IT space, too. Think Sun-Oracle-Veritas and SAP-Accenture. 

That concept might have made sense when there were only a few channels, and advertising was mostly interruptive. Today, your target audience is a multi-segment, untethered, highly demanding, incredibly savvy bunch, and they won’t submit to having their experiences hijacked, least of all for an advertisement or content that’s not timely, relevant, and personal.

Besides, buying expensive “agency of record” services to get a sense of security (“Remember, Johnson – no one ever got fired for hiring IBM!”) makes about as much sense as buying expensive monolithic, best-of-breed marketing technology platforms.

“If you’re wedded to one vendor, they have the opportunity to hold you hostage regardless of what kind of value they’re delivering. You might have one throat and you might be choking it, but you’re still stuck with it. Plus, you can only choke so hard, or they’re dead and you’re screwed.” – Customer Relations, And The Faults With ‘One Throat To Choke’ Business Alliances, Forbes 2013

As with elaborate and complex best-of-breed marketing technology platforms, when you go the agency of record route, you often end up using only 10-15% of what you’re paying for, and what you pay is top dollar. The reality in too many cases is that you come away from those experiences feeling like Clara Peller in those classic Wendy’s “Where’s the Beef?” commercials.

Models for Success Beyond the Agency of Record

Companies like P&G get it. They’ve stripped out $1 billion in agency costs to date with a focus on bringing more of the work in-house. Chief Brand Officer Marc Pritchard is moving P&G from “brand people who outsource too much of their work, to brand entrepreneurs with their hands on the keyboard.” P&G has reportedly halved the number of agencies it works with, from 6,000 to 3,000.

P&G is not alone. For example, one year after launch, Unilever’s in-house agency U-Studio has a presence in over 20 countries. According to an article in the drum, “The agency was established to develop “utility and informational digital content” such as how-to videos, infographics, articles, product information, while Unilever simultaneously slashed some 3,000 agencies it worked with in half.” 

Unilever Chief Marketing and Communications Officer Keith Weed says of U-Studio, “Since launching in 2016, we now have 18 U-Studios across 15 countries. They sit with our marketers and are regarded as centres of excellence. Our marketers like the new way of working and it has delivered on the anticipated benefits of speed, quality, cost and agility.” Weed says that by in-housing, the company created the tech, tools, and talent required by marketers to better serve and anticipate the needs of Unilever consumers. 

New Ways of Working

This move away from the agency of record mindset fosters new ways of working and advances an entrepreneurial culture in the right environment. Besides, any CMO with a smartphone knows we’re living in a demand economy. 

We want what we want, and we want it fast, simple, with kick-ass customer experience. How many of you now get your groceries delivered to your home? What about prepared food from your favorite restaurants? Have you hailed an Uber lately? 

Beyond an Uber ride, have you tried Uber Eats, Uber Freight, Uber Health, Uber for Business, Uber Bike, or Uber Elevate? Probably not. These offerings have been crafted for specific audiences. Sure, Uber would welcome the “Uber of Record” customer, but the likelihood of me consuming multiple services from Uber beyond a ride and maybe food delivery is slim.

Apologies for the digression. Let me get back to my point.

Specialty Shops: Specialized Knowledge, Increased Value

It’s clear from the shift that’s been happening for more than ten years that the agency of record model is shifting to using smaller and mid-sized specialty agencies. According to a CMO Club study, CMOs report this approach provides them with more specialized knowledge, increased value, more creativity, and better market knowledge. The same survey found that some 46% of CMOs surveyed were “…still using the traditional agency of record model, but only 14% reported being very satisfied.“

“Listen closely and you may just hear the ghost of David Ogilvy, the father of advertising, rattling his chains as the halcyon days of big agency dominance continues its decade-long decline while the pervasiveness of digital marketing, and the emergence of smaller specialty shops, twist the knife into the time-honored Agency of Record (AOR) model.” – Developing a Modern Agency Ecosystem, CMO Club

Putting all of your eggs in one basket, whether you’re buying a marketing technology tool or trying to drive your business forward through marketing and advertising, is a throwback to a bygone era. Your customers are moving faster than your brand, and you can’t possibly create and deliver the remarkable customer experiences they expect if you’re always struggling to keep up.

Like narrowcasting, where you deliver the right message to the right customer at the right time, moving away from the agency of record or “all-in-one” model means choosing specific partners to help you address specific challenges or goals you want to achieve.

If the Only Tool You Have Is a Hammer

As Abraham Maslow said back in the 60s, “I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.” Don’t do that. Pick and choose the right tool for the job — every time. Not only will those tools likely do a better job helping you accomplish your tasks, but you’ll also be better equipped to take on new initiatives (can you say “innovation?”) with the robust toolkit you’ve built over time.

Make sure you give whatever partners with whom you engage the time to develop a deep understanding of your business, including where you’ve been, where you are today, and where you’d like to go tomorrow. Any solutions must also carefully consider your business, marketing, and technology needs.

One more thing – don’t be sucked into the lipstick on a pig approach of bolting on the word “Digital” to “Agency of Record.” You’re smarter than that. As the Adweek article says, “It’s Time to Fire Your Agency of Record” and switch over to a team of specialists instead. Do it. And don’t look back.

Is your brand engaged in an agency of record relationship? How’s that working out? Please join the conversation by leaving a comment.

The marketing industry has been confused about the digital strategist’s role since the dawn of digital marketing itself. Here’s my take on the answer to the question, “What is a digital strategist, and what does a digital strategist do?”

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I published the article “What is a Digital Strategist?” almost six years ago. The piece has been viewed more than 100,000 times by digital strategists, digital marketers, digital marketing recruiters, and others inside and outside the digital marketing industry. Most of them came upon the article seeking clarity about the digital strategist’s job description, one of the most essential but misunderstood roles in digital marketing.

Some fifteen years after the term “digital strategist” first made its way into a Google search result, the concept of the digital strategist’s role within an agency or brand remains a challenge for many to wrap their heads around, especially hiring managers and HR departments. Speak with ten marketers today, and you’ll still get ten different answers to the question, “What is a digital strategist?”

Explore any of the popular online job search engines or talk with a recruiter specializing in the digital marketing space about a digital strategist role. You’ll quickly learn that a digital strategist role may also shoulder the duties of: account executive, social media manager, web analytics manager, media planner, brand ambassador, financial or business analyst, business development associate, digital marketing specialist, marketing coordinator, or any combination of these roles. It’s wild and ambiguous out there.

Digital Marketing Purple Squirrels and Unicorns

I’ve seen digital strategist job requirements that included phlebotomy certification, piano tuning experience, and the ability to debone a freakishly large-breasted chicken in one piece. OK, maybe not. But seriously, the people these job posters are after don’t exist. They’re like purple squirrels. Some might believe the “casting a wide net” approach to staffing the digital strategist role is pure ignorance. Perhaps the reality is simply a desire to get as much bang for the buck as possible from the hiring budget.

I’m guilty of hunting for purple squirrels, myself. And I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t trying to wring every penny’s worth of value from my hiring budget, like everyone else. At the time of this writing, I’m seeking talented unicorns with skills and experience bridging the domains of business, digital marketing, and marketing technology. Finding people in one of those areas with the right attitude, skills, and ability to deliver value for my customers is a chore. Finding people who check the boxes in all three areas is a task worthy of Hercules.

On the flip side, those applying for digital strategist jobs are often (seriously) unqualified. However, since the digital strategist’s job descriptions and requirements are so convoluted and ambiguous, you can’t blame the applicants. The bottom line? The unresolved disconnect between both parties regarding the role and responsibilities of the digital strategist is a big one, and there’s no sign of that changing any time soon. That said, here’s my point of view in answer to the question, “What does a digital strategist do?”

What Does a Digital Strategist Do?

I’ve always held that digital strategists work with teams inside an agency or brand to solve complicated business, brand, marketing, and technology problems. Digital strategists are the people that lead the problem-solving charge, helping to connect the dots between the needs, wants, and desires of the customer and the often elusive business, brand, and marketing goals of the company. The most competent digital strategists work with business unit stakeholders to get a clear and detailed understanding of client challenges from a business point of view like a business analyst.

What Skills Do Successful Digital Strategists Need?

The digital strategists who’ll be most successful going forward have a robust generalist’s understanding of traditional and digital marketing and some knowledge of how businesses work. They also have a solid understanding of what a digital product or service is, how it generates revenue and everything in between.

What kinds of skills? Here are some example skills you’ll need to get – and keep – a digital strategist job, taken from some of the better digital strategist job postings I’ve seen.

Digital Strategist Skills

• Leads business, marketing, and technology stakeholder elicitation and translates/communicates to necessary parties.
• Works directly with clients to define and distill business, marketing, and technology goals, create success metrics, and communicates to necessary parties.
• Maps business requirements to technology capabilities and, if necessary, adjust existing business processes (along with developing a business case).
• Understands and defines management, measurement, accountability, and ROI objectives. 
• Creative problem solver with a proven ability to formulate recommendations based on a broad set of inputs and facts.
• Identifies priorities related to tracking and measuring marketing performance and related technology capabilities needed for execution.
• Strong analytical skills to evaluate ideas, prioritize initiatives, quantify benefits, and evaluate performance.
• Configures, operates, and integrates a wide range of commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) marketing technology platforms and tools. (NOTE: you must have at least a baseline understanding of the most popular (useful?) marketing technology tools on the market, how they work, and how they work together).

Other than the last one, there aren’t any tactical requirements in the list of examples I provided. Still, the ability to execute is just as important as the ability to think strategically. Yes, you read it right – you also need tactical skills. Being strategy-driven is essential, but we can’t be myopic in our approach. It’s one thing to develop robust digital strategies and quite another to activate them, and you’ll have to do both to be a successful digital strategist.

Are these skills in your wheelhouse? If not, drop me a note. I’d love to talk with you about how you can get the skills you need to get and keep a job as a digital strategist.

No Digital Strategist Is an Island

Digital strategists need the smart team supporting them to be tactical (i.e., do work like SEO, paid search, analytics, development, etc.) while the digital strategist stays at the rain forest’s canopy level instead of down in the mud. For a digital strategist to be more strategic, the primary focus must be on strategy, not tactics. Another thing the most successful digital strategists do to set themselves apart is to network.

The landscape of digital strategy is broad and deep. There’s no way you can know it all, so why not build a network of like-minded people you can turn to when you have questions and vice versa? These relationships are an excellent way to foster personal and professional growth, create value in the wild, stay informed about the digital marketing industry, and create a competitive advantage.

To Be More Strategic, You Have to Be Less Tactical

Sadly, most of the digital strategy gigs you’ll find today are loaded with tactical requirements and duties and are light on strategy. That’s where being proactive can help. Be sure and ask questions when interviewing for a digital strategist job. If the role feels like it’s too tactically driven, take a minute and ask your interviewer to define what digital strategy means to the organization from a strategic and tactical perspective.

If you can’t get the answers you need, it’s an opportunity for you to decide if the gig is right for you. There is a multitude of opportunities out there with exceptional companies with plenty of people who get it. There’s no need to settle. Knowing the answer to the questions, “What is a digital strategist?” and “What does a digital strategist do?” will help you help others (especially recruiters and hiring managers) clarify what they’re looking for in a new hire.

Let’s Connect

If you’re looking for a job as a digital strategist, if you’re already working in the digital marketing space or would like to, I’d love to hear from you. Connect with me on Linkedin and Twitter. You can also use the contact form here to get in touch.

What does digital strategy mean to you? What do you think of my point of view about the role of the digital strategist? Join the discussion in the comments.

I’m moving away from digital sharecropping and will be publishing more of my content on owned media properties. The first step is re-launching a blog. I’ll still publish on shared media platforms, but my goal is to keep the majority of my original work here on the blog.

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Nicholas Carr, the American writer who has published books and articles on technology, business, and culture, was right-on back in 2006 when he discussed the economic concentration of content. Coining the phrase “digital sharecropping,” Carr postulated that businesses like MySpace and Facebook “…realized that they can give away the tools of production but maintain ownership over the resulting products.”

Speaking of the Web 2.0 shift a couple of years earlier, from which sprang the concept of democratization and user-driven content, Carr said, “One of the fundamental economic characteristics of Web 2.0 is the distribution of production into the hands of the many and the concentration of the economic rewards into the hands of the few.”

The Promise of Digital Sharecropping and Shared Media

Digital sharecropping inherently promises massive viewership if we’re willing to give up control of our content by placing it on shared media platforms like Facebook, Linkedin, and Twitter. Note that I said “shared media.” While you can create content on platforms like these, the platform itself is not something you or your company owns, so operating a Facebook, Linkedin, or Twitter presence isn’t owned media, it’s shared media.

In return for allowing us the luxury of leveraging their investments in innovation, people, and technology, the owners of those shared media platforms will reap the majority of the rewards from our work (ad revenue, free content, creating a “sticky” destination for users, etc.). That seems fair to me.

I don’t subscribe to the notion that my content posted on Facebook, Linkedin, or Twitter makes Mark Zuckerberg et al. wealthier or helps build their audiences and create more engagement on their platforms. I have no such illusions about the power of my opinions or writing!

My Experience With Digital Sharecropping

The impetus for embracing digital sharecropping and moving my content from a personal blog to Linkedin (I even pointed my domain name to Linkedin) was to reduce the expense and related time and effort of building and maintaining a website.

I found the ease of pushing content out on Linkedin to be a plus, but my full-length articles didn’t generate even a fraction of the engagement as the 1,300 character posts.

I also tried publishing to other sites within my domain of expertise, often at no charge. Those relationships proved prohibitive, with the site owner restricting my use of the published content, controlling the engagement with the content, and reaping financial benefit by showing advertising on the page where my material appeared. My goal was exposure and promoting my brand, but the outcome was less than expected.

What About You?

What’s your experience with digital sharecropping? Have you taken the approach I tried, where you move your content publishing entirely to a shared media model from an owned media model? Have you found the right mix of shared and owned media channels that deliver the desired results?

Please share your thoughts and experiences in the comments.