Why Traditional Marketeers don't GET Digital

WHY AGENCIES AND MARKETEERS DON'T GET DIGITAL

Firstly, having been focused on this industry for the short past 10 years, i strongly do think that agencies DO want to get Digital and Marketeers, and this has been more apparent in the past couple of years than ever before.

If you do attend any sort of industry conference, even in traditional media or marketing conferences, 70% of the speakers and content have been focused on the digital medium. It has just been unfortunate that while marketeers, top media and creative agency CEO's have been touting this as a really important medium, the execution and know how from the rest of the organization has been lacking and thus been largely a "Lip Service" which is demonstrated by the lack of marketing dollars to the overall ADEX against traditional media.

As a personal issue, I believe that online marketeers have also contributed to this confusion by contributing to a mindset from wannabe digital believers thinking that this is too complex and confusing a medium to deal with. Moreso, making less and less sense with small budgets and a whole load of planning and post campaign data to crunch. In fact, I think that the accountability of web marketing, while being the greatest tool for marketeers, have also been a contributor of "fear of the internet" by many traditional media planners, creative agencies and the like.

The bottom line i prescribe, would be to go back to traditional fundamentals and speak to marketeers in a language they would like to understand.

My SIMPLE comparison for Digital media and traditional media would be:

Firstly,
What are the objectives that the various brands would want to achieve, whether it be product awareness, branding or market positioning. whether it be Product sampling or activation, or simply to drive leads or sales.

1. Digital media is as important and reaches as many people as traditional media for a Brand's Advertising needs

The basic fundamental way a media planner should plan his media mix is based on Reach and Frequency. In cases like these and comparing channel to channel, I would believe marketeers would see that the online reach of individual channels whether they be Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, or aggregated ad networks and the many news and lifestyle portals etc have a reach that has surpassed most newspapers and TV channels.
The difference in using online media as a branding and awareness tool is the myriad of ways it can be used creatively and strategically

Simply mapped, Online Display advertising can be mapped to Newspaper, TV, Radio or Out of Home advertising for a brands Mass Awareness or Branding needs

2. Online marketing is as important traditional Event and Community marketing.

Online communities have much more potential in reaching a larger mass of people in a short period of time and probably would have a similar efficacy in word of mouth marketing than traditional media ever has. Mediums such as Facebook which today probably is the single largest channel, even compared to the largest TV, radio or newspaper players; can be used effectively to gather a group and communicate to, brand loyalists (or fans) with more frequency than ever. More importantly, Social Media, or Facebook specifically, allows for Marketeers to market themselves, not only to potential brand followers, but has tools that allow for marketeers to market to friends of Fans. In this scenario, marketers use the power of social endorsements and bring peer to peer or word of mouth marketing to hyper levels.

Mapped to traditional Marketing, Social media today brings not only the reach and the frequency of the mass media but accelerate its power through the power of social endorsements and word of mouth marketing.

3. That online media is stronger and more "in time" when it comes to "Tactical and Promotional" Marketing.

Google is the largest media company in the world because it is that medium that allows companies large and small to be present when a consumer is looking for a particular product or offer. The closest traditional media that compares to this probably would be the classifieds business (yellow pages, classified ads and even classified magazines) The only particular phenomenon is probably how large brand marketeers see Search as being the main medium in the online mix. A brand like Coke cannot be built on search alone.

Simply mapped, Online Search advertising can be mapped to traditional Classified Advertising or Yellow/ White Pages advertising but in a hyper accelerated manner.

The Bottom Line

If only online display advertising, with all its reach and brand impacting capabilities with rich media has to offer would be truly valued by Marketeers; then online marketing would see a larger focus and portion of the brand budgets of marketeers

If only Online Communities, social networking and viral programs with its reach, timeliness and strong word of mouth potential would be truly valued by Marketeers ; would online marketing see a larger focus on event and social marketing or even Ambient marketing budgets

And I think Search Marketing is probably the only successful online medium that has taken focus away from its traditional counterparts. Maybe even a little over hyped but a great tool nevertheless. That’s made Google the largest media company in the world. It has made the power of marketing available to large and small

However, if the online world were to mirror and mimic the way traditional marketing dollars flowed, maybe someday, large portals like Yahoo, MSN and AOL or aggregated Ad Networks and the many lifestyle websites out there may take a larger portion of marketing dollars in the future.