On The JOb

success. Unlike software develop-ment, where requirements can be captured to the finest details and there’s very high degree of certainty, digital marketing if outsourced to an agency must be treated differently.

Active involvement of key stake-holders, especially that of the mar-keting team is critical for the suc-cess of digital marketing even if it is outsourced to an external agency. The relationship between the company and the agency has to be more of partner relation vs a typical client-vendor relation. In addition to providing understand-ing of the customer’s concerns and their behaviour to the agency, the company play active role in strategy development, content creation and regular reviews.

3. Content is not a big deal: In case of digital marketing, content speaks on behalf of the company. A large number of digital marketing ini-tiatives fail because organisations underestimate the requirement of the content. When outsourced, they expect the agency to take care of it fully.

In addition to the volume and quality of the content required, managing various types of content based on platforms used is mostly underestimated. This failure in planning for the content is one of the major reasons of failure of digital marketing campaigns whether done in house or outsourced. It also leads to crisis situations especially in case of real time customer engagement campaigns on social media.

4. Everything is measurable in digital media: Measurability is one of the biggest advantages of digital media. However, over the years, it’s over-

According to eMarketer, digi-tal advertising spend will increase to over USD 137 bil-lion globally in 2014. This is a phenomenal growth of more

than 14 per cent over 2013 spend. In-terestingly, this will account for more than 25 per cent of global media ad spend. By 2018, digital advertising spend is expected to be around one third of global spend on advertising.

Considering this growth, market-ers are significantly worried about the future of traditional marketing. Many have started to believe that digital will replace traditional. On the other hand, a large number of professionals including business owners are still thinking if they should invest in digital or not. Like in any other industry, this combination of over optimism and fear about digital marketing is natural and part of the evolution.

It is evident from the figures shared that digital will not replace traditional marketing but is complimentary to it.

For those who are really serious about exploiting the opportunity of digital media for personal or organ-isational growth, it’s important that these common myths about digital marketing don’t sway them:1. Digital Marketing is all about

technology: Unfortunately, a large number of business owners includ-ing marketing directors consider digital marketing technical and expect their IT teams to manage it. This treatment is one of the biggest reasons of failure of digital mar-keting initiatives. Since they are unaware of the potential of this new medium, they don’t consider that digital has to be an integral part of their business strategy.

While technologies play a role in

Pradeep Chopra says it is important to embrace digital marketing as a part of overall marketing strategy

Can Digital Marketing Replace

Traditional Marketing?

While technologies play a role in expanding the opportunity of digital marketing, digital marketing has to be owned by Director of Marketing or CMO with active involvement from other key stakeholders including CEO, COO and CFO.

expanding the opportunity of digital marketing, digital marketing has to be owned by Director of Marketing or CMO with active involvement from other key stakeholders includ-ing CEO, COO and CFO. In case of digital marketing campaigns, content in various forms including videos, pictures and presentations speak to customers on behalf of the organisation. While technology can be and should be leveraged to improve the effectiveness of content and expand its reach, the role of marketing team cannot be mini-mised.

2. Digital Marketing can be complete-ly outsourced to an agency: For the similar reasons shared above, a large number of organisations outsource their digital marketing to external agencies and expect them to be solely responsible for the

38 CFOCONNECT September 2014

On The JOb

sold both by individual practitioners and digital marketing agencies.

Unfortunately, expectations around measurability have become so un-real today that a large number of organisations are unwilling to invest in digital marketing unless they are given the guarantee of success. It does not only kill the opportunity of getting a new customer for a digital marketing agency, it actually ends up depleting the opportunity for the company as it ends up not investing into digital in absence of guaranteed success including by their internal team.

While measurability will continue to be one of the key advantages of digital media, marketers cannot ig-nore the qualitative side of it and the fact that success in digital requires experimentation especially in the current evolutionary stage of the industry.

5. I don’t need to learn Digital Mar-keting if I am outsourcing: One of the questions we constantly encounter when we speak to a busi-ness owner or to a senior marketer about the relevance of our digital marketing training programs for them is ‘Why do I need to learn this medium when I can outsource it or build an in-house team to take care of it?”

There’s a significant amount of resistance when it comes to embrac-ing new-age media for traditional marketers. This mindset comes in their way of acquiring relevant skills for them to deliver success of their digital marketing campaigns whether they are doing in-house or outsourced to an agency. What kind of people they should hire, what should they expect from their inter-nal teams and their agencies, what’s the role their internal team and they themselves need to play are some of the key questions they need to have

There’s a significant amount of resistance when it comes to embracing new-age media for traditional marketers. This mindset comes in their way of acquiring relevant skills for them to deliver success…

answers for if they are really serious about managing successful digital marketing campaigns.

6. We should leverage social media because everyone else is talk-ing about it: While one should be abreast of the latest happenings within digital space and should be willing to experiment with new avenues, decision to leverage a platform within digital should not be solely based on its popularity. It should actually be based on the business objective and target audi-ence. For eg. if a B2B organisation wants to generate leads digitally, it should definitely consider LinkedIn.

Having conducted many corporate trainings, we regularly hear from CMOs and brand managers about their mistake in choosing an ap-propriate digital media platforms for their organisation.The future obviously belongs to

integrated marketers especially in large organisations. Doing digital marketing or not is no more a ques-tion. Instead of seeing digital as a threat, embracing it as a part of overall

marketing strategy is the only way to be success-ful in the digital world.

Pradeep Chopra is CEO, Digital Vidya

September 2014 CFOCONNECT 39