When I began my career as a marketing professional, e-mail was a rare privilege. There were four major forms of marketing communication: in-person, phone, fax, and postal mail. Everything that we needed to know about the customer we learned from talking to the customer, through research surveys, or from transaction records, laboriously collected, and sometimes painstakingly supplemented. There was no online behavioral data to analyze, no web logs, or click-through rates.
I remember, not too long ago, going through hard copies of printouts with a yellow highlighter to pick out the industries which were most likely to yield increased sales in terms of vertical marketing specialization (a technique which worked, by the way). I was somewhat unique in having come from an information systems background and being able to coax decisions from data in the organization. Those who knew how to do so usually labored, as I did, in direct marketing, one of the few areas of marketing which relied on customer data analysis for decision making.
Now I would argue that an individual who is in marketing cannot escape the inexorable rise of technology and its applications. A proliferation of communications channels and a reliance upon technology by both business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer markets (B2C) mean that we marketers are dependent upon the importance of digital marketing. Not only that, digital marketing is the responsibility of everyone in the organization, beginning with upper management. For example, if 93 percent of purchases begin with searching the web, then search is everybody’s business in the company, not just that of marketing.1
This book is a handbook for the management of digital marketing. It is not, like my other digital marketing book, Internet Marketing: Integrating Online and Offline Strategies in a Digital Environment, 4th edition, with MaryLou Roberts, designed to also be used in a skills-based course and provide a detailed overview of the ins and outs of the execution of digital marketing. Those seeking to learn the details of operating social media platforms or how to effectively create paid search ads can look to that text or other resources to do so.
This book is for managers, students of management, or would-be managers, and those who are just seeking knowledge of the subject who need to know not how to do things on digital marketing tools but why to do things. The intent of this book is to teach managers how to reframe and rethink their organizations so that digital marketing is integral to their operations. A 2013 study from the Online Marketing Institute said that only 8 percent of brands think that their team is up to speed in digital marketing and strong across all channels.2 In 2019, Econsultancy published a report with similar results. In this report, only 8 percent of the 500 CMOs interviewed said that there was not a skill gap in marketing.3 In my classes, I supplement this material with practical, hands-on applications, such as the Google Ad Grants Online Marketing Challenge (OMC) or an Internet marketing simulation.
This book will also help pinpoint the people skills necessary to build the digital marketing organization and also help identify and classify the important elements of digital marketing in the organization. Although there are some leading-edge programs in this area, marketing academics have been slow to make the transition to digital marketing. A recent study by Langan, Cowley, and Nguyen found that only one in ten university undergraduate marketing programs accredited by Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) requires a digital marketing course in the core marketing curriculum.4 Therefore, this book plays an important role in terms of its use in upper-level master’s classes and as a resource for managers.
This book is relevant because what constitutes digital marketing is constantly evolving, with skills in data analysis and management, content marketing and storytelling, and the user experience becoming core skills to accompany competencies in search, e-mail, and social media. Increasingly, flexibility and openness to new ideas are just as critical as skill sets in managing a digital marketing team. It is more likely than ever that skills and specializations will have to be developed in-house as well as hired from without, because of the shortage of those with knowledge in this field. Managers need to know what skills and capabilities to develop in their employees, not necessarily have the skills themselves.
To summarize, the book’s target is anyone who needs to understand how to incorporate digital marketing into their organization at a strategic level. It is hoped the book will be as useful to the small business owner as to the CMO of a large company. Many of those reading this book developed and succeeded in their careers in an era without Facebook, Twitter, e-mail, and paid search; many are “digital natives” but use the Internet for their own education and enjoyment and not for marketing purposes. The book can be read on its own or to upgrade your skills or as part of an undergraduate or master’s level course in the subject.
The book will focus on current technology usage but not the details, which change on a daily, if not hourly, basis. This book is meant, as the title says, to be used as a guideline for the management of digital marketing processes. I hope that, at the end, readers will have a better idea of why these principles and ideas are important and how to implement them in the organization. So, let’s get started. . .
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1Sticky Branding. “93% of B2B Purchases Start with Search.” https://stickybranding.com/93-of-b2b-purchases-start-with-search/, (accessed October 13, 2019).
2Gesenhues. 2013. “Study: Only 8% of Brand Believe Their Marketing Team Is Strong across All Digital Marketing Channels,” Marketing Land. https://marketingland.com/study-only-8-of-companies-believe-marketing-team-is-strong-across-all-areas-of-digital-marketing-64404, (accessed November 13, 2019).
3Marketing Charts. February 27, 2019. “What Skills Would Marketers Stake Their Future on?” https://www.marketingcharts.com/business-of-marketing/staffing-107533, (accessed October 10, 2019).
4R. Langan, S. Cowley, and C. Nguyen. 2019. “The State of Digital Marketing in Academia: An Examination of Marketing Curriculum’s Response to Digital Disruption,” Journal of Marketing Education 41, no. 1, pp. 32-46.