For enterprises to implement successful digital marketing transformation reforms, they need to implement the following pyramid model. From top to bottom, they are cognition, application, process and organization. Let's break it down one by one.
01 Cognitive layer
At the top is the cognitive layer. If the awareness of digital marketing has not been established, it is difficult to implement thorough reforms. Usually projects fail while they are being implemented. The cognition here includes the cognition of at least two layers of management.
1. The first level is the top management CXO, that is, the CEO, CMO, and CFO. The CEO is responsible for approving the entire digital marketing transformation strategy, and the CMO is responsible for the output of the upper-level digital marketing methodology, the establishment of marketing management processes, and the implementation and digitization of digital means . The marketing organization is established, and the CFO is responsible for budget approval.
2. The second level is the cognition of middle management, such as marketing director, e-commerce director, digital marketing director, sales director, and sales excellence director (many large companies have this department, and its main task is to optimize the structure and methods of the sales department , output the best sales methods, improve sales funnel performance) and other department heads related to digital marketing transformation projects.
Why are they important? Marketing transformation usually requires the cooperation of multiple departments. Common reasons for project failure are unclear rights and responsibilities between departments, conflicts of interest among middle-level management, and insufficient coordination of goals.
For example, the sales department usually has conflicts over the pricing issues of the e-commerce department. They are afraid that new channels will seize the sales prices of traditional channels. In the cognitive stage of establishing digital marketing, users must change their purchasing habits and shift from offline to online . Price Profit sharing is bound to happen. Without established cognition, it will be difficult to reach an agreement in this area. The inevitable result of high prices is poor online sales, which in turn becomes the reason for the failure of digital marketing projects. Obviously this is a vicious circle. It is not conducive to the advancement of marketing reform. It can be carried out through other methods, such as launching online dedicated contributions, giving appropriate profits at specific stages, and also giving some special discounts to dealers with good offline performance to achieve cognitive synergy and online and offline synergy.
Another example is that in digital marketing projects, there is usually a critical BDR department (business development representative). They do not face customers, but they are the first brand personnel to contact customers through outbound calls, so their conversation The way of communication directly determines the customer's impression of the brand. Who is in charge of this department? Is it the sales department, the channel department, or the digital marketing department? Which department it belongs to basically determines their KPI assessment and communication with customers. In this way, some of this department is even under the customer service team. Their main assessment indicators are customer satisfaction and sales satisfaction. Customer satisfaction is actually an important indicator of marketing, but sales satisfaction is very problematic. This department has The reason is not to make sales happy. Sales cannot say that this customer is small. Why is the quality of the leads sent by your BDR department so poor?
Use this as a reason to complain. On the contrary, small customers are very likely to become large customers through full sales exploration. Therefore, in addition to customer satisfaction, the assessment of this department should also include the conversion rate of leads into MQL/ SQL . Didn’t you take on the wonderful front-end and use your sufficient professional knowledge and communication methods to turn the customer into a high-intent potential customer who is willing to be contacted by sales for the first time?
02 Process layer
The second layer is the process layer. The establishment of process is second only to cognition and higher than application. Why? Once the process is established, no matter how the personnel flow or how the marketing strategy changes, the establishment of the process is conducive to the improvement of marketing efficiency and the scale and replicability of marketing methods. The key to establishing a digital marketing process is to make full use of digital technologies, systems, tools and means to achieve efficiency improvements brought by marketing automation. We use the digitization of exhibitions as an example to establish a digital marketing process. How to digitize traditional exhibitions?
1. The first step is to establish a digital user experience process . Starting from users learning about the exhibition through various channels such as the official website, WeChat, mini programs, Moments, offline posters and other touch points, the brand guides users to log in to the micro website or mini program for the exhibition. Information navigation, viewing, brand highlight events, new product release information, and experience of the Metaverse virtual exhibition (the content and experience format can be very diverse) attract users to invest in the lottery.
In the later stage, the brand incubates leads through the Marketo system, and the BDR team conducts timely follow-up, sales visits and conversions, and records of follow-up transactions are recorded in the Salesforce system. The brand uses this to describe the user experience process, and the front-end is visible In the user experience journey, the backend is the lead follow-up implemented by the brand through digital tools, conversion measures, and the flow and connection of data between various systems.
2. Second, deploy and integrate digital marketing systems. Deploy marketing systems and tools according to specific business needs. Website data analysis uses monitoring tools such as Adobe Analytics and Gridsum to monitor page traffic, bounce rate, listening time, etc., emails Automated marketing uses marketing tools such as marketo, Pardot, Eloqua, and Adobe Target. WeChat uses more localized SCRM tools such as Beschannel and Sinobase to tag users, group them, and reach batches of accurate information. At the same time, after the system is deployed, It is necessary to complete the field docking with other systems such as the CRM tool Salesforce to complete the automatic transmission and flow of data. The construction, deployment and application of a digital marketing system is a huge project that requires the collaboration of the strategy team, enterprise architecture, IT project delivery team, and digital marketing team to complete.
3. Third, establish a marketing automation process . The digital marketing of the exhibition is established in different stages. It starts to warm up the week before, pushes customers through WeChat template messages three days in advance to remind users that the exhibition is about to happen, reminds users again one day and one hour in advance, and informs about the exciting activities on site, and sends exhibition information to customers after the exhibition. Highlights of the scene, inviting users to participate in customer satisfaction surveys, and previewing the next exciting exhibition. Through full-link communication and tracking before and after the exhibition, high-frequency interactions with users are established and the actual benefits of services are provided. Gain favor from users.
The benefit of establishing a marketing automation process is that the traditional method of notifying customers by phone or WeChat is now transformed into batch and large-scale notifications with the same "user tag" through WeChat template messages, EDM emails, SMS text messages, etc. The target audience is interested in the exhibition, so the efficiency of customer communication is greatly improved.
4. Fourth, establish a unified KPI assessment mechanism . We can establish assessment indicators in several dimensions such as Educate (education), Engage (interaction), Advocate (support), etc. This is a customer-centered approach. In the "customer education" indicator, you can set how many WeChat fans have been increased through this exhibition, if media is purchased, how many users have been reached through the media, how many reads of the WeChat official account, etc.; in the interaction In terms of indicators, you can set up comments and likes on WeChat tweets and video accounts, the number of participants in the Yuanverse virtual exhibition hall, the number of deposits, etc. On the Advocate indicator, you can set up the number of people who retweeted and generated SCRM traceability posters, which will bring about two Deeper indicators such as the number of retweets and the business opportunities brought about are submitted layer by layer in three dimensions to help measure the actual effect of digital marketing and put forward practical improvement suggestions.
The digital marketing process is not just one process, it can be composed of many. The above example is the process of digital marketing for exhibitions. Other digital marketing methods such as website marketing, social media marketing, employee marketing, etc. can set up related processes. Once established, similar marketing activities, or similar activities conducted by other business units, can be replicated on a large scale and used immediately to avoid the waste of marketing resources, marketing costs and The inevitable result of saving manpower is the improvement of efficiency, and another major advantage of process establishment is that the process can be continuously optimized in the practice of marketing activities to achieve the purpose of improving marketing effects.
03 Application layer
The next layer below the process layer is the application layer. Under the guidance of the process layer, applications are made based on actual conditions and different scenarios. Taking the exhibition again as an example, the digital journey, assessment indicators, and marketing system deployment and integration are established. After the automated process is established, the specific content of the exhibition is to invite big names. Whether to hold a lecture, a roundtable event, or a new product release is a matter of application level and can change every time.
The application layer refers to the cross-integrated application of digital marketing methods and the application of digital marketing tools.
Digital marketing methods include official website marketing, content marketing , social media (WeChat official account, video account, Douyin, Bilibili, etc.) marketing, paid media marketing (Paid Media), live e-commerce, employee delivery, etc., digital marketing tools Application refers to how the system is used to benefit the business, deciding which modules of the system to use and for what purpose, so this is a matter of both strategy and execution levels.
The main factors that determine the application level are the following factors:
01User features:
Whether the customer is B2B or B2C, what are their media consumption habits, what kind of content they like to consume, what they are interested in, what industry they are in, etc. determine the user profile, which in turn affects the construction of the user tag system and determines what channels are suitable. , what content, what form of marketing
02Marketing goals:
Whether the marketing goal is mainly brand awareness and favorability, whether it is to acquire new users, or to increase the value of existing customers, it also determines the application of different marketing methods and tools.
03Resources and Budget:
The objective situation faced by many companies is that they are extremely short of marketing personnel and budgets. Especially during the three-year economic downturn caused by the epidemic, corporate efficiency has been affected. The first thing to bear the brunt is the reduction of budgets. Therefore, limited resources can only be invested in areas that can generate the maximum ROI (return on investment). ), for example, media placement marketing activities that can only generate a large amount of exposure are abandoned and switched to more economical private domain user operations. Higher business gains can be obtained through long-term relatively low-cost private domain user operations and content marketing optimization. Opportunity conversion.
04 Organizational level
The lowest and most basic thing is the establishment of a digital marketing organizational structure. Any successful marketing activity or marketing project is inseparable from a good team and collaboration among team members.
There are several elements required to build a successful digital marketing organization:
First, build the organization according to the characteristics of the enterprise and the different stages of digital marketing, adapting measures to the times and local conditions. If the company itself is in the start-up stage and it is not appropriate to build a huge organization, start by setting 1-2 positions that the person in charge of the company thinks is the most important and most helpful to the company's business development.
For relatively mature companies, it is imperative to set up a digital marketing department and conceive of the division of labor among department personnel. In large multinational companies with different business units, this situation is the most complex and involves the organizational coordination between the global headquarters and the local market, and between business units. Some centralized the digital marketing department into one functional department to support Different local business units work, and sometimes each business unit has its own separate digital marketing department or personnel. This is an organizational model oriented to support business. There is also a hybrid organization, where a digital marketing department is set up at the enterprise level, and digital marketing personnel are also set up in the business unit to support the business unit. Marketing activities are realized through full collaboration between different departments.
The second step is to find the right person in charge of digital marketing, authorize them to find digital marketing talents, and build a team. Usually due to the reduction of corporate personnel budgets, a digital marketer usually has to undertake all aspects of work. It seems cost-effective, but in fact it is not, because There is no way to do the work very precisely, and it is impossible for one person to be very proficient in all areas of digital marketing. In terms of responsibilities, it covers project management, strategy formulation, execution and operation, upward reporting, process formulation and optimization, etc. From a functional perspective, including official website operations, search engine marketing, social media marketing, content marketing, big data marketing, marketing automation, etc., it is ideal to have experts in the field in each position.
The third is the collaborative goal, broken down to every person, with clear division of labor and clear responsibilities.
Finally, formulate an appropriate incentive mechanism, objectively evaluate the performance of members through the achievement of quantified results and the quality of completed and delivered projects, and provide appropriate incentives in terms of both material and spiritual benefits, so as to be both differentiated and fair.
To summarize the main points of this article, a pyramid model of digital marketing strategic transformation is constructed:
1. The top level is cognition, which is divided into top management cognition and middle management cognition. It is a necessary condition for successful transformation.
2. The middle layer is the process. The establishment of the process brings significant improvements in scale effect and efficiency.
3. The layer below the process layer is the application, which is ever-changing. The three core influencing factors are user characteristics, marketing goals, resources and budget.
4. The lowest level is the construction of a digital marketing organization, which needs to be adapted to current and local conditions.
Brand DTC Transformation
Original link :
Further reading:
Innovation Case | See how underwear brand Thirdlove uses the DTC model to play the feminist card
For more exciting cases and solutions, you can visit the Runwise Innovation Community .