Why Companies Fail at Digital Marketing

Digital is supposed to make executing anything, especially marketing easier, right?... Wrong.

Consumers only see the end result of all the turmoil a company has to go through to send them an email, set up an on-line ad campaign, make sure the right content and message is sent to the right person at the right time but for many companies, it feels like moving a mountain to do some of the most basic things consumers expect and they still get it wrong.

I'm currently leading a project for my firm at a very well established consumer goods company based in New Jersey.  They make a product for a category that's been around hundreds of years and will continue to be relevant.  The product itself is considered the best in its industry.

Over the last 10 years or so, the company stopped investing in it's Marketing Technologies (MarTech), and kept buying multiple system and tools to address needs instead of looking at the eco-system as a whole.  The unfortunate truth is that almost any established institution approaches technology this way.  They have data silos, duplicate systems, paying for functionalities they're not using, and the biggest culprit - people in roles without the skill sets for the roles.   To give you an example, one of the senior leaders in their Digital Marketing organization ordered the company to stop investing in paid and organic search because they don't see any value in it.  When I heard this, I had to put my hand over my mouth to hide my facial expression. 

The interesting thing is, they see startups as their biggest threat because they are setting up their technology infrastructure right from the start, have marketing strategies, integrated marketing plans,  across channels, automated marketing push multi-channel activation and a content strategy!  All these terms - are like a foreign language to most established companies. 

The reason most companies fail at Digital Marketing is because they don't keep their people relevant and if their people are not educated on what it is, why its important and how to do it right, they can't understand the value and will not have the right skill sets to execute it well.