Digital marketing agencies are laughing all the way to the bank as traditional marketing organisations just don't seem able to evolve their business to include digital channels without a digital agency takeover.
Every month we hear of another traditional marketing agency announcing they’ve snapped up a digital marketing business in order to offer the full gamut to clients. And while this doesn't sound too risky a move, the potential danger it spells for clients is significant: a fragmented approach to campaigns. We have already seen disconnected efforts come from agencies with digital acquisitions, and these affect the endgame – true ROI.
Instead, digital marketing must live up to both the 'digital' part of the name and also the 'marketing' part to offer a more holistic approach. Traditional agencies can meet them partway by integrating their tactics better with digital channels, rather than simply including it as an add-on in their arsenal.
The false divide
The truth is, there is no 'traditional' and 'digital' anymore. Even if you are running offline campaigns like billboards, radio ads, or even TV appearances, the consumer will inevitably jump online and search for it, and hopefully end up on your website. Effectively, you're funnelling people from one medium to another. We're in an ‘on demand’ economy where people want to be able to access the information they want, when they want, where they want: and most times that’s online. Therefore, marketing is now a convergence of media.
What this means is you can't acquire a digital agency and expect it to make up for a gaping absence in your offering. Making digital a subdivision of the traditional agency by purchasing just for the skillset and the talent is a short-term solution that rarely pays dividends. Instead, the acquired digital agency needs to act like a graft. At first it may seem like a ‘bolt on’, but eventually its life-blood should flow through the veins of the traditional agency and vice versa. It needs the same P&L and the same account team to provide both true integration and the economies that offers. If you keep them separate, the channels will continue to battle for budgets at the expense of client ROI – which should be the only victory you’re aiming for.
Furthermore, the merge needs to see the same razor-sharp focus on tracking and landing measurable results that the digital game applies. Traditional media spend has been savaged and digital is taking over because people want to track and measure their efforts: they're following the demand. Brands won't want to collaborate with one agency for their TV ads and another agency to understand how that affects their digital conversions. Brands and businesses will champion the digital space because it's the channel where they can track spend and profits.
The solution is to embrace digital and its results-focused approach and make it a part of your agency DNA. This fragmented approach we are seeing won't survive in the long term.
Stronger together
Better still, if a digital marketing agency is willing to focus on the 'marketing' part so that digital is part of a sales funnel and a planned ideal customer journey, then both agencies’ work is married together for the benefit of the client, regardless of a merger. It must all work together as part of a sophisticated sales funnel.
Branding, advertising (offline and online), landing pages, direct mail, PR, content marketing, email marketing – none of these should operate in isolation. Sure, you can acquire all those services, but that doesn't guarantee an effective, fluid approach. The sales funnel demands a fluid approach with all marketing tactics ¬– including digital – working harmoniously with great reward.
In short, traditional marketing agencies will fail to evolve if they continue to see the digital channel as separate rather than a truly integrated resource to support the client's campaign goals. Clients don't discriminate between traditional and digital – why should agencies?
King Kong founder Sabri Suby