Saturday, March 27th, 2010

I recently read a post about the cultural changes a company needs to make before engaging their customers on social media platforms.  The emphasis was on the organization’s readiness to have their dirty laundry exposed and their willingness to implement cleaning strategies to mitigate negative buzz.  I found this to be insightful, because many companies do not recognize how much organizational change management is involved in today’s digital marketing environment.

I thought of clients we are working with and the transformations they are making.  Many of our larger clients are simply not equiped from either an organization perspective or from a process perspective to react at the competitive speed of digital marketing.  At Anova Group, we describe this capability as Agile Digital Marketing.  For companies to be truly successful, not only in social media, but also in search, they can no longer take extended deliberate steps to craft their message.  They must empower their marketers with key talking points and messages to act and react real-time in the digital space.  This means not only responding immediately in social media with the company message, but also creating real-time content around current events to tie their message in a search engine friendly way.  For example, if you are a financial investment firm, you should have posted information on how your firm views the current European monetary crisis.

In one great example of a company demonstrating agile digital marketing, a news article described how a brand of dishwashing liquid was used as a lubricant when the repairs were made to the Bay Bridge last winter. Needless to say, this news story generated a lot of searches.  One savvy competitor brand took advantage and put their brand message front and center by immediately launching new SEM campaigns on relevant keywords.  This real-time reaction to a current event allowed them to gain a competitive advantage.

Contact Anova Group if you would like information on how we help our clients maximize their digital marketing investment through Just In Time Digital Marketing.