Incorporating digital elements—be it digital advertising, social media, websites, or data—into marketing activities has become the norm. Consequently, corporate marketing now involves people with diverse backgrounds: data and system specialists, website developers, social media operators, marketing strategists, and content planners/editors.
The digital marketing field is challenging enough with new terms constantly emerging, requiring constant effort just to understand and keep up with their meanings. Within the team designing marketing together, people from different backgrounds gather, necessitating mutual understanding of each other's jargon to move forward.
In such environments, misunderstandings in terminology often arise unnoticed. Proceeding without realizing this can lead to misaligned discussions causing mutual stress, increased revisions on outputs like designs that don't match expectations, and ultimately impact budgets and schedules.
What you should watch out for: "Common Keywords"
While unfamiliar jargon is relatively easy to avoid, it's the "common keywords" we tend to overlook. For example, the universally known term "schedule" can lead to significant misunderstandings when it comes to creating an actual schedule. The level of detail people expect in a schedule varies wildly from person to person.
Recently, I had a discussion about utilizing a DMP (Data Management Platform). As we talked, it became clear that the purpose of "utilizing" it differed among the gathered members. For one member, it was about segmenting customers for advertising. For another, it was about delivering targeted information. Yet another saw it as a way to understand customers and gain insights. These differences stem from each person's specific marketing challenges and the missions assigned to them within their organization.
Identifying "misalignments" and "differences" is essential for evolution
We marketers are accustomed to sharing information, but we seem less accustomed to acknowledging differences. Hearing that even team members with different backgrounds interpret language differently might suggest meetings could become chaotic. In reality, however, confirming these "discrepancies" and "differences" often leads to discovering new perspectives, broadening horizons, and reaffirming objectives.
To achieve this, we must always work under the premise that "the keywords I use may not be interpreted the same way by others." We must concretely visualize and mutually share what our target goal is, what form we want to create. Continuously discussing while constantly aligning our understanding in this way, and moving forward together, is what becomes most essential in digital marketing.
Up to this point, we've discussed diversity within the marketing team. As is well known, in digital marketing, the customers who actually purchase services or products are segmented much more finely than in mass marketing. This means we must respond not only to diversity within the marketing team but also to the diversity of our customers.
Furthermore, the process of advancing digital marketing requires breaking down a very large distance: from strategy design to implementation and operation. This means moving from painting the big picture of marketing to actually defining requirements, designing operational workflows, and putting them into motion.
Here again lies a factor that diversifies and complicates digital marketing.
In this series, we aim to continue sharing insights that may offer some guidance as we navigate the diverse, complex, and chaotic landscape of digital marketing—the "digital transformation of marketing activities."
Digital Marketing Tips [1]
