'Digital marketing' to become just 'marketing' in 2013
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Digital is set to lose its prefix and just be referred to as “marketing” this year as all marketers’ output will become “inherently digital” over the coming months, Forrester predicts.
The research company forecasts that digital budgets will become 20 per cent of the total, accounting for about $50bn (£31bn) worldwide.
It predicts the momentum of digital disruption will continue to grow across all verticals in 2013 – such as healthcare providers being challenged by personal tracking devices, broadcasters threatened by the likes of YouTube and banking platforms competing with new services such as Square.
Forrester’s “Trends for the B2C CMO to watch in 2013” report warns these disruptors threaten to challenge all businesses if marketers do not expand the utility and value of the experience their brands deliver.
The report, compiled by Forrester’s CMO and market leadership professionals analyst Corinne Munchbach, advises CMOs to work across departments and with executive peers to assess their digital readiness and identify where messages, actions and products can be improved by digital.
Munchbach advises marketers to use surplus budget at the end of the fiscal year or tie funding for new projects to positive business results to ensure their companies commit funding to innovation projects.
Budget should also be reorganised out of channel silos and into new cross-platform teams organised around consumer segments, with experts on the relevant media, channels and devices for that particular vertical, Muchbach says.
The report also advises marketers to maintain a shared “centre of excellence” for broader campaigns to help achieve scale for overlapping initiatives and to establish a multifunctional group from the marketing, R&D, IT and operations divisions to track how digital elevates their parts of the business to improve the brand experience for consumers.
In the UK, online and mobile ad spend increased 13 per cent to £2.6bn in the first half of 2012, according to the IAB and PwCs advertising expenditure report.
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Readers' comments (48)
David Moon | Thu, 10 Jan 2013 5:40 pm
It's certainly not budgeted with traditional marketing in most companies. As someone else said, digital marketing is a channel. As is any segment of marketing. As long as digital continues to evolve, it'll continue to be a hot channel to explore. And even if we are due for a merge of "Marketing" with "Digital," it'll take some time before everyone gets the message.
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Anonymous | Thu, 10 Jan 2013 6:45 pm
Your business website, and social media, internet etc are just tools that marketers can use to attract, engage and convert prospects.
So in that sense digital marketing is just marketing. Digital marketing is such a broad term too. Pretty soon everybody will be connected online 100% of the time.
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Joshua Cabe Johnson | Thu, 10 Jan 2013 7:18 pm
The problem with generic verticals in all markets for marketing is that it weakens the demand for high skill levels of expertise to market areas of marketing departments. Having a specialists in Link Building and a PPC specialist are two totally different skill levels. But, they are shoved under one roof of what the market calls "SEO". So, most of the time, you hire out for marketing in a generalized idea of "Marketing" you are going to get a generalized marketing experience with possible Brand Name Decay. Are we to just hire "Marketing" specialist now? Marketing in what? There are so many areas here that should not be generically marked.
Just saying, we as business owners AND specialists need to make sure we don't get lazy with our budgets or services.
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Anonymous | Fri, 11 Jan 2013 1:19 am
I totally disagree. Digital marketing is completely different than off-line marketing. The two should remain separate because they are two different forms of marketing. Companies are just investing more into digital marketing (as they should), but it has nothing to do with what "marketing" and "digital marketing" should be called.
If you were to hire a new marketing person to do digital marketing, the job title would be something like "Digital Marketing Manager." That's how you attract the right applicants for the job -- the people who apply will have digital marketing focuses. People with out digital marketing experience are less likely to apply. ... because they're two different things!
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Valer Merenyi (WSI Media Consulting) | Fri, 11 Jan 2013 7:49 am
The article and the comments remind me of another article I recently read (and found worth sharing via social media).
http://socialmediatoday.com/maggiefox-social-media-group/1052366/why-marketers-will-rule-world?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=linkedin
There's an element of truth in both points of view. Digital Marketing is part of Marketing, but B2C CMOs can't afford not taking note of customers migrating away from TV, print, even email and simple websites to mobile and social.
The CMO's role is changing and those who are not comfortable, or indeed proficient working with technology, big data, analytics, those who can't bring "those skills and combine them with a deep love and passion for the marketing mix" will ultimately drag their company down.
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Tim Mace | Fri, 11 Jan 2013 7:53 am
'Digital' is an amazingly capable and complex media tool, which is undoutedly the big game changer of recent times, but media is pointless without MESSAGE in marketing a brand successfully. Perhaps 10 years from now Digital will have become outmoded, but never the message.
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Simon | Fri, 11 Jan 2013 10:43 am
I disagree with this ridiculous statement. Yes digital marketing is more prevalent than ever and research underpins this- but is not marketing in its entirety.
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Hy Haberman | Fri, 11 Jan 2013 3:00 pm
As someone who proudly considers himself a true professional marketer, I'm surprised by this article. There is little doubt that 'digital marketing' continues to play a greater role in marketer's plans and budgets. But saying that it should lose its 'digital' prefix is somewhat foolish.
Of course it is 'marketing', but so too is advertising, sales promotion...and for that matter pricing and packaging. So should these just be called 'marketing'? What's wrong with being recognized as a specific area or discipline? Are its practitioners feeling unappreciated?
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Steven Herron | Fri, 11 Jan 2013 3:33 pm
Maybe we need a new term; one that encompasses all aspects of what a VP of Marketing must be doing and be knowledgeable of. In 2005, the head of HyperDisk Marketing and well know speaker about online trends, Steven V. Seghers, related to "Fusion Marketing" in which all marketing efforts revolved around a website much like electrons in their orbits around the nucleus in an atom. Those "orbiting" efforts - direct mail, email, print, radio and television, and even exhibiting at trade shows, etc. - should be driving prospects and customers into the core (the website) for data collection, tracking and measurement.
This industry is constantly evolving as we all know. Shouldn't the term used to describe it evolve as well?
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David Burdon | Fri, 11 Jan 2013 4:41 pm
I thought "digital marketing" became "marketing" about 2003. That is the year Google and Yahoo (then as Overture) really broke through.
Seems Marketing Week is playing catch up. Yes I know they have other titles.
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