Krista Neher is the CEO of Boot Camp Digital, a 6X best-selling author, international speaker & recognized digital marketing thought-leader.
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With over 56% of budgets in digital, marketers can’t afford not to understand digital and implement it strategically. While most marketers rely on agencies to execute digital, I believe marketing teams need a strong understanding to drive strategy and evaluate campaigns.
For example, I recently worked with an agency that was struggling to implement an effective digital ad campaign. The client had only provided a business goal of "growing sales," without any strategic direction or marketing objective. A junior media buyer implemented the brief but had to guess which ad objective to choose and how to optimize the ad. The brand didn't provide enough strategic direction for the agency to implement properly and as a result, didn't get what they wanted.
When I spoke to the brand, they had no idea of the granular level of strategic direction that the agency needed to execute the campaign properly. They also struggled to understand the results, since they didn't have a deep enough understanding of digital ad metrics.
Digital is complex and always changing. Marketers need to understand the tools to build and evaluate effective strategies for their business. Relying on an agency to understand and deliver digital best-in-class executions doesn’t work.
The following stages will help marketing departments create a strong digital skill set to drive growth now and in the future.
Stage 1: Evaluate Current Skills
Start with an evaluation of where your skills are now and where you want them to be. This stage involves understanding the organization's current skills (at my company, we use a "Digital IQ" test to do this) and comparing them to the skills needed now and in the future to drive growth.
The evaluation stage provides the road map for growth. It also allows you to measure the ROI and impact of your digital upskill training program.
Stage 2: Level Set The Organization
The first step in growing digital capabilities and skills is to level set the organization. This means getting everyone on the same page by improving and standardizing digital fluency across the organization.
In my own team's marketing skills level sets, we typically include digital marketing strategy, social media, websites, SEO, website analytics, digital advertising, email marketing, CRMs and digital measurement. Setting foundational broad knowledge gets the team speaking the same language.
This can be achieved through live workshops, online certifications or both. I've worked with organizations that have every marketing department complete a two-day in-person workshop to develop common understandings. Other businesses prefer asynchronous training methods, and we've built customized online certifications. Multiple delivery methods can deliver results as long as the entire organization completes them at the same time.
Stage 3: Engage Leadership
It is important that all stakeholders are included in the digital capability plans. Specifically, leaders and executives need to be on board and set the right example.
Executives and marketing leadership should also develop a strong digital understanding to drive accountability and ask the right questions of their teams.
Include specific training for leaders and a safe opportunity for them to ask questions and deepen their understanding of digital. Seasoned leaders often started their careers in traditional marketing and don’t have a depth of experience in digital. Upskilling executives is important to permeate digital through the organization.
Stage 4: Develop Mastery And Depth
Basic knowledge is vital to getting the organization on the same page, but in-depth knowledge is needed to really deliver on digital. For example, if a business is spending millions of dollars on digital ads, they'll need more knowledge on that topic. If they are posting a lot of content, they may need a content optimization workshop.
Most marketers have the opportunity to get more in-depth in key areas. We recently delivered a series of workshops for a group of marketers that focused on both applying knowledge and increasing depth of knowledge. We started with a strategy workshop to articulate the plans for growth in a clear and consistent way. Next, we delivered a content strategy workshop to improve the briefing and content evaluation processes. We followed that with a content optimization workshop where the clients practiced giving feedback to improve digital content. Finally, we dove deep into analytics and reviewed agency reports and results to increase the understanding of marketing. These deep-dive workshops developed deeper mastery.
Marketers need a deeper knowledge of the areas that most drive business growth. This allows them to drive strategy and best-in-class executions with agency partners.
Stage 5: Continue Learning And Innovating
Digital is always changing, and a culture of continuous learning is vital to the long-term digital marketing success of the organization. AR, VR, AI, machine learning and digital privacy are all areas that are rapidly changing the way marketers communicate. To stay sharp, marketers need to continuously learn. My company does this with our clients by creating email newsletters, monthly webinars, short videos, podcasts and leadership emails.
Final Thoughts
A digital learning plan is vital to getting and keeping your organization on the leading edge with digital marketing. Digital is only becoming more important, so the sooner you start, the sooner you'll get results.
The marketing teams I've worked with to strategically upskill are positioning themselves to grow their results from digital marketing. The five-stage method above provides a continuous, strategic way to upskill.
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