The What Works Where in B2B Digital Marketing research project has been running for six years now. From a marketing perspective not much has changed in this period. Websites, email and social media are still the heavy digital hitters, the top three channels used by companies to achieve their marketing goals. Promoting products or services, building brand awareness and positioning the company as experts are still the top objectives. The most important measure that marketers get judged on is lead generation. And, mobile continues to grow year on year, particularly in apps. So, on the whole it’s business as usual for marketing folk, right?
If you think this, you’d be sleeping at the wheel. Around us, things are changing dramatically. As the recent report published by Omobono ‘Integration and marketing within the digital organisation’ shows, it’s not what marketing is doing that is bringing change. It’s how the rest of the organisation is changing around it.
Over the last 4-5 years, HR has been investing heavily in digital channels, with the result that they are now the second most powerful digital voice in the organisation.
Think this is just internally focused? Think again. 78% of this year’s research respondents said that HR is a major contributor to perceptions of the brand. And our respondents were painfully aware that there was also a disconnect between the employer and the corporate brand, despite the fact that there needs to be a ‘clarity of purpose, vision and message’. But to do that, HR and Marketing need to work together.
The research shows that the benefits of this are tangible for the company, and they are getting clearer for respondents compared to the previous year. 87% of respondents saw that consistent messaging was a direct benefit of working together more effectively (up from 56% the previous year). 82% said it would lead to more effective communication (up from 61% in 2015) and 82% said it directly contributes to a stronger brand (twice as many as the previous year).
If benefits are clear - what’s holding organisations back?
First up is a lack of clarity about who is in charge. Whilst HR does ask Marketing for their expert skills in digital, the fact that they are the owners of the human resources within the enterprise means they inevitably want to lead on issues like encouraging employees to promote the company and positioning the company as experts. Marketing however, sees itself as the department which should be in charge of this. ‘Positioning the company as industry experts’ is seen as the most critical marketing task. The opportunity for tension is obvious.
Second is the structure of organisations themselves and how people are rewarded. When asked about the barriers to working together successfully respondents cited the #1 challenge as ‘departments having different objectives and priorities’. Lack of ownership, pointing back to the lack of clarity about who is in charge, was barrier #2.
As Jackie Lanham, former Group Organisation Development Director of Rexam plc put it ‘The consumer brand has an intrinsic link into the employer brand, and I think in the past working separately was a mistake.’
Ms Lanham’s comment points to the solution – that people should be measured on things which drive the right behaviour. There’s good news there, a third of all respondents – from both HR and Marketing – are measured on how well they collaborate with other departments. But only a small percentage (5% for marketing, 15% for HR) are measured on consistency between the corporate and employer brand.
Does this matter? Absolutely. Because a company is no more than the people within it. Take out the people and there's nothing there. If the departments don’t collaborate the organisation will go backwards.
By Ben Dansie is CEO of Omobono
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