The second battle of who’s-responsible-for-the-website
When I first started working in web agency world in the Jurassic era of 1999, we had a battle on our hands. Because the web was ‘to do with computers’ and a bit new, more often than not it fell to the I.T. folk in our client’s organisations to lead on web strategy, design and development. The I.T. people were really happy talking to us about programming languages and server platforms, but the really important questions like ‘who are your target audience and what do they want?’ were not in their comfort zone.
So the first battle was getting the web into the realm of the marketers, and relegating the I.T. folks to a supporting role. And so began a long-standing, skipping-through-summertime-meadows relationship between marketing managers and directors and us web specialists. Great stuff. But times have changed.
In the last few weeks I have given executive briefings about social media to two very large, but different organisations: One of the UK’s largest transport companies and one of the major highstreet banks. Assembled in the meeting rooms were the people you’d probably expect to see at such an event - marketing and comms people. But in the age of social media, this is not enough. Bring on the second battle!
Unlike the first battle, we don’t want marketers to take a back seat. Far from it. Marketers are more important than ever. But marketing needs to go back to the core of what the discipline is really about. Not just promotion and getting a message out there, but ensuring that customer’s needs are understood and satisfied. And this they cannot do alone in their marketing silo.
Marketers need to reach out to every corner of their organisation to the people who can make a difference to customers, and involve them in their web plans. Not just in the next website redesign process, but ongoing. And I’m not just talking about managers from other departments. We need to include back office staff and others who have been behind the scenes up until now, because it’s these people who most need to engage with their customers online, as they’re the ones who can provide help and answers and change the products and services for the better.
Marketing is no longer the channel between an organisation and the outside world. Marketing people need to facilitate the opening up of the organisation so that customer interactions can happen everywhere.
Tom wrote this on 08.05.08 –
It's filed in the Social media, Strategy box
