The Biggest Barrier to Digital Success? It isn’t What you Think.
Krista Neher
Sep 21 2017
According to a study by McKinsey, the biggest barrier to digital marketing success is not what you think it is. It isn’t technology, complexity, or integration. It isn’t budgets or investment.
It is people.
The study showed that cultural and behavioral challenges were the biggest followed by lack of understanding of digital trends and lack of digital talent.
All of these boil down to people.
Getting people on board with digital is the biggest challenge.
How do you get people on board to help meet digital priorities?
View Digital as Change Management Digital is change management, pure and simple. View digital the same as you would any other large scale organizational change. Create a vision and consider how to communicate and rally people around it. Look at your entire organization (processes, etc.) and figure out how you’ll get people excited.
Create a Comprehensive Training Program Lack of knowledge can sometimes lead to fear and close mindedness. It is important to have a comprehensive digital training program in place if you truly want to impact organizational change. This isn’t about a single workshop. It is about ongoing corporate digital marketing training to build a continuous learning environment. Digital isn’t static like other fields. You don’t learn a set body of knowledge and move on. You need to evolve and learn over time and continue to grow and establish depth of knowledge.
Build a Culture of Digital Curiosity For digital to really take root you need to establish a culture of curiosity. Share articles. Explore the world of digital. Live it. Breathe it. I’m continuously amazed at how many e-commerce leaders have never actually shopped online for their product and category. You’ll never really get digital if you don’t become curious and live it.
Start at the Top Many training programs aimed at teaching digital marketing success ignore leadership – but getting leaders up-to-speed is vital if you truly want to become digital. Leaders should model behavior and an executive digital training program can help with this.
