How to Avoid the Digital Silo

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Most buyers are channel agnostic, unfortunately, and marketers sometimes get caught in the digital silo, setup by outdated company models. This silo mentality reduces efficiency and may be a contributing factor to a shrinking online brand presence. Well-organized companies promote the sharing of information, in an attempt to let the combination of various groups within the organization function as a team.

What is the Digital Silo?

Silo mentality is as an attitude found in some organizations that occurs when several departments or groups do not want to share information with other individuals in the same company.

Do silos exist within your marketing team? If there has been inadequate knowledge sharing between your PR, social media, SEO, advertising, promotions and content departments, it diminishes the impact of your message.

This is even more likely if you have hired multiple outside agencies to handle these various marketing responsibilities, as communication between these firms is likely few and far between.

However, when you create a strategy that allows these departments to work together, it creates solidarity among the organization as a whole, while also presenting a streamlined brand to your core audience.

Now that you know what the digital silo is, let’s talk about how to escape it.

Create a Multi-Channel Content Strategy

As new technologies and social platforms have continued to crop up over the last decade, many organizations have deployed them independently of their traditional marketing programs, in an experimental fashion.

However, as these platforms continue to mature, solidifying their position within the marketing mix, it’s becoming increasingly more difficult to win customers on a single channel without help from its sister channels. Because customer touch points continue to become more and more fragmented, marketing efforts need to become more cohesive.

By using content to drive inbound marketing you’ll begin to see how collaboration is a requirement to success, and how consistency becomes a competitive advantage. A company who successfully brings together content, social, PR and other channels will benefit from a greater level of insight that will drive data-driven decision making, than a company who operates within silos.

Change the Company’s Model

Each channel is a cog in your marketing machine. The cogs in the machine must work together in order for the machine to function optimally. Develop a model that allows a cross-functional internal team to assemble to share knowledge and learn from each other, with the common goal of serving internal and external stakeholders.

Hire a Firm with Multiple Capabilities

If you’ve been paying a high monthly retainer to a firm that does PR and only PR, it’s time that you reevaluate that relationship. Today, there’s no longer a need to hire one firm for Content, another for social and yet another for PR. Not only is it expensive, but it’s much too important that these strategies and activities be closely aligned. Progressive agencies recognize the need for all of the various digital marketing programs to work together under one master strategy in order to present a unified message.

Focus on the Buyer

Marketing silos within your organizations limit your ability to successfully tell the world who you are, what you do and why you’re better than your competitors. The key to success with breaking down the silos within your company using a multi-channel content strategy is focusing on your buyers’ journeys, how they consume content and then setting up your ecosystem to best serve their needs.

How will you break down the silos in order to leverage traditional, content and social marketing channels to accomplish your goals?

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