Who owns online?
August 19th, 2007Those of us in marketing communications hate to see a perfectly good organization hand over their website to IT. It’s clearly a recipie for disaster.
But, what if they hand it over to marketing? Who owns it - marketing proper or PR specifically? Should IT still have a voice in this conversation?
Fundamentally, as far as we’ve moved in terms of corporate branding online, we have not reconciled the fundamentally different disciplines which are needed to really make “new media” work. It takes marketing, PR, IT and others (not to mention buy-in from management) to collectively work together to really make a project successful. But we haven’t merged those people effectively. More on that soon…
A lot of these thoughts are the result of something said this weekend at BarCamp Nashville by Chris Houchens, who writes a blog called Shotgun Marketing. While talking about social media (Facebook, MySpace, etc etc) in the context of corporate marketing he said, “It’s about reaching the audience that has already identified itself as your audience; it’s not about sales.”
His premise raises a much deeper question than how corporations should approach corporate marketing. It’s often a given that internally, marketing should own managing the online experience. But is that so? If the online experience is not about sales, then fundamentally it’s not a marketing function. Marketing is all about sales! So social media seems to fit in a different category, such as PR. Or are we back to IT?
Should it be that way? Who owns online?
As long as marketing encompasses data-driven decision-making and product development/management that both realistically leverages IT/development resources and consistently pushes the envelope for the sake of optimal user experience, then by all means marketing should own it. But any group — IT, PR, janitorial — that’s willing to provide those functions could feasibly own it.
Hi Allen — Glad to hear I got some thoughts running yesterday.
Totally agree that mkt, pr, it, etc have to work together. It’s dangerous to have one leading too much. But each has their role.
To you reaction about my point of the online experience not being about sales — you said that fundamentally means it’s not a marketing function. Even though it’s counter-intutive to most of the world - -I don’t like to lump “sales” and “marketing” in the same package. Sure, they’re extremely close cousins, but not necessarily the same. I’ve always said that marketing creates the sales opportunity.
But here’s the simple answer to who owns online — it ain’t the company - it’s the users!
Nice to have met you. — Chris
I really appreciate the feedback and comments. Ideally, I think we all hope to see marketing take the leadership role and drive innovation that pushes the envelope across the brand experience. Chris, I may have neglected to say this above, but I wholeheartedly agree with your assertion. It is about the relationship and engaging support, not making sales.
But is that what we see on a day-to-day basis? A lot of our clients are small professional firms, and to a tee they hand over the website to - the office manager. It’s too easy to push it off as an expense more than an opportunity.
So in a more complex manner, my question is: What is the ideal scenario for managing a corporate online presence? Developers know the web, but may not know marketing. Marketers know the mix, but maybe not technology. When we look at the options available, it really begs for interdiciplinary training, don’t you think?
Also, I just realized comment moderation was turned on. That has now been fixed. Sorry!