I've just completed a research project into how companies are resourcing and structuring their digital marketing capability, working with the smart folk at Econsultancy. It's a fascinating subject since, for all the talk about the impact of digital and the changes it brings, the challenge of how you resource your teams and capability in response to that is something of a critical (but less often openly discussed) question. It's fundamental to the real nuts and bolts of how stuff gets done inside organisations.
The full report is behind the paywall (Econsultancy have a membership of over 200,000 marketers and agency people worldwide so I figure a good number of you loyal readers are already members) but I've also penned a post on the Econsultancy blog summarising a few of the key take outs. The report builds on the first iteration of research I did for Econsultancy into this subject two years ago so it's been intriguing to see exactly how things have moved on, what's changed and what hasn't.
I've used the phrase 'the end of the digital beginning' in the title to that post (lifted from the PWC Global Entertainment and Media Outlook report) to allude to the fact that whilst the original models we developed in 2011 to describe the key ways for structuring resource remain valid, there have been some significant changes within that which signify a growing maturity of digital capability within businesses. Most notably these changes are around the increasing emphasis on content and content marketing, the shifting relationship between centralised and localised resource ('hub' as strategy, 'spoke' as execution), a real focus on the devolvement of expertise (upskilling non-digital specialists in digital), a trend toward taking some key functions in-house and the growing potential for marketers to be change agents in companies. As I've said before – interesting times.
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