Digital marketing buzzwords are everywhere, from corporate boardrooms to webinars. But while many brands spend millions annually on digital marketing, few actually understand the importance of digital marketing maturity in taking campaign planning to the next level.
Are you aware of where your brand currently stands in your digital marketing journey? Have you set realistic benchmarks for improvement?
A Boston Consulting Group (BCG) study reveals only 9% of businesses are using data and technology to create useful and relevant experiences for customers at different stages of the purchase journey.
About 83% of brands cannot make customer connections across consumer touchpoints, 68% do not leverage automation technology, and 78% are not using the buyer’s journey to inform their marketing decisions.
Have you wondered what your brand’s digital marketing maturity is? Here’s a detailed guide to help you find out.
What is digital maturity?
Maturity models are a common tool used by management consultants to measure an organisation’s capabilities in a particular area and identify areas for improvement.
If you are new to the concept of evaluating or assessing digital marketing maturity, you might be wondering if it is necessary. The value of assessing digital maturity lies in its ability to swiftly provide a baseline benchmark for your organisation’s digital marketing activities, which can then be used to drive improvement.
The Smart Insights Digital Marketing Maturity Model is a free interactive tool to assess your digital marketing skills.
The tool structures the assessment across their RACE Growth System and is designed to be efficient. You should be able to complete it within 5 to 10 minutes and you will receive a score out of 100.
Here are the five stages of the capability assessment with a visual checklist:
- Initial: For unplanned campaigns.
- Managed: When you’re just starting to plan a campaign.
- Defined: Designed for integrated campaign plans.
- Quantified: For integrated plans with real-time response.
- Optimised: Created for continuous optimisation of campaigns and media.
The Digital Maturity Model (DMM) is another tool created by Google and the Boston Consulting Group that helps organisations assess their current level of digital maturity and develop a plan to improve.
It consists of four stages: Nascent, Emerging, Connected, and Multi-Moment.
- Nascent: Marketing campaigns are still in their infancy, and results are difficult to measure. Most processes are siloed and inefficient, with little integration between data and sales.
- Emerging: Marketers begin to tap into their own data to automate buys and optimise single channels. Although it allows them to be more efficient and targeted, there is still room for improvement.
- Connected: Data is integrated and activated across all channels, with clear links to ROI or sales proxies. This gives them a holistic view of the customer journey, allowing them to deliver more personalised and relevant experiences.
- Multi-Moment: Organisations orchestrate dynamic execution across all channels. This requires deep insights into customer behaviour and preferences, as well as the ability to execute campaigns in real time.
Why is measuring digital marketing maturity important?
Assessing your digital marketing maturity is critical to gain a comprehensive understanding of current digital marketing capabilities and performance.
Once you get a thorough knowledge of where you stand, you can drive improvement in digital marketing efforts and inform decision-making about digital marketing investments, strategies, and tactics.
Here are six reasons why measuring digital marketing maturity is important:
- Identify strengths and gaps: Measuring digital marketing maturity provides a comprehensive assessment of a brand’s current capabilities. Organisations can then prioritise improvement initiatives and allocate resources accordingly.
- Benchmark against industry standards: It’s essential to identify areas where your brand is lagging behind. Benchmarking also provides insights into best practices to enhance digital marketing effectiveness.
- Track progress over time: Assessing digital marketing maturity can help you identify trends and patterns in performance. Tracking progress also ensures that improvement initiatives are having the desired impact.
- Empower decisions: Decision-makers can make more informed choices about resource allocation and prioritisation if they’re armed with a deep understanding of the brand’s current strengths, weaknesses, and campaign performance.
- Drive improvement: Develop and implement plans to address areas that require improvement. Regular performance tracking also gives more insight into what’s working and helps motivate teams to achieve their goals.
- Demonstrate value to stakeholders: By empowering decision-makers with compelling evidence of the role digital marketing plays in driving success, you can build support for continued investment in future marketing campaigns.
Benefits of assessing digital marketing maturity
How important is it to adopt a digital marketing maturity model? BCG says, “Companies that have achieved multi-moment maturity reported cost savings of up to 30% and revenue increases of as much as 20%.”
- Improved efficiency: Streamline processes, automate workflows, and reduce manual errors.
- Enhanced customer experience: Better understand customer needs and preferences, leading to more personalised experiences.
- Increased agility: Respond quickly to market changes and customer demands.
- Better decision-making: Access real-time data and analytics to make more informed decisions.
- Cost savings: Automate processes, improve resource utilisation, and reduce waste.
Overall, assessing your brand’s digital marketing maturity helps you become more competitive, agile, and customer-centric, leading to better business outcomes.
How to improve digital marketing maturity?
To review and improve digital maturity, you can follow these steps:
- Use a relevant framework: Define digital maturity in different categories using a relevant framework. This will help you to identify specific areas of your business where you can make improvements.
- Identify your strengths and weaknesses: Assess your current digital maturity level within each category. This will help you to identify opportunities or weaknesses.
- Focus on the improvements: Prioritise the improvements that you need to make. Consider the business case for each improvement and the resources that you have available.
- Set realistic expectations and deadlines: Communicate your priorities to your colleagues (or clients if you are an agency or consultant). Explain the benefits of each improvement and how it will help to achieve your overall business goals.
- Track key performance indicators (KPIs): Set objective targets for improving your digital maturity. Use measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound goals to track your progress over time.
The appropriate level of digital maturity will vary depending on the specific context of your business. By following these steps, you can ensure that you are on the right track to improving your digital capabilities.
5 Alternative Tools to Assess Digital Marketing Maturity
McKinsey Digital Quotient (DQ) Model
This model assesses an organisation’s digital maturity across five dimensions:
- Strategy
- Capabilities
- Culture
- Organisation
- Digital maturity
Capgemini Digital Maturity Model
This model assesses an organisation’s digital maturity across six stages:
- Initiate
- Experiment
- Scale
- Integrate
- Transform
- Optimise
Gartner Digital Business Maturity Model:
This model assesses an organisation’s digital maturity across five stages:
- Stage 1 (Initiating)
- Stage 2 (Experimenting)
- Stage 3 (Scaling)
- Stage 4 (Transforming)
- Stage 5 (Digital Leadership)
Digital Capability Framework by Deloitte:
This model assesses an organisation’s digital maturity across four categories:
- Strategy
- Customer
- Operations
- Culture
Optimizely Digital Experience Maturity Model
This model assesses an organisation’s digital maturity across five levels:
- Ad-hoc
- Basic
- Intermediate
- Advanced
- Leading
Banc’s Digital Marketing Maturity Matrix
Banc’s Digital Marketing Maturity Matrix is a tool to help you understand your business’s current and desired level of digital marketing maturity, identify the areas you need to improve, and track your progress over time.
This guide will walk you through the key principles and show you how to use it to:
- Assess your business’s current digital marketing maturity
- Identify the areas of transformation you need to prioritise to reach your goals
- Develop a plan to implement the necessary interventions and changes
Sounds intriguing? We’d love to partner with your team to get you to the next level.
At 360 OM, we specialise in helping businesses take their marketing efforts to the next level. Our team stays on top of industry trends, make data-informed decisions to maximise your ROI, and provides full transparency through comprehensive reports.
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