Why you should adopt a 'tradigital' mindset

We can no longer compartmentalise online and offline elements of our campaigns. Doing so is unproductive at best. It almost always ends up costing us more and—more often than not—the results are tepid.

Instead, we need to work out how best to integrate the two. And that means going back to the basics of audience and influence.

The fundamentals of marketing are the same as they always were. However, the speed at which we need to run, the channels available to us, the power of those we seek to influence, and our ability to measure, refine and improve have all moved on significantly.

The power we have available to us as marketers today comes from combining the art of what we do with the science that can inform, improve and deliver it. And it requires us all to have a more 'tradigital' mindset.

Turn off the (omni)channel

Marketers have grown obsessed with the channels they’re using, often at the expense of campaign effectiveness. Our choice of channels, platforms, and media is obviously important. But it has to come second to the fundamentals, which can all too often fall to the wayside when striving to put together the most omnichannel campaign possible.

A tradigital approach acknowledges that audience and influence cut across all channels both digital and traditional. The channel is dictated by what influences a particular audience, rather than some abstract benefits or features that may or may not create the desired effect.By going back to first principles, marketers will automatically find themselves combining traditional and digital channels into fully-integrated campaigns—not for its own sake, but because doing so is the best way to get the right results.

Going tradigital also makes it easier to adapt existing skills into new practices. Take influencer relations, for example, a relatively new practice that’s intrinsically tied to rising online clout of bloggers and YouTube stars. While it might seem like uncharted territory to most marketers, it’s in many ways the evolution of media relations, something PR firms have been doing for decades.

The same rules of relationship-building, partnership, and content direction apply. The only difference is the medium where the content ends up residing.

Marketers with a tradigital mindset won’t be attached to working with bloggers, media, or Instagrammers. Instead, they’ll assess which particular type of influencer has the most traction amongst their target audience, then forge relationships to develop content that will resonate the most with that audience.

These relationship-building and content-creation processes may take place across a diverse range of channels, but they’re guaranteed to be far more consistent because of a common understanding of who the campaign’s addressing.

Don’t let tradigital become tragedy

How can marketers best integrate their campaigns across traditional and digital silos? The first step is to cultivate strong technical skills across all channels, media, and tactics. Only with that technical proficiency can marketers make well-informed decisions about which tactics will influence a particular audience, and coordinate those tactics to ensure they don’t deliver contradictory or ambiguous messages.

Whether in-house or agency, the best way for marketing teams to develop these skills is through a 'Model T' approach to training, where each marketer hones a single area of deep expertise while also gaining basic skills in a wide range of disciplines. The approach ensures that teams not only have access to strong specialist skills in a range of channels, but also can understand one another and collaborate more effectively when bringing those channels together.

When doing this, ensure that so-called 'traditional' channels like media and outdoor are not discounted in favour of online channels that marketers—and clients—may be more enamoured with.

Next, marketers should rethink the way they organise their campaigns. Rather than segmenting plans by channel, tradigital marketers will focus on how the campaign influences its audience to progress down the marketing funnel.

Finally, marketing teams must invest in a new breed of talent: project managers and planners whose specialty is orchestrating increasingly complex combinations of online, offline, and hybrid (like VR) channels. These individuals play a critical role in making sure that all the talk of audience and influence doesn’t devolve into channel-based silos during the execution process.

The best advice we can give marketers today is to get rid of traditional and digital altogether. The terms are increasingly irrelevant in an era where audience preferences, spheres of influence, and media channels are emerging, evolving, and dying faster than ever before. Tradigital marketers are just practitioners who’ve realised that there is no real difference any more between online, offline, or any other professional silo: so we can get rid of tradigital too. It’s all just marketing.

Lee Nugent is managing director, consulting and strategy, Text100 APAC