Marketing Dept from a Support Unit, to a Strategic Business Unit in the Digital Age

It is undeniable that marketing has become the cornerstone for operations at any company or business, from supporting sales functions to promoting the company’s services and solutions in addition to its vital role in redesigning service offerings. This significance of marketing became more visible when digital transformation reached the marketing sector and redefined how marketing departments within companies should be operating.

The Digital Face of Marketing

Marketing led by digital transformation is allowing businesses to achieve cost savings, market relevance, and increased business growth and profitability. Utilizing this transformation for better data collection, upscaled business intelligence, and enhanced feedback, in addition to having improved research methodologies, more customer centricity, to an overall structured customer experience.

Adding to the above, the digital arrival has impacted companies on all levels irrespective of its business models and combined data from different areas allowing for more effective outcomes. By taking advantage of different components of digital transformation, companies can connect the dots in a way that wasn’t possible before.

While digital transformation is mainstreamed across all departments, but when it comes to marketing, it is in a league of its own. Opposing to traditional marketing where the department was often seen as a support unit rather than a cornerstone, digital transformation aided in building on the shift from digital complacency to the active pursuit of digital excellence through the proper usage and optimization of digital channels and tools.

A Behavioral Impact

Throughout time, two main factors have caused marketing to evolve: Technology and customer needs.

Back in the day, marketing consisted of simply creating and presenting illustrated print advertising, in-store merchandising, and one-to-one marketing. With the introduction of digitization, marketers now have various ways to reach their audience whether through digital channels, or offline activations that are supported by tools to help track and study the behavior of their audience when interacting with the message. In other words, digital transformation equipped marketing experts with much more precise user data and metrics, allowing them to tweak and optimize marketing plans to be far more agile, responsive, and targeted.

As for the customers, their demands and needs have majorly evolved due to behavior modifications caused by the change of customer’s lifestyle, better finance accessibility, therefore higher purchase power, and lastly, access to larger markets, locally and internationally due to the internet, a matter that led to more competition across suppliers.

The STS Marketing Experience

As the leader of digital transformation solutions operating in the IT sector for more than three decades, STS has adopted facets of digital transformation within its own marketing department, empowering its team members and equipping them with the necessary digital tools needed. This adaptation led to easing the entire process of generating strategic marketing campaigns, from strategy to execution, and without the need to resort to external parties. It also assisted in the, including the creation of visuals, that is now simplified through the usage of different visualization tools for design, animation, creative pitches, and beyond.

Additionally, these tools are geared to allow the marketing team members to go beyond executing their marketing campaigns and enable them to measure impact, perception, and return on investment accurately and effortlessly by analyzing the outcomes of various marketing activities in a timely manner. This is done through fully analyzing data across tools and digital platforms leading to effective data-driven campaigns.

STS heavily invests in different digital marketing tools and continuously equips the team with the needful to efficiently plan and execute 360 marketing campaigns for its activities and offerings, online and offline.

Digital Fever is Contagious

Not only marketing department benefited from the integration of digital transformation at STS, but digital fever was also mainstreamed across the company.  STS invested in fostering a digital culture that embraces technology and understands how to leverage this transformation to become more efficient and effective. This culture has significantly cultivated the employees experience; making it easier for the teams to connect with one another and utilize the expertise they need cross-functionally. And the most admirable result of, embracing the digital culture and nourishing it was the better customer experience that was obvious due to the availability of the necessary tools that are produced to provide the best service on all aspects.

While it helps in providing an easy way for collaboration, it also helps to move the entire organization ahead digitally. This digitalization is crucial for the future, as it forces the upskilling and digital learning of the entire staff to take advantage of the benefits of digital transformation and the tools it provides.

STS approaches internal communication and nurturing the culture of change with the same importance as external marketing; it invests in knowing the employees and their mindsets, reaches out to them via dedicated channels, and communicates continuously to ensure they are all up to date with the latest news and happenings. After all, a healthy culture change is one of the most pivotal pillars to the success of digital transformation in any organization.

Personally, this investment has allowed me to develop as a marketer and as a member of the STS marketing team, it made me thrive and expand my skills and knowledge as a well-rounded marketing and communication specialist.