Social Media Marketing For Dummies, 2nd Edition

Structure Your Marketing Department for This Social World

Undoubtedly, the Internet and the social media revolution have changed marketing significantly. It’s no longer about creating cool, creative ads and pushing messages out to customers via different channels. Nor is it just about print advertisements and in-store displays that may or may not grab the attention of your consumers. It’s about a two-way conversation — online and offline — and looking holistically at how all your marketing efforts — digital or not — can work together.

And this begs the question, have you structured your marketing department appropriately for this world? You probably have interactive marketing in one corner of your department organizational chart. But can you still separate interactive marketing from the rest of marketing? Does it make sense? And along similar lines, should you silo market research from product innovation and brand and direct-response marketing when you live in a world with real-time customer feedback? It might be time for you to revisit your marketing department’s organizational structure.