ABSTRACT
In this chapter we explore the future of digital marketing with a discussion of the Digital Business Maturity Model. This model can be applied to any organisation and any of its operations.
Positioning an organisation within the Digital Business Maturity Model recognises its current levels of digital activities – including marketing – as well as its future potential. Identifying an organisation’s current digital business maturity in relation to its current strategic position also offers a clear understanding of the progression route required to achieve even greater levels of digital maturity. Digital maturity should itself be considered a desirable, if not essential, development trajectory for any organisation. The relationship that the Digital Business Maturity Model introduces between strategic perspectives and the combined threats and opportunities of digital technologies for an organisation is significant. Holding and maintaining a strategic understanding of your current situation is as much a challenge for many organisations as keeping pace with technological change. However, in a world that is increasingly digital, a strategic perspective will serve the combined beneficial purposes of avoiding short-term decision making and preventing fire-fighting approaches to the day-to-day management of your organisation. Being strategic also lifts your perspective above a desire to just ‘use’ the current, favourite social media channel or newest technological devices towards a recognition of the need to
continuously engage your buyer persona through digital channels. Overall, the Digital Business Maturity Model presents the need for greater integrated use of technology within your organisation as part of wider, more systemic change to processes and management. In the long term, this approach will give you new efficiencies, redefine your employees’ roles (if you have any) and present your entire organisation as an engaged component of the global digital economy.
