Why do organisations fail to compete online?

MSc in Strategic Management and Digital Marketing

Dr Franco Curmi An online review conducted on local businesses worryingly highlights the lack of basic insight on managing online marketing effort. Most clear are the lack of a strategic approach, the weakness of understanding how to gain competitive advantage from new trends, and an often inexistent customer experience design. The latter is most commonly managed through a programmer-driven approach, thus leaving success to chance. Locally, it is very rare to notice online customer experience that is driven by rigorous research, even though it is widely know that this aspect is one of the key factors that influence online brand engagement. It is no wonder, then, that many local businesses fail to become sustainable online or are unable to identify a valid competitive advantage over their international competitors. It seems that to sell online all you need is a web page. That is like saying, to sell offline all one needs is a stall. Yes, but would a stall in a dead alley with no traffic, flourish?

These are the most common observed issues behind organisations’ failure to compete online:

Handling digital marketing without any academic study: Just as it is impossible to calculate statistics without learning the maths, or to perform surgery without training in surgery, managing digital marketing without training is like leaving the success of investment to chance. The field is becoming more complex, and underestimating the needs is a high risk for those who do not know what they do not know.

Lack of investment: Some organisations are fine investing six, seven, digit figures furnishing a retail outlet but then struggle to value a website costing four digits even though they are aware that most traffic is generated online rather than offline. More challenging is investing in design’ing’ the online customer experience; something that may be looked on by the inexperienced online investors as an expense rather than an investment.

Lack of a company’s long-term strategic plan: This is fundamental to guide the selection of actions from a wideranging set of tools and tactics. Some actions can have an immediate impact on the business, others, such as Content Marketing and Search Engine Optimisation may provide a longer-term investment.

Having a one-man-band approach: Increasingly, specialisation is becoming the norm, and no matter how intelligent your IT person is, if s/he creates a website once a year, it is unlikely that the result can compete to that of an expert who builds websites in your industry, every day, all year round for years on end.

Most importantly, the lack of strategic leaders who lead teams while having a broad understanding of ‘digital’ across marketing, design and technology.

Some businesses are opting for a DIY approach on the lines of ‘if a kid can use Facebook, then using social media for my business should be a piece of cake’. In most cases, the management of digital marketing campaigns is done with a trial and error approach. Beyond the small corner shop that has a handful of customers, the issue with this approach is that a good digital marketing campaign needs to create impact. For this to occur, it necessitates specialised training in areas such as statistics for the optimisation of programmatic advertising, the ability to conduct experiments for field-testing content, and many similar activities that go beyond gambling a fiver on a naïve Facebook Boost. Acquiring these skills through experiences and without training not only extends the learning curve, but is also likely to elicit a number of learning-failures which, in some industries, is not an option. Other organisations opt to outsource their digital marketing department. This presents a number of advantages, such as the ability to get up-and-running pretty fast, and the ability to make use of on-demand experts who, at worst, have experience in a similar industry. The downside of outsourcing is that the organisation sometimes risks becoming dumber as the core data insight of, say, how to generate leads, is taken outside of the organisation. Organisations that are realising how core digital marketing is becoming to their organisation’s continuity, are opting to build an academically trained in-house team with interdisciplinary competencies around online content creation, testing and optimisation through data analytics and strategy building.

In this light, as from October 2018, the University of Malta is launching a new MSc in Strategic Management and Digital Marketing. This new MSc is designed to prepare next generation leaders in Digital Marketing by integrating Digital Marketing with a strong management component. This approach transforms candidates into leaders who have a broad understanding of digital marketing opportunities and will design data-driven actions to lead teams and create impact. Students are equipped to be effective in their roles by understanding success cases and pushing boundaries by engaging with cutting edge tools and techniques. This MSc empowers students to build knowledge and skills that employers are demanding from the new generation of digital marketing managers in the Digital Economy.

Students completing this programme will develop the latest marketing and leadership concepts such as digital marketing channels, performance metrics, digital advertising, decision modelling, data analytics and digital content production theories and applications.

The programme lasts one calendar year and is expected to attract interdisciplinary graduates from industry who want to perform better in their current employment or advance their careers.

Applications are now open and those interested in the programme are encouraged to apply immediately. For more information, visit the website for the MSc in Strategic Management and Digital Marketing: https://www.um.edu.mt/courses/overview/P MSCSMNDMKFTT8-2018-9-O , or contact: franco.curmi@um.edu.mt