Digital ad spending is $16 billion a year and growing in the USA. It is bigger than traditional advertising.
There is a simple reason why they have grown so much so fast. Their marketing sells more products than traditional advertising. Digital marketing is a lot more advanced. These are the people who send you advertisements as you browse the web and facebook.
Learn from others
I came across this ad on how a company founder operated his digital marketing firm – here.
I could do the course because:
- I wanted a middle-aged career switch,
- better understand this part of business a DIY MBA, or
- Understand how to systematise knowledge
For me, it was option 3. A late friend had been explaining how digital marketing operated. He passed away before he could explain the mechanics to me. I was struck how thorough and analytical this digital marketing industry was. As a lobbyist I was struck by what lobbying and Public Affairs could learn from them.
Systemized Knowledge
One of the reasons digital marketing is so effective is that the companies have systemized their knowledge systems. Nothing is left to chance. They have written down each and every step. They identified the best practice and wrote out the steps to be taken.
I bought this course to see how someone has systemized the knowledge of how his company works in this industry works. If this company owner can do it, why can’t anyone else do it.
Here is a checklist for one part of my work. I am going to write-up a lot more checklists.
What is interesting about the course is how people in the company have gone through and explained every steps and process of their work and how it adds up to a better product and service. The presentations are all in plain and clean English. I have heard that knowledge workers think it can’t be done “for their work”. They are just wrong.
I want to better understand how this systematization was done, what their checklists look like, and the advantages or not it brings to work. A few hours looking at the mechanics is interesting.
Nothing left to accident
Every step is planned out in advance. It is planned out on paper (electronically at least). It uses:
- Written execution Plans
- Written checklists
- Video, transcript, and audio explanations
- Templates and examples
- Excel tables of who is doing what and when and what it is going to look like and examples
The production of a marketing campaign or new web site is all planned out, every step of the way, and it is planned out on paper (electronically at least). The detail is amazing. Nothing is left to chance. If a project lead is away it is clear someone else can step in and the quality of the product and service will not go down.
Luddites
I have encountered a lot of reluctance to systematise knowledge. I am not sure why that is. The best reasons I can work out are:
- People are worried that if they put their knowledge down in paper they will be replaced
- People don’t want others to check out the quality of their work
- People don’t really know what they are doing .If they put their operational instructions down on paper, they fear their ignorance will be called out
Observations
The fear that you are writing away your job is muddled. The law of comparative advantage means that is very unlikely someone else in your organisation are going to do the job. To understand why, read this article.
You may find out that the job is not being done well. Key steps are being missed out, key people not being met. That is a good thing.
Now, systematization has to be done on paper. Telepathy does not work. A lot of people know I wrong and are keeping me in the dark on how to master telepathy.
It seems such a no-brainer, you would wonder why systematizing of knowledge is not more popular.