Maturing a Digital Marketing Maturity Model (DM3)
May 26th, 2009 by Jason WidupHi there everyone – it’s been a while since I last posted. We’ve been head’s down working on a Digital Marketing Maturity Model (a.k.a. DM3) that we unveiled during eMetrics in San Jose. We released a draft of the model and are currently in the process of collaborating with industry influencers and practitioners, gathering feedback on the model and collecting real-world sample maturity profiles from organizations across multiple industries. Details of the model and the quick maturity assessment can be found by clicking here.
We have already met or exchanged with folks from Gartner, Zaaz, and other industry influencers (inlcuding Sean Power, Stephane Hamel and Jacques Warren – THANKS GENTLEMEN!) to talk about the model and how we might be able to collaborate moving forward. We’ve also started initial discussions with Jim Sterne on how we can turn this over to the WAA and have it truly become an industry-wide standard. I am looking to continuing the dialog with the community, provide interested folks with the background and thought that went into the model and to solicit feedback from experienced analysts and marketers.
In each of a series of blog entries I will discuss a different aspect of the model and provide readers with details on the progress being made. So be sure to come back often and comment. In today’s entry I’m going to provide an overview of the model and discuss some of the history and thought that went into it. I’ll also talk briefly about our near-term plans for the model and how we’ll integrate public feedback into it.
As I mentioned in a prior post about our automated, interactive digital marketing scorecards, Brandon and I started the Digital Marketing Optimization practice here at Webtrends at the end of last year. Since joining we have brought several new products/services to bear, the aforementioned Digital Marketing Scorecard, a services framework that we now use to guide all of our client engagements, an easy migration process that converts a customer’s historical data (when switching from a competitive solution) over to Webtrends so *no* information is lost, and now the DM3. We have other offerings in the works that I’m just as excited about – but will write about those in other post.
During all this time we’ve had the opportunity to work in multiple roles across multiple verticals with some of the largest brands in the country, including Microsoft, Coke, Expedia, Orbitz, Toshiba, Disney, Dell, and NBC. Throughout the experiences we’ve had with these clients from different perspectives we were able to develop the services framework, which ultimately led us to the maturity model.
Now that you know what got us here I’d like to provide an overview of the model itself. We identified the need for a maturity model when we realized that we were pretty much informally assessing all of our client’s maturity at the outset of all the strategy projects we have done. In order to establish successful digital strategies for our clients we need a way to understand their current competencies and opportunities for improvement. As said by someone much more intelligent than myself, “the best map in the world is useless unless you know where you’re starting from.” The same holds true when setting strategies and developing road maps to meet those strategies.
Once we understood the need for a maturity model we started doing research to see if there was already a proposed model that was gaining traction that would work for our needs. We found a few proposed models but couldn’t find examples of how they were actually applied. In addition, the models we found and researched scored an organization on a continuum where we felt what was needed was to score organizations across 6 distinct maturity pillars in order to create what we call a Maturity Profile.
Using our experience and research we landed on the six maturity pillars currently in the model with an assessment to understand ranking within each of the pillars. We then visualize the results on a radar diagram which we did for several reasons (with an example output below):
- The actual shape and area of the radar diagram becomes an organization’s maturity profile
- These can then be overlaid on top of industry averages, competition, or ideal-state profiles
- It allows for a very quick understanding of maturity deltas between a client’s organization and others
Example Maturity Profile
I’ll wrap up today’s post by briefly speaking to our near-term plans for the model and our next steps. It is important to note that everything we do with this model is public domain – we strongly feel that the only way to even have a chance at industry adoption that it couldn’t be something that we dictate and hold close. Also, we purposefully built this model to be completely agnostic of any tool or specific discipline within digital marketing in hopes that it could be adopted more broadly. That said, we released this first version for a few reasons:
- To solicit feedback from industry influencers and practitioners
- To have organizations fill out the quick online maturity assessment in order to start building a database of maturity profiles across multiple verticals – this data will be used in aggregate to allow users to compare their current level of maturity against that of others in their industry
Our next steps will be to collect feedback and tweak the model as dictated by those who participate with us. We will continue to actively search for individuals who would like to participate so please reach out to me directly if you’d like to be included.
In my next post I’ll go into detail about how we came up with the pillars in the model as well as how we use the assessment tool to develop a maturity profile. In the meantime please comment below or reach out to me at dm3@webtrends.com Thanks!
Tags: Best Practices, Maturity
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May 31st, 2009 at 12:58 pm
Thanks Jason, I think there’s a need for such a model, and going through the evaluations gave me a perspective about where I’m going with my own work and the sites that I’m working with.
Two ideas while reading about the model:
1. Visualization: The resulting shape that is based on the company’s score gives the impression that adjacent pillars are somehow correlated because the area that is formed by joining their scores depends on both the scores and doesn’t give each one visual independence of the other. Is there a reason in this ordering? I still think it’s not a bad visualization because you can see how your are doing versus the industry at a glance, and within two seconds you can see the where the deltas are. You have it presented like an equalizer in the document, I think that’s a good idea.
2. Checklist: While trying to assess a company (going through the model) I think you are making an assumption that certain groups of activities come together. I found it difficult whether to rate a client 2 or 4 on Data Analysis and Insight because they have a very detailed a standard tagging system for all campaign and for the most important links on their site, at the same time they don’t use search traffic data to optimize pages.
I strongly believe that this should be done as a checklist, with each point having a weight to it (think personality tests) and the score would simply be computed by adding up the points.
Thanks!
June 3rd, 2009 at 9:41 am
Hi Elias, thank you very much both for reading my post as well as responding to it. I completely understand your point about Visualization. I can say that we did try to place the pillars in an order that made sense – we tried to follow sort of a waterfall based on when in an organization’s digital marketing growth the pillars would come into play. For example, we start with Measurement Strategy because we feel that the success of any digital marketing measurement program has to be rooted in a solid strategy and adhered to diligently. I’ll add this to our list of suggestions to make sure the order makes the most sense. If you have any thoughts about the order please let us know.
In terms of your comment about the ranges and how to provide an accurate score – it’s difficult to develop something that is compact enough to be usable but also detailed enough to be helpful. And on top of this it needs to fit as best as possible with an incredibly diverse set of digital marketing practices. It’s like a one-size-fits-all hat. Does it really fit EVERY head in the world? No because it was developed to work for 80% of the heads in the world
. Same thing applies here. Of course we feel there is absolutely room for improvement, we also know that we can’t expect it to fit perfectly across all programs.
Thanks again for your comments – please feel free to provide more as you see fit!
June 4th, 2009 at 6:23 am
Thanks Jason, my main concern with visualizing it this way, is that measures seem dependent on each other. I suggest to approach the visualization and think about it like a geographical map. A country’s map doesn’t “begin” or “end” anywhere, it’s just a map, it could be complete or not, and if you want to get the “full picture” you need every part.
I believe this model should be actionable and should guide practitioners and companies on how to get the full analytics culture mature in their company and reap the full potential of the data. We don’t want companies who realize that they are doing “step 4″ to stop and go back to step 1. I frankly don’t think the steps are necessarily sequential and need to follow a certain order. I think we need to show that this process is like putting a puzzle together, where you can start with whichever patterns you can recognize and put together. While you might start from the bottom right part of puzzle, another person might start by recognizing another pattern. It depends on your own strengths. Companies should approach it this way, and start wherever they have gained progress, build on it, and complete as much as they can from the puzzle. (this way, it applies to all companies)
To provide a suggestion, how about using the six pillars as circles, and each circle would have 4 possible sizes depending on the score of that particular pillar, and they can immediately see where they need to improve? I also suggest we remove the numbers altogether, because even if you have most of the pillars right, if you are seriously lacking in any of them, your other efforts will be meaningless.
From an operational perspective, I think hoping that things will start with a strategy will need the support of the VP’s and the C’s. These people are probably not the most welcoming in terms of letting go of their 20 years of experience and accepting that a 26 year-old analyst knows the details of their industry by spending a couple of hours on an analytics tool.
Therefore, I would suggest that companies start wherever they can. For example, let’s say this 26 year-old analyst does some SEO for the website, tags the campaigns properly, and gets some good results (these are things that don’t cost much, and can be done under the radar fairly easily). Once the results are shared in the company, and the VP realizes that 32% of his sales are coming through free Google traffic, he might be interested in learning how that came. Then the analyst can explain with numbers how that is not only effective, but that it is more profitable to use organic search than to advertise on XYZ.com for example.
Operationally, you should start anywhere.
Regarding the ranges, we can simply put a check box next to each item, and that item will score 1,2,3, or 4 points depending on where in the hierarchy it fits (it’s importance). The total will determine your final score for that pillar. This can be scalable where in the future we can detail the criteria more, and still provide a final score between 1 and 4.
Sorry I talked too much
June 15th, 2009 at 12:27 pm
[...] organizations get the most of their analytics investments. In particular, the implementation of a maturity model in an organization using analytics, or one considering analytics, has the potential to greatly [...]
July 3rd, 2009 at 12:18 am
@Jason,
Very interesting that you are working on a standardized framework for measuring Digital Marketing Maturity. Recently (as consultant for Atos Consulting) I have constructed the E-Business Maturity Model and performed the first benchmark (Netherlands). This benchmark is currently being performed in France. More information: http://www.e-business-benchmark.com/.
I have reviewd the model you propose. First off, I think it is great to work towards a cross industry standard, open to all to use. Are you planning to make the model and research approach available, and if so how?
Second, I think that the name of the model does not quite cover the contents. As I see it now, it only focusses on the measurement and analytics skills of the organization. In my opinion, digital marketing encompasses more than just measurements.
The EBMM takes 4 key areas and 12 categories into account:
Management & Organization: Vision & Strategy, Leadership & Commitment, Governance & Alignment
Processes: E-Business Process, E-Business Performance Measurement, E-Business Cost Management
People & Culture: Competencies, Culture, Communication
Infrastructure: IT Strategy & vision, IT Architecture & Infrastructure, Business & IT alignment
What I have found in setting up the EBMM, is that this model only explains the organizational aspect, let’s say the car. In order to be able to assess the overall maturity of an organization, I feel it is necessary to also measure the actual strategy (in relation to market, customers and other benchmarks) and the performance of the current online channel in relation to the other channels.
Your DM3 model could provide a core component of a comprehensive model, but needs enhancement in other areas in order to fit the DM3 promise.
I am more than interested in exploring the opportunities to work together on establishing a comprehensive model. Looking forward to your response.