What is a Gatekeeper to Marketing?
Merriam Webster defines gatekeeper as “one who controls access.” In the world of marketing, the concept of gatekeeping has caused marketing departments to fall behind the needs of their customers. This problem especially applies to digital marketing agencies, who rely on data to help determine the best option for their clients.
The Relationship of Marketing and IT
The two most important departments of a company are arguably marketing and information technology (IT). While marketing focuses on awareness and lead generation, such as targeting potential customer segments, IT works on the back end, like security and data. In order for companies and organizations to thrive, they need these two departments to be working together to achieve common goals.
Communicating at the Right time
In the age of the internet, a business’ website is considered the best option for marketers to communicate with their audience. So, when they need to update and maintain their website and digital presence, they must cooperate with the IT department to get the job done. This IT gatekeeper stalls the marketing side since their priority is focused on security and privacy over the customer’s experience.
Audience Growth
Digital marketing agencies are entities that try to increase audience growth by analyzing one’s data and giving useful information. The way gatekeeping affects digital marketing agencies is limiting or even prohibiting access to said data. IT departments in companies again focus on security, and giving away data can be considered an issue and that affects these agencies.
How to stop Gatekeepers
What is the best way to stop these gatekeepers? The technical way would be to centralize the data, meaning giving access to those who need the data within the business. In most circumstances, IT would hold the data for themselves. With this concept, giving access to others, such as marketing, will allow them to stop IT from stalling their work. This applies differently for third parties such as digital marketing agencies. What they need to do is build trust through communication to both marketing AND the IT teams. With that, the digital marketing agency will seamlessly be able to access data from the client without an issue from either team.
Creating Trust
The concept of the Gatekeeper decrease the customer experience by creating barriers to the customer’s goal. That goal could be purchasing a product or obtaining information. In a world where everything is at our fingertips, a business must update consistently in order to meet the best customer experience. In order to remove gatekeepers, both a marketing team and digital marketing agencies must create a trust in order to access data that usually is blocked by gatekeepers.
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