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Investment in digital marketing continues to grow and despite the recession spend online is holding up (although growing at a lower rate). Equally good is that more and more brands are recognising that digital must now be an integral part of their marketing mix.

So what’s the bad news? Despite the continued growth in online spend many clients are buying into ill conceived, poorly planned solutions that have absolutely no relevance to the target audience. This isn’t meant as a criticism of all digital agencies. There are plenty delivering superb, on-brief sites, campaigns, content, etc that deliver great returns for the client.

However, there as many, if not more campaigns and digital products being sold that are not fit for purpose. Let’s take games as an example. We’ve seen several this week all of which are well executed in terms of playability and use of Flash. But exactly what relevance do they have for the consumer who is supposed to buy the products that the client produces (and wishes to sell)? None.

Here’s an example. Brand X is an FMCG product targeted at and bought by women who are likely to have families. Great media planning has located the kind of sites that they are likely to visit. What is the call-to-action for our busy mums? Is it a chance to get a free sample of the product? Is it a voucher offering a discount to incentivise a purchase in place of their usual brand? Or even a competition so that they can capture data? No. The result of the strategic plan was a game. In this case there was little to redeem this content which was ill conceived, poorly executed and creatively weak.

How is this good marketing? If marketing is defined as satisfying customer needs profitably, then how does a game meet this particular audiences needs? It doesn’t. A client has seen/read that games are good. The agency concerned has the capability to develop games and has either sold the concept or merely agreed with the client’s wishes rather than challenging the brief. Most likely is that the agency simply lacks the skills and expertise to offer a genuinely insightful solution.

If digital agencies are to ever reach the position of strategic leadership that their (offline) advertising/media counterparts enjoy they need to be doing several things. The key change is to become much more audience focussed. They need to embrace planning and insight so that the solutions they sell as absolutely right for the target audience. What’s frustrating about the lack of planning is that digital is such a highly measurable channel that there are many sources of research, etc that can really help with campaign planning.

The supply-led approach to selling is wrong. Agencies are getting away with it because digital is new, perceived as technical and in great demand. Sadly as a new industry not all the suppliers are of equally quality or as experienced.

But if we really want clients to embrace digital as central to the mix then practitioners need to show the same level of insight and audience understanding as ad agencies. Then, and only then can digital really command a seat at the top table. Planning is where it’s at. Planning is the future of digital…

This post was written by Jason Navon - Director at Clarity Digital