Digital Transformation in Marketing: A Roadmap 2022 released

The report provides a panoramic guide to transformation involving 99 turning points across 6 major segments

BEIJING and SHANGHAI, Nov. 8, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Miaozhen Academy of Marketing Science (MAMS) has recently released Digital Transformation in Marketing: A Roadmap 2022 ("Roadmap 2022"), a groundbreaking research report that is updated annually. This marks the second year that the Roadmap has been released. Digital Transformation in Marketing: A Roadmap 2021, by systematically identifying paths for digital transformation in marketing across 5 major segments, lays a solid foundation for the digital transformation in corporate marketing. Roadmap 2022 further consolidates this foundation.

Opening up new paths: The new version adds the Innovation Management section, detailing complete digital transformation paths and addressing the core issue of how to support product innovation at companies through digitalization. Adding 29 new key turning points: In addition to the 13 new transformative changes highlighted in the Innovation Management segment, other segments add important new sections such as "ROI of Advertising Investment", "Agile Operation of Social Media" and "User Experience Measurement". Updating 23 key turning points: The 2022 version adds more color to some sections, including updating of some titles to more accurately reflect the change: "Voice Measurement" to "Social Media Effectiveness Measurement" and "Content Data Governance" to "Content Tagging Analysis".

"With the original intention of 'answering the confusion many company managers and marketing practitioners have about digital transformation in marketing', MAMS systematically researched and released Roadmap 2022, with the goal of, through clear objective and path mapping, providing a detailed interpretation of the findings and of the cases shared, alongside insights into and guidance for an enterprise-wide digital transformation in marketing," said Peking Tan, producer of Roadmap 2022 and president of MAMS.

The Roadmap compares the process of digital transformation in enterprise marketing to mountain climbing, in which each marketing section commences the ascent from the bottom of the mountain, and works through three key stages: basic, advanced and leading. Then, after achieving several transformative milestones, they meet at the top of the mountain and finally complete the digital transformation.

Roadmap 2022 spans 6 major marketing segments and their respective paths: advertising, content, social media, e-commerce, user growth and innovation management, covering 99 key turning points. Compared with the 2021 version, the paths for three segments - advertising, e-commerce, and content - in the new version have remained relatively stable with slight updates. The 2022 version adds paths for innovation management, with social media and user growth sections having evolved the most.

According to the MAMS study, in the past year, the digital transformation in the production, acquisition, launch and management of social media content has all accelerated. Social media-based marketing is not advertising, and its underlying logic is different from advertising as well. Social media is not only about having a voice, but also about stimulating interactions and enhancing relationships with users. Therefore, the path for digital transformation in social media is also different from that for advertising. It requires a more comprehensive balance between talent, content, and management, as well as a new measurement and evaluation system and method to help brands produce quality content, allow their voices to be heard, and enhance user interaction, and, by doing so, creating three key values: cross-domain conversion, brand attachment and brand loyalty.