Step Out of the Service Swamp: Digital as a Strategic Driver

In many organisations, digital marketing operates as a service. Depending on structure, the team or individuals receive and execute requests (i.e. demands). There’s limited time for reflection and strategic thinking—just do.

Regardless of the channel or platform—email, organic social, paid ads, or the website—the posture towards digital remains the same. Digital exists to distribute the marketing priorities of other teams, departments, products, or projects.

A former mentor called this the service swamp. You, the digital expert, are stuck in the muck, unheard, and struggling to keep up with requests.

In the service swamp, you lack the time and mental capacity for strategic thinking, resulting in it being dictated to you. In the worst cases, you’ve tried to be strategic, but the requestors override you; it needs to be done their way, they know best.

Contrast this to the strategic highlands. A place high above the noise of the service swamp where you can see clearly and operate strategically. Where your voice is heard and valued. Where you can say no and why.

From the highlands, digital can take its rightful place within the organisation—a core driver of strategy.

Stuck in the service swamp

Digital often ends up in the service swamp because they promote/distribute content/collateral. Promotion is typically the last step, so digital gets brought in at the end and fed everything that is ready for promotion (or expected to create it all!).

There’s a level of strategy involved in when and where to post, send, and promote, but it’s too late for a meaningful contribution. Treating digital this way often leads to channels working in isolation rather than operating from a unified strategy.

Digital teams/specialists often work within the technical constraints of platforms—i.e. Website CMS, email marketing automations, functionality, payment gateways etc.

Frustration arises when digital teams can’t deliver a stakeholder’s required functionality or idea, through no fault of their own—often due to budget, time or technical system constraints. This causes the stakeholder to use an additional third-party platform, potentially fragmenting the digital experience and customer data and creating technical debt.

I’ve seen charities using multiple peer-to-peer fundraising platforms, email marketing tools, and payment gateways because stakeholders were frustrated (or bored) with their existing tools.

The organisational flow-on effect is huge—creating extra work for not only the digital team, but often finance, and IT. Time spent on other platforms is time not spent improving and enhancing the core systems.

For someone who sees the potential of a holistic approach for their organisation, this is demoralising.

In organisation, the demand for digital often exceeds the team’s or individual’s capacity. The problem is rarely the digital capacity, but their ability to be strategic and pick and choose. They rarely can say no.

As a result, teams become swamped and stuck—only able to be reactive. You need space to think creatively, innovatively and be proactive. To make that space you need the permission to say no.

People don’t realise that the swamp is bad

I was part of a community of digital marketers. We spoke of people who ‘got it’, who saw the potential of digital marketing. Rarely did we have someone who worked under leaders that ‘got it’.

To most people, the swamp isn’t a problem—in fact, it’s a benefit, the swamp works. The social, web, and email people are compliant and you tick things off your list. Great, right? It depends on what you are maximising for.

The swamp gets results, but average ones. Will it keep working long-term? Probably not. However, stakeholders are typically focused on what they need now. Worry about today's targets, not next year's.

Organisations like this don’t ‘get it’. They don’t understand what they have. They have a race car and drive it like an old bomb—sure it gets you from A to B, but it could do so much more!

A hill I will die on is that a high tide raises all ships. If all digital channels work synergistically, the tide will rise. More website users, larger social platform followers, better email engagement—all improve performance across the board.

You can’t achieve this without empowering digital to be strategic and empowering them to contribute to strategy from the beginning.

Content is a great example. I’ve met many teams that create an absurd amount of content that they might promote once on social media. Is it worth spending time to craft and publish content for it to be seen by half a dozen people? Probably not.

A team crafts a story inline with a campaign or initiative. It’s then expected to be distributed across all digital channels, but no customer is interested.

I’ve seen teams create libraries of information that nobody will read. They create because they like creating, not because it’s strategic.

If this effort focused on creating smart, strategic SEO pieces instead of a specific initiative, site traffic would swell, not languish.

The swamp is bad. Bring in the tide.

Time to reframe digital

Digital needs to inform your broader strategy. Without digital at the strategy table, you’re not set up for the long term.

Your customers/supporters primarily experience your brand through digital touchpoints, giving digital teams insight and understanding of audience behaviour to drive organisational decisions.

When starting a new initiative, you’re at an immediate disadvantage by not consulting the digital teams. Start by asking “What does our digital data tell us our audience wants?” rather than “How can digital distribute this message?”

The audience’s needs are often obvious when you start to consider it. For example, the number of terrible websites for big organisations is criminal. Your website is one of your biggest brand touchpoints yet often neglected or not deeply considered.

Create a strategy or roadmap, resource it, and equip the team to manage it like a product. It shouldn’t be a graveyard of past campaigns and conflicting stakeholder messages. Make it great.

SEO is a proactive long-term initiative that would benefit organisations, but is often neglected. People aren’t incentivised to create content that isn’t aligned with a campaign—so it isn’t done, despite it being a lucrative opportunity.

The problem often stems from targets and outcomes being seen through a campaign lens, rather than a long-term view. A campaign landing page may spike a few thousand users before disappearing, while evergreen content could generate a few thousand a month and deliver more lifetime value than multiple campaigns' content.

Trends on different networks should change your content creation approach. Consider analytics from your website, email, and social channels as you roll out your marketing initiatives.

Digital marketing provides real-time quantitative feedback—capitalise on it, become data-informed, and work smarter.

Leadership is required to reach the highlands

Stepping out of the swamp is not easy—it requires leadership and an organisational mindset change.

Digital’s role needs to be elevated in leadership’s eyes. Clear support is needed for digital teams to push back.

Practically, workflow changes are the easiest to tackle. Involve digital stakeholders at the concept’s start, rather than prescribing them what to do at the end. Ask them to bring any useful data or insights from past initiatives. Be humble and curious.

Becoming data-informed is hard. We often do things because we enjoy them, not because they’re strategic. “That story from the last campaign nobody engaged with? Let’s avoid repeating that.” It doesn’t matter if you liked the story. It can be humbling—a good ego check.

Creating ongoing time and space for digital teams to be strategic is often one of the hardest tasks. Demand is high and there’s always more to do. Long-term strategic work suffers from being important but not urgent. Block out and protect time in the calendar.

Ultimately, it is leadership that needs to drive and back the shift from the service swamp to the strategic highlands. Some teams will refuse to do less or engage stakeholders at the right time. Others will protest or go rogue. Leadership needs to be prepared to support digital stakeholders in these instances.

Leadership must support data-driven decision making, and follow the example themselves.

For those in the swamp, there is hope

I’ve been in the swamp. It’s frustrating when you see people creating content and collateral that won’t achieve their intended result, but it’s too late for you to do anything.

If you don’t have leadership buy-in, you need to influence your way out.

I quickly identified who would listen to me when I brought up the numbers. Getting a better result is a strong motivator. Working with those people improved their numbers and they became my champions, leading others to ask how they could improve their results.

I’d built a reputation within the organisation as someone to listen to and was invited early.

If digital isn’t a strategic driver at your organisation, chances are nobody is asking for it to be. People don’t know any better—they don’t ‘get it’. You need to lead from the bottom up.

Learn to influence people, achieve wins, and drive change. Most people are open to suggestions that improve outcomes. Ask the question.

The service swamp isn’t unique to digital marketing. Many teams can be stuck in a service-only posture without strategic input. The symptoms will be different but the way out is the same—leadership buy-in and influence.

If you’re in the service swamp, there is hope.

Bring a number to your next meeting. Make someone curious.

The strategic highlands await.