ADMA Forum: Top-down vs bottom-up

@Mikezed begins with an intersting look at top-down vs bottom-up digital strategy, and explains that businesses typically use one or the other.

In reality, bottom-up is what happens most often - setting up tactics and KPIs at the functional level and measuring random stuff (email click rate, unique visitors, CPC etc) in relative isolation. While easy to set up (creates little disruption inside the organisation), there's no alignment, and because our data is focused around discrete channels, it's not helping us to understand cross-channel / overall performance.

Top-down is the smarter paradigm of creating something that starts at the business level and strategically coordinates activities throughout the business.
 
What's good about top-down

• More focus on delivering real business returns
• Better alignment of activities, less wastage and overlap etc - improving ROI
• Fosters a deeper, more complete understanding of customer interactions throughout their lifecycles
• Management love it

What's not so good

• Hard to put in place - from a management and tech perspective
• Takes more time - all the pieces need to be in place before rushing into execution
• Lots more stakeholder management - "WHY can't we start using social media straight away?!"
• Massive need for communication and collaboration across functional groups (like IT)

Great food for thought.