Is digital marketing just a part of a company’s marketing department, or is it its own separate thing?

Gymshark, an emerging activewear brand, issued a press release on Friday announcing the appointment of its first “chief digital officer.” It was a standard-fare release n many ways, but was noteworthy for revealing the company’s creation of a digital-focused role separate from the overall head of marketing. It also provides a helpful description of that role as overseeing “the end-to-end digital customer journey” and optimizing “customer engagement and retention.”

This sort of thing is sure to become increasingly prevalent over time, as it reflects an understanding of the complexity and multimodal nature of digital marketing requirements. By evoking the image of an end-to-end journey, Gymshark may help other companies, in other industries, to recognize the importance of having either and in-house officer or a third-party team to guide customers from a digital point of contact to an online sale and beyond.

Traditional marketing still has its own inherent value, especially for brands that rely on distributing products to physical retailers or driving foot traffic to their own storefronts. But of course most manufacturers, artisans, and service providers have both physical and digital operations, which serve distinct purposes and call for separate management.

This is not to say that there isn’t much overlap between traditional marketing and digital marketing. This very blog has made many posts over the years emphasizing the value of integrated strategies. As an agency specializing in digital marketing, we have mostly taken that to refer to integration across digital platforms and processes, including social media, email campaigns, webpage advertisements, and so on. Still, we’ve also talked about keeping one’s overall digital marketing strategy in close alignment with the company’s broader strategy and brand identity.

That remains a laudable goal, but when considering the existence of separate roles for heads of marketing and heads of digital operations, it becomes clear that the larger goal for some companies is to spin off digital marketing from traditional marketing while making sure that each of their strategies run parallel to each other and support each other.

This is often just as it should be. And even though many companies are still well served by keeping digital marketing under a larger umbrella, this could change for many of them as their multi-platform online presence and associated digital activities continue to expand.

As the landscape of social media becomes more fractured and as questions arise about the long-term commercial value of different platforms, there is a need for companies to move onto other platforms and to develop an understanding of what type of consumers can be found there and how best to engage with them. Marketing heads should therefore stand ready to admit when the diversity and complexity of their digital branch has outstripped their ability to focus on it while also giving due consideration to traditional marketing tactics.

When that day comes, as it will for most companies with a significant online presence, one might respond by appointing their own “chief digital officer” to manage a unified strategy across multiple social media platforms and other digital points of contact. Alternatively, if this sort of high-level restructuring is too much of a burden in the short term, a company might instead establish or expand a relationship with an outside digital marketing agency, to help alleviate part of the digital load that marketing departments are increasingly required to carry.