After taking part in several 2009 interactive planning sessions for various clients over the past few weeks a common question between the sessions was asked repeatedly. What are you going to do for us online? The question seems quite simple and benign on the surface, but it has almost infinite intangibles, influencers, dependencies and possibilities. And because of all those things that basic question becomes very difficult to answer and requires a very complex response. Clients are asking for their digital and online agencies to provide more than just a strategy for building a website. We have moved into a new era with the digital agency landscape and the agencies that prosper will need to respond with an evolved view of online marketing and how to integrate with other marketing mediums.

I generally break the evolution of interactive marketing strategy development into four eras;

1) The ‘hot sh*t’ era, other wise knows as the first bubble. This is when every .com start up was an IPO away from glorious riches. Accountability, for both budget and strategies, took a back seat to industry buzz and popularity. The money and BS flowed freely and everyone was trying to be the next one to cash in/out.

2) The ‘we are a serious business, seriously’ era. This is the void between the first bubble and then now ubiquitous Web 2.0 establishment where interactive agencies and ideas had to fight for credibility, and budget, to prove that online marketing was more than putting .com at the end of your name or asking for something ‘viral’ in the campaign.

3) The ‘seat at the table’ era. The bubble burst, we proved that interactive marketing could work, we had the metrics to prove it, and now we want to participate (even lead) the creation of marketing strategies and not just be the production shop building a cool website.

4) The ‘what are you going to do for me online’ era. This is the next big step for digital agencies. We’ve gotten our seat at the strategy table and now we are expected to do something that pure play digital agencies haven’t been equipped to do…think like traditional marketers.

This last era is where the simple questions start to get complicated.

Higher value clients with larger cross channel campaigns and complex business drivers are demanding a different kind of thinking from a digital agency. The go-to solution of ‘hey, lets do a website redesign’ has become antiquated and narrow…a site redesign is not an interactive strategy. Clients are asking for a true online marketing plan similar to what traditional agencies deliver for offline campaigns or brand development – a holistic solution that is more than the sum of its parts.

This is the real growth opportunity for digital, the opportunity to move upstream to the point where the overall marketing strategy is defined, it’s the ability to get ahead of the solution (and production request) and establish value as key business partner. The problem is that most digital agencies don’t have a process or resources to support that upstream mobility. Typically the digital shop has been a downstream vendor executing on an already formed marketing campaign and translating pieces of it into some sort of a web property/presence. And most digital shops have gotten very good at that role and can pull out their proprietary process, tools, strategies and technology for building you the best darn website you’ve ever seen. But what were once differentiators for digital shops have now been codified and are becoming more and more commoditized as generic production vendor services.

I have also seen the antithessis of this within the larger traditional or interactive creative agencies. They are being driven to provide more integrated solutions that go beyond the big idea which require them to own the entire interactive delivery model. Online development is very messy and requires a rigorous process that not as easy as just plugging in a production vendor and saying go. We’ve all see the traditional agency try to bolt on their ‘interactive services’ department and more often than not it is a failure. Why? Because interactive needs to be an integrated component of a strategy or campaign and not just a after thought tossed to a downstream vendor.

It will be this critical ability for agencies to demonstrate and excel at full cross-channel integration that will separate the new breed of agencies. Interactive is the future, I’ll argue that with anyone, and because of that I envision a couple of paths that digital shops can go down. The standard development/production orientated digital shops can bring in true marketing strategy services, the big idea, game changer creative types to elevate them to a lead spot at the table and drive a companies overall marketing strategy. Or these digital shops will get absorbed into larger more established creative shops to serve as integrated in-house strategy and production teams.

Either way the key is integration. To evolve pure play digital shops need to start thinking in terms of campaigns and not projects – i.e. if we are planning a Microsite for a product we can’t just focus on the creative concept and execution, but go to the clients with everything from how we drive traffic (PPC, banner, social) to what the conversions are on the site, to how we track and report to how we extend the conversations and bring them back. So it’s less about individual projects and shifts to blending communication messages across all available online media channels into a continuous brand experience. The next evolution once we move to campaign planning is to look at Integrated Marketing Campaigns were we blend all media channels, not just online. The easiest example of this is HP’s “The Computer is Personal Again” campaign. They utilized a wide range media with great consistency, and capitalized on each of the media’s individual strengths. Business Week has a great article on it here: “The goal: to do away with HP’s fragmented marketing strategy of the past and build a cohesive campaign that will work across many product lines, in all regions of the world, using print, online, and broadcast media.”