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An Introduction to Systems Thinking for Online Marketing
November 26, 2007 |
The philosophy of Systems Thinking is how to better understand the interrelationship of components responsible for patterns of behavior. It helps us gage how things work and enables us to take a different look at why patterns of behavior are the way they are. Systems thinking is typically applied to understanding these patterns of behavior at the organizational level, but there are certain aspects of the philosophy that can be applied to Online Marketing.
At the organizational level, systems thinking helps to not only identify a problem within an organization, but how to solve the problem by looking at the various components of that organization and how they interact with one another. Within Online Marketing, if one were to identify a problem within Paid Search, to gain a better perspective on how to solve a problem via systems thinking, one would look beyond the various components of the individual ad group where the problem lies. The idea is really to look at the overall picture, understand how all the parts fit and work together and how best to ensure the organization or Paid Search account as a whole exceeds performance expectations.
As it is defined in Debashis Sarkar’s book, “Lean for Services Organizations & Offices”
Sarkar goes on to say that “in a system what is critical is not only that the individual components are working well, but how all the components fit together as a whole”. This point is especially interesting considering how the various components of an ad group interact or how multiple ad groups within a campaign behave.
One other point from Sarkar’s point about systems thinking is that “properties of a system emerge because of the interaction of the components”. Again, within Paid Search this point is valid because in many cases sets of keywords tend to do better than others in an ad group because of the relevance of the ad creative messaging. In a case like this, if it is possible to separate a group of relevant, ‘winning’ keywords into it’s own group it is possible to increase the Quality Score or Quality Index of the new, increasingly targeted ad group helping to increase the performance of the campaign as a whole. It is also possible to target the ad creative messaging for the remaining keywords so that they begin to perform better on their own.
Systems thinking can be fairly complex when applied in its entirety in understanding the interrelationships within an organization. The key point here, as it applies to Online Marketing, is to introduce the idea of looking at more than just the keyword, account or marketing channel in front of you in order to understand the bigger picture, develop new ideas and how to solve problems more creatively.
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Comments
2 Comments so far
Great post! People in many/most fields fail to see the obvious systemic interactions because of the way they think. This is especially true when a lot of variables or a lot of data are involved so it seems complicated enough without trying to think about how all the bits interrelate. But it’s critical to a sophisticated - and true - view of any world. including online marketing!
Most likely, this blog article created the historical first link between Digital Marketing and Systems Thinking.
Indeed this is a timely milestone in the history of Digital Marketing, as the SEO/SEM field is now filled with so many “piece-meal tips and practices”. A holistic perspective about Digital Marketing enabled by Ackoff’s Systems Thinking is the way to go.