[Posted by Steven Noble]

Marketing is a great place for interactive experts to test their skills and strategies. However, it’s far from the only area where digital thinking can have a huge impact. Whether to grow your agency or your in-house career, here are a few more opportunities to consider:

  • Interactive internal communication. Attracting, retaining and harnessing skilled staff is one of the largest challenges facing many organisations. Increasingly, internal communicators are using interactive tools to address these issues. In fact, organisations often experiment with social media for internal communication before they use it externally, because there is no risk of anonymous trouble-making — employees signs into the social application using own network ID. Interactive marketers should take on internal projects if they want a less scary way of proving the power of social media.
  • Interactive supply chain communication. For consumer electronics firms in particular, it can be incredibly slow and expensive to ensure that retailers worldwide understand how to sell your product. Luckily, smart interactive marketers have a solution: web-based training modules that use video, self-assessment and other tools to deliver the message straight to every salesperson.
  • Interactive investor communication. CFOs must ensure that all investors have equal and instant access to market-moving information. Clearly, digital distribution channels have a role to play here, and interactive marketers should step forward to help make this happen. The other big opportunity is the use of visualisation tools, video and online communities to tell an emotional story to investors, beyond the endless facts and figures.
  • Interactive media relations. The easier you make it for journalists to find your story, your graphics, your stock video and your contact details, the better they’ll be able to cover your company. Most online media rooms need a complete revamp, and savvy interactive marketers should be lending a hand.
  • Interactive public affairs. Government, citizens and pressure groups all want to see how your organisation is operating and they all want their say. Smart interactive marketers lend their tools to the cause, helping to lower the barriers between the organisation and the public.

All these areas would benefit from the input of interactive marketers. However, each of these is grounded in quite different assumptions to the four Ps of marketing. Moving beyond marketing is a tremendous opportunity for interactive experts who want to grow their agencies or the in-house careers. However, first they must immerse themselves in the complex business issues that motivate everyone from the CFO to the director of human resources.