For the past two decades marketers have spent enormous time and effort perfecting specialty practices. Where once we had simple fundamentals, like the “4 Ps” of product, place, promotion and price, and a single, monolithic view of advertising, we now have a huge abundance of sub-specialties, channels, tactics and departments. In some cases they are even thought of as “professions.” The idea was that by encouraging specialization, and developing marketing best practices by refining of them, state-of-the-art marketing would advance. Results would improve. Life would get better. More people would buy.
But something happened on the way to that promised land. Reality struck, in the form of the unexpected. 
Marketing disintegrated. Literally.
It turns out this “disintegrated” approach to marketing comes at a high cost. It’s unworkable in today’s world, for one very important and strategic reason. It creates unconnected silos of both information and function that make it difficult if not impossible to yield the kind of results that organizations demand. The holy grails of messaging reach, frequency and consistency—not to mention relationships, digital marketing and social engagement—cannot be achieved when one hand doesn’t know what the other is doing.
Organized along this silo approach, Marketing is a basketball team whose players refuse to pass the ball. Ever. Instead, everyone tries to score and take all the credit. Which is why it’s so hard to win.
In the rush to tear down the silos, marketers are quickly and urgently embracing the benefits of Content Marketing. They see the great potential of aligning marketing programs based on a single, coherent content strategy that recognizes the roles of each content asset and how it fits into the customer’s buying process. Trying to fix marketing silos by starting with the org chart is backwards. Start with the content strategy first, then proceed to the workflows needed to support it, and finally to the org chart implications. Otherwise, the failure to base change on its information sharing implications can turn silo busting into one big game of wack-a-mole.
Content is now the foundation of all the myriad marketing functions required to tackle the messy, noisy and complex world. Content is the one “through line” that drives communications consistently across all your diverse audiences and channels in a context-appropriate way. With good Content Strategy and an understanding of the essential role that information sharing plays across all marketing functions, Content Marketing can help you re-integrate the marketing silos back into a unified whole.
Tags: breaking down marketing silo - Content marketing - content strategy - Digital marketing - integrated marketing - marketing - marketing integration - re-integrate marketing - silo busting
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