Title of the paper :

The Digital Marketing Capabilities Gap

Abstract:
Over the years with technological development, digitalization and digital marketing has
expanded its horizons not only to consumer outreach, but also influenced industrial marketing.
This paper seeks to address the research gap in the literature of industrial digital marketing by
collating and reviewing over 129 articles, spanning over 20 years. The paper can be identified in
four major themes; channels, social media, digital relationships and digital technologies.

Research Gap:
This paper mainly seeks to address the research gap of lack of literary and academic
contribution towards industrial marketing in spite of parallel development in social media and
mobile marketing. They have classified their research gap findings into two aspects, knowledge
gap and practice gap. On the same line addresses the lack of research in understanding the
dynamics and impact of digitalization on industrial firms. Secondly, though already existing
research has extensively spoken about opportunities and potentials, it has left behind a major
knowledge gap of practical guidance and real life application. And lastly if focuses to address
the gap that existing literature is based on pushiled research works, and have failed to
incorporate the new emerging digital capabilities.

Objective:
The main objective of this paper is to establish a bridge between the existing research and the
practical application of digitalization tools and explore the research gaps.

Research questions:
The paper explicitly states three questions that it intends to address and provide knowledge
through this paper.
What do we know of digital marketing capabilities?
Which digital marketing capabilities will drive future value?
How can digital marketing capabilities gap be reconciled?

Methodology:
The major objective of this research paper is to conduct an exploratory study, to understand
existing problems in industrial marketing academics and literature and contribute to increasing
the existing knowledge base. It is an investigative approach. The authors have reviewed over
129 articles ranging from different time periods, conducted an online survey to understand
current trends and perspectives among managers to understand the needs of industrial
marketing.

Research findings:
The research revealed the multi-channel capability gaps and IoT technology. It also identified
the importance of data analytics relating to digital technologies. The research was also able to
highlight through surveys the role of search engines, and online advertisement, SEO,
programmatic advertising etc. And next finding relates to how the aspect of online product
configurators were overlooked in B2B firms. Additional it was found that the industrial firms are
already experimenting in the paid social media and influencer marketing strategies, in spite of
no clear or specific knowledge or outcomes regarding the same.

Future scope and limitations:

This paper has been retrospective in nature, and there are no experimental or result outcomes.
Though this paper has recognised the gap in practice and research, it has failed to enumerate
or analyse its outcomes and returns. Thence though this paper has understood current and
future trends, it has failed to measure the actual importance in the field. Another limitation of this
paper is that it had a small sample size, and did not focus on industry specific trends.