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The One Person The CMO Can't Live Without

This article is more than 8 years old.

According to Forrester, 97% of CMOs think marketing needs to do things they have never done before to continue to be successful, but a full two-thirds of CMOs find it very difficult to keep up with the changes that affect their world. The consumer attitude to marketing and advertising is also changing faster than the CMO can keep up.

  • Banner ads are rejected at rates greater than 99%.
  • The average click-through rate for display ads is 0.11%.
  • Mobile banner ads have an average click-through rate of  just 0.35%.

So how do chief marketers plan to meet this challenge? According to IBM , over the next 3-5 years most CMOs plan to focus on the integration of cross-channel touch-points. While 83% will focus on analytics to capture customer insights to help fuel their campaigns, very few of them know exactly how to prepare to meet the data deluge

While the evolution of marketing continues to point to an increased focus on technology to achieve results, the savviest of CMOs know that it is only by turning that focus internally, and creating a capable customer-centric marketing operations team to match the technological investment, that marketing will truly evolve.

Modern marketers have a multitude of technology platforms, tools, and technologies available to them. They have to understand and know how to use everything from marketing automation platforms, CRM systems, analytics programs, social media listening tools, data management, demand-side advertising techniques, search engine optimization, e-commerce sites, web properties, mobile landing pages, and gamification. It’s difficult to master the technology, let alone use it effectively enough to quickly react to changing consumer and competitor behaviors.

And, at the end of the day, “it’s the fundamentals of marketing that matter.”, says Jeffrey Hayzlett, former Fortune 100 CMO and host at CBS Radio, “It’s about understanding all of the technology, but, more importantly it’s about knowing how they relate to customer satisfaction. You can have a great CRM system, but if you don’t realize your best customer left you because you’re out of touch, then it really doesn’t make a difference.”

"You can have a great CRM system, but if you don’t realize your best customer left you because you’re out of touch, then it really doesn’t make a difference.” - Jeffrey Hayzlett

CMOs need to help take their marketing operations to the next level. In order to understand the challenges better, I interviewed some of the top marketing operations executives in the business, each of whom has deep knowledge of data, technology, and marketing best practices.

In a previous article I discussed the powers of storytelling and evangelism as a means to engage with clients and consumers, and how it has more of an impact than targeted brand marketing, and organizations heavily reliant on predictive analytics and marketing automation sacrifice true engagement for technology. The real goal, as Hayzlett points out above, is the intersection of the two. Using technology to understand and feed true engagement.

“Marketing today has become both incredibly technical and complex,”  states Mick Ebeling, Founder of Not Impossible, “Every CMO has access to the same digital tools and data as their most fierce competitor.  These tools give better access to the consumer, but in the end, it is not the access that makes the brand impression or buying decision, it's the story.”

Aidan Lyons of the NFL, who is Vice President of Fan Centric Marketing agrees. He also acknowledged that consumers today have been so empowered by the digital experience and social media that brands no longer hold singular control over the narrative. However, the data generated from engagement can be used to better understand consumers and what they are saying about brands.

“The skill becomes figuring out how to sift through the abundance of information to get to the most important feedback from your fans and consumers.” - Aidan Lyons of the NFL, VP of Fan Centric Marketing

“If we combine all the data from our fans, be it behavioral/engagement/transactional (from channels such as desktop/mobile web/app) and attitudinal (via surveys and social media) we can better understand them,” Aidan elaborates.

In order for that data to be turned into actionable insight that drives intelligent decision-making, marketing operation execs need processes in place, and teams centred around collecting the right data, at the right time and in the right form in order to deliver that capability. Marketing operations involves the application of capabilities, processes, structures, and technologies to cost-effectively exploit and scale the interactivity, targeting, personalization, and optimization of digital channels according to McKinsey in a recent report.

This was echoed by Mason Nelder, Verizon’s Director of Digital Strategy during our conversation on customer engagement. “A critical component of marketing today and into the future needs to be dedicated to the combination of voice of consumer feedback, what they think of an experience and what they’re talking about, both solicited and unsolicited,” said Mason, “It’s really listening to what the consumer wants, not just what they’re talking about.”

“Marketing’s first focus has to be about finding out what the true customer experience is, which ultimately means changing the culture of the organization and its marketing functions entirely.” - Mason Nelder, Director of Social Media and Digital Strategy at Verizon.

And it’s because of this cultural shift that the CMO needs a strong leadership team to support and execute a vision for the future. As marketing leads the organization in how it engages with its customer and client base, it should also align itself with the same business goals across every department, driven operationally by the right measures and the right team.

"Marketing’s goals and metrics should be the same ones that the business cares about and not necessarily just what marketing can directly track and influence. This way everyone is aligned." - Albert Cheng, Head of Global Marketing at Google Play.

In the same McKinsey report, they identified 5 key operational capabilities every CMO must consider for success.

This can only be executed as a cohesive strategy that involves all these elements, led by a marketing operations leader who can bring the capabilities together for the CMO and lead the the organization without sacrificing internal relationships.

“The ideal digital strategy should not involve compromise for any part of the organization. Roles and responsibilities need to be clearly laid out and respected. Everyone needs to collaborate to serve the needs of both the business and the consumer.” says Adam Broitman, VP Global Digital Marketing at Mastercard.

Nelder at Verizon agreed that having the right capabilities in place was critical to create performance indicators that got to the heart of customer engagement. But it isn’t always easy. “You need to have the talent internally to build these. The measurements that you need to pay attention to are not easily created, like tracking sentiment, trust, or consumer need. There are so many ways to measure the customer experience. But you need a score that you understand, and ultimately understand how it is calculated. It would be very difficult to understand sentiment without understanding how to score trust, for example.”

Lyons of the NFL felt that multiple KPI’s can easily distract a marketing function,  losing sight of those which may be valuable to vertical products owners for example. For him and the NFL, it’s the “good old solid ones” that help them understand how effective their operations are:

  • Engagement: are the fans/consumer engaging with the brand and on which platforms?
  • Retention:  are the fans/consumer coming back and if not why not?
  • Acquisition: how do I grow the fan/consumer base?

As companies become more customer-centric, metrics should focus on customer activity rather than simply product based activity according to McKinsey. Metrics should also reinforce new behaviors and processes by identifying and incorporating lessons learnt from previous activities so that continuous feedback is created.

In order to create the best customer experience, engage consumers across multiple channels and drive marketing to align all parts of the organization culturally and strategically, teams need data, and at the heart of this is the customer base. But with the pressures on marketing to use data responsibly, retain integrity and respect customer privacy, marketing operations today faces tough challenges, and digital leaders know this.

“It’s about respecting and leading. When you’re in a position to access personal information you have a responsibility to protect it.”  -  Mason Nelder

Consider the technology and operations required for L’Oreal’s Makeup Genius app, which uses webcams to enable customers to virtually try on different shades and styles of makeup. To the customer, it is an easy, seamless, and enjoyable experience. But it is enabled by complex technology that involves coding dozens of makeup shades, matching them to a near infinite variety of skin tones, and collecting data on which types of customers try on which shades, then tracking their satisfaction levels after purchase—all of which are analyzed to further refine the matching process and improve the customer experience. This two-way flow of information is an important aspect of modern marketing operations.

To accomplish a balance of privacy and personalization, consumers should have the ability to determine how much companies know about them in exchange for the convenience of a highly personalized experience.  If they don’t, the same holds true, and it should be easy. “That’s why I believe we should be leaders of data security and control. “ Mason added,  “Ultimately, if you do the right thing and lead out on data ethics and data integrity, people will appreciate it and trust you more.”

This trust is an important part of the customer experience equation. Lyons also echoed this, stating that consumer privacy will always come first.

To conclude, we rewind back to the start of the article. A CMO today understands that this is no longer their grandfather's marketing, and that the marketing world is changing more quickly than most are able to keep up. Regardless, CMOs and their marketing ops teams in particular are being tasked with making sense of an ever expanding world of devices, channels, technologies and consumer behaviors. But technology alone is not the answer. While analysts seek to boost the role of the Chief Marketing Technologist for example, it’s not solely about being skilled at new technologies,  it’s about using the technology to gain the most relevant and important insights about consumer behavior. Because at the end of the day, it’s great customer experiences that keep customers coming back and makes prospects want to do business with you.

Savvy senior marketing leaders like the ones I spoke with for this article have cracked the code on building and leading teams that are able to deal with the challenges being thrown at them today and who will be poised to handle the evolving complexities of marketing well into the future. And CMOs today need them now.

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