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Marketing is at the heart of every system, every business, and every trade form these days. Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) are at the zenith of the marketing structure & with the evolution of marketing, have become more of profit and loss assessing businessmen than core marketers.
Marketing is everywhere! Right from answering phone calls at the reception desk to giving out purchase invoices, every individual within a corporate setup has a marketing role to play.
The dawn of the digital era has brought about a lot of changes in the marketing landscape, some areas being highlighted & others getting overshadowed.
Augmented Reality, Artificial Intelligence, and Marketing Automation, etc. have emerged as overwhelming factors that are causing ripples in the marketing field.
In the present day world, Marketing means measuring the ROI & driving business revenue by implementing cost-effective strategies. Technology & the greater business inclination of the marketing strategies has left CMOs to be equipped with knowledge that equals marketing technologists. All that said, the CMO’s role may be evolving but is still of great prominence in leading a business to its highest success point.
The Chief Marketing Officer heads the marketing department & is responsible for the formulation & implementation of strategies, incorporation of innovative technology & automation techniques in the marketing approach; designing of marketing campaigns & supervision of their execution for maximal ROI.
With such a broad spectrum of functions, a CMO needs to stay in touch with the developments in the B2B marketing world, so as to tweak the marketing tactics accordingly. As business heads, CMOs report to the CEO of a corporate organization. If you look closely at the job profile of a CMO you will find multiple functions that these individuals perform that affect the efficiency of the entire system.
Coordinating operations, bringing in challenging strategic innovations, encouraging a customer-centric product design, devising pricing strategies that will be beneficial to the consumer as well their company, etc. are some of the functions of the CMO that emphasize their role as a marketing thought leader.
The CMO is responsible for establishing a brand presence, creating brand loyalty & maintaining brand awareness. The CMO cannot accomplish these huge tasks alone & is backed by a trusty team consisting of handpicked officials with special skills. The CMO thus has a leadership role to play over his team that may consist of job titles such as:
The success of a CMO may be measured in terms of certain metrics in order to understand the critical role of this officer. These metrics include:
Now that we have a clear understanding of the duties of a CMO let us now move on to understand the factors affecting their job profile.
The Role of the Chief marketing Officer or The Chief Marketer is one that is largely affected by all the factors influencing the marketing landscape. With increased digitization, onset of mobile marketing & technological innovations that have occurred over the past decade or so, The Chief Marketing officers have evolved simultaneously to keep pace with the new developments in marketing.
Apart from these core changes, there are now more opportunities to reach customers & deal with them on a one-to one basis. This in turn requires the CMO to have profound knowledge of CRM systems, predictive analytics & the like. Let’s now explore the various aspects of digital Marketing & technological innovation that are affecting the CMO’s Role:
Everything has become digitized these days. Right from baby health monitors to smart inverters in home appliances, The Internet of things seems to have taken over everything.
“Big data has emerged as the critical factor to achieving a customer-centric culture across enterprises, as stated by over 40 percent of CMOs and 51 percent of CIOs.”– CMO Council
With everything getting connected to the internet, the data being generated from these new innovations offers an overwhelming challenge to marketers & Consumers alike. Thus CMOs need to stay in touch with not only the CEO to be an integral part of the business process but also with other major C Level Executives such as CTO & CDO.
Have a look at the Big Data explosion in 2016 & 2017 & expected numbers till 2012 in this Cisco Forecast to understand the enormity of the current data situation!
Also Read: How Big Data Management Can Be A Boon For Your Business
Digital Media is Transforming at A Crazy Rate
“84% of marketers said that their companies need to achieve more with their digital marketing. For example, they need to increase their ROI from social.”
Domus
With the advent of Digital Marketing & Media, CMOs can no longer work alone on their marketing strategies & often require the participation of the Chief Digital Officer (CDO) to accomplish the devising of new marketing plans with the right digital techniques incorporated. The critical role of executing tasks such as content creation, visualizing digital ads & organizing internet marketing as a whole need to be supervised by the CMO.
Also Read: The Emerging Role Of the Chief Digital Officer
Marketing & Sales is now Omnichannel
“78% of CMOs believe that marketing will undergo fundamental change over the next 5 years. This change will be driven by analytics, as well as digital and mobile technologies.”– Accenture
The Internet has emerged as a bridge between the physical & digital world. Now people can access the internet from the comfort of their homes or on the go from their mobiles to lookup places, shops, restaurants, etc., test goods in the physical stores, buy them from online stores & refer them to their friends on social media.
There is definitely a seamless integration of the physical & digital world & what’s even more fascinating is the Omnichannel nature of this integration. The eager acquisition of Jet.com by Walmart is a perfect example of this integration influencing the biggies in the marketing world. Thus CMOs need to learn the tricks of the trade & further the seamless Omnichannel marketing & sales approach.
Whether it is personalization of emails or the emergence of influencer marketing, all of these point towards the fact that B2B Marketers are taking the phrase ‘Customer is King’ pretty seriously. CMOs being at the head of this changing tradition need to be well versed with their client’s needs & pain points by having a good understanding of the CRM system & must keep a close eye on the analytics.
The Customer Centric Approach means not just selling to the needs of the prospects but also building long term business associations by resolving their major pain points with apt products & services. The current marketing scenario has an overwhelming requirement of forming bonds with clients or prospects rather than conducting mundane campaigns that yield nothing but just are a waste of valuable resources.
The Chief Marketing Officer’s post has definitely evolved & will continue to do so as long as there is marketing & its evolution is taking place. It is thus important to understand that with every new innovation, their skill set will definitely have to change but CMOs will always be a part of the B2B structure in some form or the other & sometimes they will be the chief brand officer, the chief strategy officer, the chief story teller & the chief marketing people’s officer all put together in one! So all the CMOs out there! You are the leaders of Change & will remain that!
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