The role of the chief marketing officer is changing, and firms need to look beyond search engine optimization or big data to find a CMO who truly believes in the product and can master the “sales jungle,” writes Bruno Aziza, in a recent post at VentureBeat.
According to Aziza, in practice this means marketing chiefs with a broad skill set and the ability to move away from the abstract concept of “thought leadership” and view their roles more in terms of product development. In this case, the “product” being developed is any tool with the capacity to drive sales.
To build a truly product-centric marketing team requires not only creating the strong analytical foundation to draw insights and actionable intelligence from customer data, but also reestablishes the supremacy of the sales channel and rejects a one-dimensional approach to digital campaign development. Aziza cites a seemingly dated, but still relevant article from Silicon Valley entrepreneur, consultant and educator Steve Blank, which calls for marketers to take their customer development efforts “outside the building” to discover influential purchasing factors they may have been missing.
Otherwise, Blank writes, “the numeric data you collect may be blinding you to the fact that you’re more than likely working to optimize the wrong business model.” This assessment is consistent with the findings of other analysts, who point out that the modern marketing leader has entered a “post-digital age” in which successful CMOs are able to navigate a highly connected customer ecosystem to draw more intuitive insights than were possible in first-generation digital marketing.
In her new report “Create A Connected Communications Plan For The Post-Digital Era,” Forrester’s Tracy Stokes writes that the days of siloed digital marketing are over and that today’s CMO must adopt a “connected planning” strategy that takes into account the myriad of channels through which marketing messages are received.
“In this post-digital age in which digital encompasses everything from search and social to TV and products, chief marketing officers must fuse together communications across online and offline channels,” she writes.
According to Stokes, this kind of “post-digital” approach involves:
- Connecting with customers through an emotional action.
- Communicating the connected story across the best channels.
- Defining the contextual connection, or the times, places, platforms and devices influencing purchasing decisions.
In painting her portrait of the post-digital CMO, Stokes is building on the work of her colleague at Forrester, Bert Dumar, who predicted in December that CMOs will need to expand their abilities to address consumers’ more fragmented behaviors and “get their hands dirty with customer experience.”
The message for marketing executives is that in the post-digital age, technology is no longer a passive tool for getting a bird’s eye view of the customer, but an active one that works best with a little elbow grease.