Why is this guy so happy!?
He's a model - not a CMO.
Brandweek used this silly picture for their seriously valuable coverage of an H&S survey of Chief marketing Officers and their issues with digital marketing. . . and this dude does not look like he has the weight of the entire company on him!
"The big takeaway from the survey is that there’s still enormous room for improvement for most companies’ digital marketing strategies." Here are a few numbers to demonstrate the CMO's huge responsibility and desire for better data access and action:
- Only 19% were very satisfied with their SEO
- Only 18% were very satisfied with the speed of responding to new opportunities
- Only 18% were very satisfied with ROI analysis
- Only 13% were very satisfied with their CRM
How can you make that CMO's great smile shine? Simply, help him/her. The Chief Marketing Officer has been put in the middle of the mess of updating the company to take advantage of this
darned Internet and all those uppity customers. The CMO, along with the Head of Sales (my ongoing argument), should definitely own this position together. But the entire company needs to participate..."Alignment" across the organization is key. A good start is to encourage the same sharing and transparency of Social Media to be used within your company. Give the same performance management emphasis put towards ERP systems (from supply-chain manufacturing to database management) to include intersections with advertising, direct marketing, online marketing, Sales CRM, public relations, employee communications. With digital communications, that old term "Integrated Marketing" is now more relevant than ever!
This is, once again, related to my ongoing conversation about Duct Tape on Concrete. Where silos of Internet and Social Media projects are brought together with deeper technology development.
Let's discuss the organizational support and the right tech tools to rely on within your company and out in the market. The ROI metrics are available. The new goal is to realize that quality (and timely) communication is more important than quantity. People expect that their analog life will be made better by smarter digital connections.
How does your entire organization help put a smile on the CMO's face? How are Sales, IT, Manufacturing, and Finance encouraged to acknowledge (and make available) all their relevant touchpoints of the company and the Brand?