Here at Lynton, we know it's important to periodically peer out into the future of marketing to assure all our clients' trajectories are well calibrated. To that end, let's address the activities that will be the hallmark of the CMO in a few years. We already know that CMO's will be spending more on IT than CTO's very soon. With the continuing evolution of inbound and digital, CMO's should be viewing their own actions and their own measurement of success within the following contexts:
- Demand Generation - simply put, this is the main job and the identifying characteristic of any marketing department. Creating interest, enthusiasm and need for your product or service. Intrinsically tied to creating demand, is how you choose to do it. Do you interrupt prospects with the benefits of your product? Or you do you inbound prospective clients with your value and content that supports that value?
- Globalization - Even if your product is local or regional, if your marketing worldview is narrow, you won't be successful for long. Competitors will always move in and replicate your success and duplicate your tactics. Continuously seek your next best market and use technology as a leveler. At Lynton, we have clients in Houston and on the other side of the world - but we are just a web conference away from all of them. Harness technology as much as you can.
- Synchronization - even if you are successful in generating global demand, if you're not passing your data or results to departments (like sales) who can act on them - your demand generation efforts will go unnoticed. Synchronization can mean anything from CRM integration, to app development, to synching lead data to your ERP systems.
- Sourcing - How big is your marketing team? Probably not big enough. How long does it take to hire, onboard, and train a new marketing manager in your organization? Probably too long. And the pace of the change and the development of marketing automation technologies? Rapid, to say the least. Proper sourcing of your marketing team will be a determining factor in your success as a CEO. Certainly, you should have long term leaders and managers on your team but you should also source teams and individuals on as as-needed basis, whether it's for weeks or years at time.
- Visualization - Visualization is focused more on your management team or Board of Directors - whomever you report to. In short, visualization refers to your ability to clearly articulate the success of your marketing team's efforts to your bosses. Do you do this through dashboards or presentations? What metrics do you use? What if sales are still flat but all other indicators are up - what is the best way to frame your success. Visualization is the education of your management team on how well you are doing. If your superiors can't visualize your efforts and your success, then you won't be successful.
How many of this activities are you engaged in now? Some? All? None? Do you think there are other activities the CMO of the the next few years will need to be concerned about?
Photo: Alex E. Proimos