Technological developments over the past ten years have transformed the marketing industry – conversations happen in real-time, messages are more personalised and content is king. I truly believe marketing has entered a golden age. Whilst these advancements have dramatically shaped strategies – both at a business and marketing level – they have also redefined the traditional role of the CMO.
So what skills, knowledge and expertise are needed by today’s CMOs?
The CIMO
Data is the new fuel – it drives all decisions. So in many respects, one of the biggest challenges facing CMOs today is the huge volume of consumer data now available. As the number of communication channels increases, so too do the new sources of behavioural data available to marketers, for example social media, NFC and geo-location, to name but a few. No doubt, all can add valuable insight, but the danger is that there’s now so much data, it’s become increasingly difficult to know how to effectively make use of it all, let alone how to collect, store and manage it.
A key responsibility of the CMO therefore is ensuring the capabilities exist within the organisation to identify, mine and analyse the appropriate data-sets and turn it into actionable insight. This means investing in, and possibly fighting for, the right systems, processes and people. This requires a step-change in thinking and skill-sets – organisations will effectively need a CIMO – Chief Information Marketing Officer – rather than a CMO. In addition to traditional marketing expertise, the CMO of the future will need to be well versed in Information Technology as the management of information will be absolutely critical to business success.
Historically, the marketing and IT functions haven’t always been the perfect bedfellows within organisations, with often conflicting objectives and remits, not to mention personality types; however, with technology and data at the heart of decision making, the closer alignment of these departments is a prerequisite. It falls to the CMO to raise the level of technical expertise and understanding of their respective marketing teams in order to foster the close and productive working relationships with the IT department that is required in these times of real-time interactions.
The need for IT capabilities within the role of today’s CMO is further heightened by the emergence of cloud computing and its potential to revolutionise digital marketing. In addition to the huge volumes of consumer data, another significant challenge has always been the integration of different internal CRM systems. The cloud gets round this problem by allowing CMOs to bring together all data from different departments into one, easily accessible system. Most importantly, from a marketing perspective, it allows brands to utilise the vast volumes of behaviour data at their fingertips to deliver highly targeted, personalised and effective communications. But again, such gains can only be achieved with foresight and an understanding of the latest technological developments and their potential application to the business and its existing systems.
The role of the CMO today is multi-faceted and straddles many traditional departmental roles, namely marketing, sales and IT. But whilst the line continues to blur between departmental responsibilities, there’s one thing that is very clear – the CMO of the future will need a comprehensive understanding of IT and its applications if they are to survive in today’s data driven world.
