CMOs Still Adjusting to a Data-Driven World

The marketing world is changing faster than ever these days. As consumers go increasingly digital and companies have more data at their fingertips, marketing departments in companies large and small find themselves in a whole new era, one that demands an entirely new set of strategies, tactics and technologies. Suddenly, chief marketers are having to shift their resources to focus on mining business intelligence and building one-to-one relationships in order to keep up with consumer expectations and stay ahead of the competition.

More Data and Devices Mean More Challenges

The challenge is only compounded by the vast amount of consumer data emerging from digital channels — everything from demographics to behavioral data. Weeding through mountains of data is hard enough, but actually deriving meaning from it and then making it actionable is incredibly more difficult, especially at scale.

Complicating the environment even further is the multi-screen nature of today’s consumer. As smartphones and tablets become fundamental to everything we do, it’s important that marketers respond by integrating these channels into an overarching omni-channel strategy. This doesn’t simply mean adding in a new communication channel, but it presents a whole new layer of complexity for connecting consumer behavior and interactions across the entire cosystem. Consumers expect increasingly unified experiences in their interactions with a company, whether via mobile, web or through any other channels.

New Technology Required to Unite the Entire Ecosystem

Trying to capitalize on these growing complexities, the CRM and marketing automation industries are booming. Gartner has estimated that the CRM market is worth $36.5 billion, while Raab Associates projects $1.2 billion in revenue this year for marketing automation companies. But with a reported 947 different marketing technologies available on the market, how are you supposed to decide which tools provide the best fit for your company’s needs?

Single channel point solutions, enterprise box offerings and legacy automation systems don’t offer enough flexibility in terms of applying to the entire data ecosystem. As more and more technology players enter the market and marketing operations become inherently more data-driven, it’s more important now than ever to have a structured process such as that proposed by David Raab for guiding these new investment decisions.

Raab outlined a generalized approach for relating marketing technology investments to larger business strategy. He points out that because every company has the same goal of delivering highly personalized experiences, it doesn’t mean that everyone has the same technology strategy, or even the same business strategy, for that matter. For example, when setting up their marketing operations, a company with high quality as their primary goal may integrate a series of highly sophisticated, best-of-breed technologies, while a company aiming for a lower cost market might trade off flexibility and sophistication in exchange for a suite solution that meets its core competencies but offers little more.

Once you’ve nailed down your strategy, we’ve outlined a more detailed buying process in a previous blog post.

Shift of Power

This new focus on data has left many marketing organizations scrambling to find the quantitative skill sets they need to not only succeed, but in many cases just to survive. People who are technically skilled and who are also experienced marketers are in high demand — it’s no surprise that there are job openings everywhere for these types of roles.

Marketing departments are also having to align with IT departments more closely than in years past in order to acquire greater depth of technical skills. Traditionally, IT has been viewed as little more than a support function, but for companies to succeed going forward, IT and marketing need to be strategic partners working hand-in-hand to select, deploy and operate technology solutions that support marketing needs and overall business strategy.

The bottom line is that in most organizations there’s a huge shift in technology power and responsibility toward the CMO that not only enables companies to communicate with their customers more effectively, but permeates into business intelligence, operations and other core business functions. But with great power comes great responsibility, and today’s CMO is finding it increasingly difficult to keep up with the new age of digitally empowered consumers.

CMOs Still Adjusting to a Data-Driven World