Better Marketing Is Better Business!

The majority of people who have attained marketing leadership positions have mostly concentrated on the creative aspect of engagement. However, effective marketing lies at the nexus of creativity, innovation, and art. It involves developing original means of interaction and communication as well as accurately gauging and monitoring the efficacy and outcomes. Given the variety and complexity of channels, the quantitative and measuring aspects of marketing have become increasingly important. It can also be overwhelming when one considers the ever expanding diversity, pace, veracity, and sheer volume of data that exists around campaigns and customers. Nevertheless, more

than any other C-suite leader, it's the CMO who is often armed with the data and insights that are needed to be customer-centric, which in turn, can propel growth opportunities for the organisation.

*What needs to change for CMOs to be growth leaders?

Organisations that are customer-centric are by necessity laser-focused on giving their consumers what they need to succeed. And although CMOs are the ones with all the data and analysis on the customer, the proportion of CMOs who really participate in corporate strategy development is far lower than ideal, according to a Forrester’s January 2022 Global CMO Strategy Survey that put the number at fewer than 35 per cent of CMOs that involved in business strategy decisions. Perhaps it's time that organisations and board rooms recognise that marketing needs a seat at the table, so that the function with the most valuable customer insights and data can help businesses join the dots, plan better and set relevant goals backed by actionable data.

Another aspect that is crucial for marketing success and ultimately, business growth is access to technology that provides unified views of customer data. While CMOs own the customer experience they do not necessarily control the data-driven needs critical to its success. The obstacle to being data-driven in the modern digital world may occasionally be of a financial or operational character, and often it is also a lack of knowledge on where to begin. Businesses need to invest in permeating a DDOM all through the ranks if they are to succeed in their growth agenda. Perhaps this is where it's up to the CEO and the rest of the C-suite to support and encourage the CMO to step up and partner with CTOs and CFOs to better serve the overall organisational goals.

However, it's not just about the technology stack or the working partnership between the C-suite. There’s a deeper criterion that needs to be addressed here – it is essential that CMOs today have a comprehensive understanding of the business and are thinking in the future tense in order to successfully distil the data. The CMO will be unable to use the data very fairly for company growth or serve client needs if he/she doesn't have a clear overall understanding of how everything fits together around the business’ customers and the organisation’s financials. Without this critical overview of the business, the CMO is only siloed in the marketing world and will therefore only make marketing decisions versus informed business decisions. An empowered CMO is one who holds the customer, the data, the technology AND the bigger picture of the organisation as the centre of his agenda.

*How can marketers propel business change?

To fulfil their mandate to ignite and propel customer-obsessed growth for the organisation, growth marketers must be co-producers of the corporate strategy, working alongside the leadership team and advocating initiatives across the organisation to discover and deliver value on growth prospects.

Too many CMOs become preoccupied with the techniques, such as finetuning the creative advertising execution, discussing the nuances of price changes, making sure their search engine positioning is optimised, being a slave to quarterly revenues, or even the sales team. Chief Marketing Officers have been drawn or seduced into this short-term by the demand for ever-improving data analytics, the usage of precision marketing tools, and the desire for real-time interaction. Yes, it is significant, but it is not everything. Marketing leaders need to broaden their horizons above all else.

Chief Marketing Officers need to take the lead in directing organisational strategy, innovation, and transformation. They must be change agents who promote transformation, champion customer focus, and put the customer experience at the forefront of what they do. They serve as the organisation's alignment guides, bringing together several departments to work toward a common objective. Chief Marketing Officers achieve this through fostering a shared knowledge of consumer insights and expectations within the organisation to execute on a customer-obsession strategy.

*Stepping up to the new

Chief Marketing Officers today need to be organisational leaders more than marketers. They need to be focused on sustainability, driving the entire organisation to transform its practices, but equally enabling customers to apply their own impact too. The next few years will see more change than ever before. The post-pandemic world is in turmoil, the rules are being rewritten, a new generation of brands is emerging.

It's time for CMOs to seize the enormous shifts in consumer behaviour and aspirations, together with the changes in the economy and the massive technological breakthroughs. Marketing and marketers today need to take the reins and inspire, mobilise and influence the future, innovate in business, and spur growth.