Nov. 5, 2012
Ian Wolfman, CMO of brand agency MEplusYou, recently compared the average tenure of a Fortune Global 500 CMO to the lifespan of a fruit fly. The analogy certainly captures the precarious nature of the role.
And while the average tenure of a CMO has increased from 23.6 to 43 months since 2004, questions remain about the CMO’s long-term fate. Why? Why do some believe the CMO will go the way of the dinosaur, while others see the CMO evolving into the CVBO (Chief Value Building Officer)? Whether individual CMOs ignore or embrace them, transformative trends such as social business, disintegrating lines between business functions, and the demand for broader business impact beyond marketing are forging a new breed of executives. These leaders recognize big data as the fundamental consequence of our new market landscape. That makes analytics the greatest opportunity. Big data as a key enablerBig data refers not just to data itself, but to the challenges, capabilities and competencies required to store and analyze huge data sets to support accurate and timely decision-making. Inherent in big data is the notion that businesses can extract value from collecting, processing, analyzing and acting on vast quantities of data. A helpful way for CMOs to view big data is in three buckets:
• Customer: The most familiar category may include behavioral, attitudinal and transactional metrics from sources such as marketing campaigns, points-of-sale, websites, customer surveys, social media, online communities and loyalty programs.
• Operational: Objective metrics that measure the quality of marketing and business processes may relate to marketing operations, resource allocation, asset management, budgetary planning, etc.
• Financial: Typically housed in the organization’s financial systems, this data include sales, revenue, profits and other objective data to measure the financial health of the organization. CMOs can gain the respect of their C-suite counterparts by integrating customer, operational and financial data, and making sense of it to drive enduring marketing and business performance. CMOs who adopt an integrated marketing management strategy with big data can have a meaningful effect on customer experience, customer engagement, customer loyalty and marketing performance—and thrive. Customer experience
At the core of the CMO agenda is designing and delivering differentiated customer experiences, which translate into a more loyal customer base. In the past, marketers analyzed customer feedback with minimal consideration of operational and financial data. Big data offers rich insight unachievable by examining customer feedback data alone. For instance, CMOs can use operational data in call centers (e.g., wait times or time to resolution) to improve the customer experience across channels. Operational data can also reveal training opportunities to enable front line staff to deliver better service. Customer engagement
Today’s multichannel, multidevice world makes successful customer engagements more difficult. To engage your customers successfully, you must know who they are, where they are, what they want and when they want it. CMOs can exert tremendous influence on customer engagement through big data analytics. They can ask, “What needs to change to achieve positive customer engagements?” Or, better still, “What do our customers want from us?” Customer retention and loyalty
CMOs are becoming keenly aware that customer loyalty considerations must be embedded in every touchpoint with the customer. Big data lets marketers augment existing customer touchpoints and anticipate new ones to keep valuable customers loyal in a brand-fickle world. Further, big data analytics can help CMOs allocate resources to drive revenue through successful loyalty initiatives. Marketing optimization/performance
Today’s highly empowered customers average five to 10 different touchpoints with a brand. As marketers shift budgets from traditional to digital marketing channels (email, social media, search engine optimization, display advertising and mobile), CMOs need to know the optimal marketing spend across multiple channels. With big data, CMOs can continuously optimize marketing programs through testing, measurement and analysis. With a test-and-learn approach, CMOs can deliver on the key determinant of longevity: return on investment. CMOs today are better poised than ever not only to retain their roles, but to deliver broad, sustainable business impact. CMOs who capitalize on big data will reap big rewards, both personally and professionally. Bottom line: Businesses that exploit big data outperform their competition. Wilson Raj is the global customer intelligence director of SAS.