With the opportunities it creates for new and deeper connections with clients, the digital revolution has ushered in a golden age of marketing. Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs), particularly those who head B2B organizations, are increasingly challenging to keep up with new times.
Before the pandemic, marketing leaders were limited to strategic marketing planning and delivery responsibilities. Now they are expected to deliver the type of strategic leadership necessary to position the organization to unlock value and drive additional development- in the digital environment.
Digital technologies and structural changes have blurred the barriers between marketing, technology, product management, and sales. So, the B2B CMO function is confronted with tremendous hurdles.
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However, there is a way for industry leaders to remain relevant, serving as trustworthy brand stewards and drivers for growth. They can retake the strategic high ground by adhering to a well-defined strategy.
A more prominent strategic role
In addition to branding strategy and execution, progressive organizations now require marketers to take a more strategic role in customer segmentation, product value proposition definition, customer touchpoint identification, and coverage model determination. Marketers at these organizations also play a significant role early in the product development life cycle. They ensure that their on-the-ground customer expertise, competition intelligence, and market and product research are leveraged to create products that better meet customer needs.
While marketers focus on developing these cutting-edge strategic marketing capabilities, they must also focus on tactical marketing capabilities such as lead generation, event management, and sales collateral development. These qualities are necessary for CMOs to ensure they have a place at the table and influence the strategic growth plan.
Here are some key insights on how B2B CMOs have progressed from supporting roles in ‘Off-Boardroom’ productions to leading the executive show as they accept new job mandates:
Also Read: Four Key Approaches to Delivering Exceptional Customer Experience (CX) in 2022
Keeping a focus on the big picture:
With closer examination of the impact of marketing on corporate goals, marketers can contribute more to business strategy. Influential CMOs respond to executive accountability demands by establishing objectives and KPIs closely related to overall business objectives such as customer acquisition, retention, market share, and account penetration. Additionally, they eliminate marketing-specific indicators from their reporting on marketing results.
Collaborating with colleagues to develop engagement with customers:
Marketing executives strengthen customer engagement by coordinating feedback across the company to discover gaps in sales, purchasing, and support experiences that impede zealous focus on client encounters. Empowered customers expect sellers to be as familiar with them as they are with the sellers, even before the first sales call. Developing a customer-centric mindset takes more than the marketing department alone to achieve this goal. CMOs committed to greater customer engagement solicit input from across the enterprise — for example, the Chief Information Officer (CIO), the Chief Operating Officer (COO), and the head of sales. The goal is to identify gaps in customer insight, purchase and implementation experiences, sales engagement, and thought leadership that impede fanatical attention to customer interactions.
Effective delegation:
Top marketing leaders make sound hiring decisions and increasingly delegate responsibility to their employees, agencies, and service providers. Rather than focusing exclusively on tactical activities, CMOs prioritize their calendars according to three criteria: strategic importance, customer value, and long-term brand health. If the request does not fall into one of those categories, they delegate it to another employee.
Transforming internal perceptions of marketing:
Despite the broader mandate, the belief that marketing is synonymous with brand and advertising persists. Top marketers break this pattern when they challenge entrenched assumptions about the role of marketing in generating revenue growth, new market penetration, and customer-driven innovation with data-driven insights.
Marketing leaders are increasingly assisting their teams in increasing their agility and simplifying peer working relationships to advance to higher corporate leadership chances. The capacity to bridge organizational silos and focus company strategy, energy and budget on boosting customer knowledge and engagement is critical to this change.
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