Advertising

Skip to main content
Advertising

Experience new growth possibilities with Microsoft Advertising today >

Microsoft Advertising Blog
Page 1 of results

The ever-evolving role of the CMO

The explosion of data has made a lot of things possible. Brands now have greater visibility of their audience than ever before and are able to shape customer-centric models to suit their audience. Thanks to the inexorable rise of social media, we can now tie this information to browsing behaviors across multiple devices. Add to this the rapid ascendency of the Internet of Things (IoT), data volumes are set to grow further. 

Dealing with that data is of course the responsibility of the CMO and this means the role of the CMO is changing. Certainly, if you asked a CMO what their primary charter was ten years ago, you could be pretty safe in expecting most would identify brand awareness or driving perceptions. The situation is very different now: 68 per cent of CMOs view driving growth and revenue as a top priority; and a third (33%) regard it as being their primary mandate.1 I can’t think of any other role that’s been so significantly altered in such a short space of time. I speak from experience, my job specification is constantly being re-written – once I was just a customer-centric marketer, now I’m a technologist, data scientist and revenue driver!

Consequently, digital transformation is now a serious focus for the CMO. It’s certainly an exciting time, but I can also appreciate many marketers may feel overwhelmed. CMOs are under growing pressure to take on more and more accountability for driving growth. As such, the objective for today’s CMO is to build a natural, tailored experience that harnesses data representing a complete view of the customer across all channels. From here he or she must then draw actionable insights which deliver creativity and personalization at scale, to ultimately achieve a segment of one – so, no pressure.

There are signs of a growing consolidation across technology and marketing, with the holy grail being the de-facto integrated platform, but it’s likely to be some time until a victor emerges. One thing is for certain; CMOs cannot afford to wait for this to happen. Audiences are becoming increasingly sophisticated in how, where, and when they engage with brands, this means marketing organizations - and CMOs specifically - will need to have an integrated set of nurture systems with an underlying insight cloud in place to enable real-time collaboration. However, if an organization wants to meet customers on their own terms, they need to invest in next-gen technologies such as predictive analytics, marketing AI and machine learning (for example). 

Adopting a digitally centric business model is, without a doubt, the key to engaging with customers, empowering colleagues, optimizing operations, and reinventing products and business models. It is worth bearing in mind this is a systems approach, and it's not just about technology. Digital transformation necessitates entirely new thinking on the part of the executive team to embrace business models that bring together people, data, and processes to create value for all stakeholders. The cloud presents a single platform to bring these elements together. In doing so, the CMO will be able to unlock new revenue streams, improve the customer experience and, crucially, leverage the collective intelligence of people across the organization.

Successful marketing operations will be driven by collaboration and the cloud because the opportunities presented by big data, connected things, advanced analytics and A.I. are simply too significant to ignore and will become the driving force of the global economy. Like it or not, this means the role of the CMO is changing and marketers can choose to lead this transformation and gain competitive advantage, or risk being left behind.

1 The CMO Shift to Gaining Business Lift, Deloitte, Dec 2016