CMO.com Highlights – New Marketing Technology

Last’s week exclu­sive con­tent focused pri­mar­i­ly on new tech­nolo­gies in the cor­po­rate mar­ket­ing world. As more and more cus­tomers are engag­ing with the major­i­ty of their con­tent through dig­i­tal chan­nels, it becomes increas­ing­ly more impor­tant for brands to under­stand them and tai­lor their con­tent for dis­tri­b­u­tion through those chan­nels. Dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion presents plen­ty of chal­lenges for the com­pa­ny that has always relied on tra­di­tion­al chan­nels, but the firms that devel­op strate­gies to meet the dig­i­tal chal­lenges head on tend to find more suc­cess than those that don’t. Brands also have to under­stand the com­plex­i­ty that dig­i­tal presents so that they don’t regress to tra­di­tion­al meth­ods that are no longer applicable.

The week began with a recap of the Fes­ti­val of Mar­ket­ing in Lon­don where pre­sen­ters dis­cussed the chal­lenges of cus­tomer con­nec­tion and mea­sur­ing customer’s unique paths to pur­chase. Lisa Wood, CMO of Atom Bank, stressed the need for brands to tai­lor com­mu­ni­ca­tion to the dif­fer­ent chan­nels they’re using. Her point addressed the fact that peo­ple engage with dif­fer­ent chan­nels in dif­fer­ent ways, so although it increas­es the com­plex­i­ty, brands need to adapt their con­tent to the strengths of each chan­nel. Anoth­er pre­sen­ter, Nina Bib­by, O2/Telefonica’s mar­ket­ing and con­sumer direc­tor shared how her com­pa­ny has met the cus­tomer con­nec­tion chal­lenge by focus­ing on their brand pur­pose and cre­at­ing an “emo­tion­al attach­ment” with their customers.

Last week’s CMO.com inter­view with April Red­mond, CMO of Ker­ry Foods, focused on the need for com­pa­nies to under­stand new tech­nolo­gies through test­ing and learn­ing. The days of rely­ing only on tra­di­tion­al chan­nels are in the past. How­ev­er, many com­pa­nies are strug­gling with embrac­ing dig­i­tal. Red­mond shared how Ker­ry Foods has been increas­ing­ly embrac­ing dig­i­tal over the last three years and what they’ve had to learn. She also shared how impor­tant data is for mak­ing deci­sions on what to focus on in dig­i­tal channels.

AdRoll’s State of the Indus­try Report found that most adver­tis­ers are still rely­ing on a sin­gle-touch attri­bu­tion mod­el even though the cus­tomer path to pur­chase is much more com­plex. When the pur­chas­ing jour­ney often spans mul­ti­ple devices and chan­nels, adver­tis­ers need to adopt more sophis­ti­cat­ed mod­el­ling to under­stand how the dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ca­tions chan­nels are work­ing. This also presents sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges for how com­pa­nies divide their mar­ket­ing budgets.

Katz Kiely, CEO and Founder of Kiely & Co, shared how to use a social media plat­form like Yam­mer with a busi­ness cul­ture to give employ­ees sup­port through key organ­i­sa­tion­al changes. Specif­i­cal­ly, Kiely address­es the need for com­pa­nies to inte­grate col­lab­o­ra­tion and con­ver­sa­tion into their com­pa­ny cul­ture. While adding a social media solu­tion is impor­tant, Kiely stress­es the need to intro­duce new tech­nolo­gies with clear adop­tion strate­gies. She clos­es with some spe­cif­ic strate­gies for how com­pa­nies can har­ness the pow­er of social technology.

The week end­ed with less of a focus on tech­nol­o­gy. Instead, we heard a dis­cus­sion of employ­ee behav­ior in how they man­age their time and men­tal ener­gy. Klaus Som­mer Paulsen, CEO and Founder of Adven­ture­lab, shared the mod­ern myth that to make a dif­fer­ence, employ­ees must be will­ing to work an exces­sive amount of hours. The irony is that when employ­ees start work­ing more than 50 hours a week, they start gen­er­at­ing more prob­lems than solu­tions. Paulsen chal­lenges com­pa­nies to devel­op a bet­ter team frame­work for their employ­ees because it not only sup­ports the employ­ees; it’s bet­ter for the busi­ness as well.

We’d love for you to engage with our exclu­sive con­tent on CMO.com and learn from some of the industry’s top mar­ket­ing experts. Please let us know what you think.