CMO.com Highlights — Mobile Marketing as More Than Just Another Channel

Last week’s exclu­sive con­tent on CMO.com was all about how mobile is shap­ing the way mar­keters approach their craft. There’s no doubt that embrac­ing mobile increas­es a brand’s chances of reach­ing a poten­tial cus­tomer, but there are impor­tant con­sid­er­a­tions for the best approach to uti­lize mobile in dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing. Brands want to avoid the mis­take of see­ing mobile as just anoth­er chan­nel to deliv­er con­tent. Cus­tomers don’t use their mobile devices to access brand ads, so dis­cov­er­ing new ways to engage with con­sumers and cre­ate rel­e­vance for their brand are key.

I had the priv­i­lege of begin­ning the week by dis­cussing the Adobe & Econ­sul­tan­cy 2016 Dig­i­tal Trends Report, which high­light­ed the focus many brands will have this year on opti­miz­ing the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. While cus­tomer expe­ri­ence was an impor­tant buzz­word in 2014 and more so in 2015, 2016 will see more com­pa­nies shap­ing oth­er aspects of their organ­i­sa­tions around it. This will mean mar­keters grap­pling fur­ther with data-dri­ven mar­ket­ing and cre­at­ing com­pelling con­tent in order to shape the kind of expe­ri­ence cus­tomers are look­ing for.

Ari­ane Längs­feld, Euro­pean Brand Man­ag­er — Media & Dig­i­tal at Mill­ward Brown, con­tin­ued the week with a look at mobile and the new and excit­ing ways brands can uti­lize it to con­nect with con­sumers. Längs­feld shared an impor­tant insight, which is that mobile shouldn’t be viewed as just anoth­er chan­nel to deliv­er ads to con­sumers. Instead, brands need to be more strate­gic in pro­vid­ing rel­e­vant use­ful­ness in a mobile app, for instance L’Oreal’s Make­up Genius app. With this app, cus­tomers can take a self­ie and try dif­fer­ent styles of make­up on their mobile phone or tablet. While not every com­pa­ny is poised to seam­less­ly con­nect func­tion­al­i­ty of mobile in the same way, brands need to find rel­e­vant and unique ways to serve customers.

Each week, we pub­lish an inter­view with a CMO or Senior Mar­ket­ing Exec­u­tive who typ­i­cal­ly talks about a dig­i­tal jour­ney that they are about to embark upon. But how do these dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion ini­tia­tives work out? What were the lessons learned and pit­falls to avoid? What changed dur­ing the year? Last week, we went back to one of our CMO Inter­views (from Feb­ru­ary 2015) to answer those exact ques­tions. Twelve months ago, Blake Cahill, Glob­al Head of Dig­i­tal and Social Mar­ket­ing at Philips, spoke about Philips’ glob­al dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion pro­gramme and how the aim was to enable the busi­ness to move faster and not take two years to roll out new tech­nol­o­gy. We caught up with Blake to dis­cuss the programme’s progress and how glob­al changes in the past 12 months have affect­ed Philips and the way it’s mov­ing for­ward. Cahill shared the tran­si­tion Philips made from a more tra­di­tion­al desk­top-first approach last year to a mobile-first dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy this year. Part of that tran­si­tion involved less reliance on out­side agen­cies and doing more data analy­sis in-house. Philips has strived to embrace dig­i­tal in a way that keeps the com­pa­ny mov­ing faster and adopt­ing tech­nol­o­gy soon­er rather than later.

In an exclu­sive video filmed after last year’s Adobe Dig­i­tal Mar­ket­ing Sym­po­sium, Henk Jan Gerzee, VP eBusi­ness at Dutch pub­lish­er Else­vi­er, shared his opin­ion that mar­ket­ing is becom­ing more of a sci­ence and less of an art. This is impact­ing how com­pa­nies hire, as dif­fer­ent skillsets are becom­ing more vital. With mobile and dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion, com­pa­nies need more devel­op­ers in their mar­ket­ing depart­ments. Gerzee also shared how his com­pa­ny is rely­ing more on rev­enue met­rics to mea­sure return on mar­ket­ing invest­ment. Check out the video to hear more from Henk Jan Gerzee.

The week end­ed with a much-need­ed dose of con­fi­dence from Thomas Bar­ta, CMO Advis­er and Man­ag­ing Direc­tor, act­vance | Glob­al Lead­er­ship Advis­ers. Bar­ta shared that mar­keters often hold back from being an influ­en­tial voice in design­ing a company’s cus­tomer agen­da. When a mar­keter lacks con­fi­dence and holds back, how­ev­er, a com­pa­ny tends to suf­fer for it, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the way it con­nects with con­sumers. Cus­tomer lead­ers, who tend to be more sen­si­tive to emo­tions, need to realize—and embrace the fact—that they think dif­fer­ent­ly from lead­ers in areas like finance and oper­a­tions, whose roles require a more ratio­nal approach.

We invite you to spend some time learn­ing from some of the world’s top mar­keters through our exclu­sive con­tent on CMO.com. Please let us know what you think.