The Priorities That Keep CMOs Focused

CMOs often have to car­ry a vari­ety of respon­si­bil­i­ties on their shoulders—from data analy­sis to dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing to map­ping out the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence and more. Jug­gling it all can often be a chal­lenge, espe­cial­ly when mar­ket­ing suc­cess­es are on the line. For­tu­nate­ly, over the last cou­ple of weeks, sev­er­al of our CMO.com con­trib­u­tors have dis­cussed some pri­or­i­ties for CMOs.

Markus Hohl, the Lon­don CEO of Hel­lon, called atten­tion to an often over­looked ele­ment of cus­tomer-cen­tric­i­ty: empa­thy. Much of the talk around improv­ing the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence focus­es on dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion and the design of cus­tomer expe­ri­ences, which are def­i­nite­ly impor­tant. Hohl encour­ages com­pa­nies to adopt cor­po­rate empa­thy to bet­ter under­stand the customer’s unique per­spec­tive. Hohl doesn’t just chal­lenge com­pa­nies to adopt empa­thy, he also gives some spe­cif­ic strate­gies for mov­ing in that direction.

Mike Reg­nier, CCO for the York­shire Build­ing Soci­ety, shared the impor­tance of the chief cus­tomer offi­cer (CCO) in a com­pa­ny. The CCO focus­es on the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, which is espe­cial­ly impor­tant because com­pa­nies are hav­ing to “com­pete on the qual­i­ty of the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence they offer.” Chris Dun­can, CCO at News U.K., shares the view that the role of the CCO is about “mak­ing the right bets around where the audi­ence is that we need to serve and the choic­es we need to make to reach them.”

Thomas Bar­ta, CMO lead­er­ship thought leader, keynote speak­er, and author, shared some insights on the pri­or­i­ties CMOs should adopt. Bar­ta paints a pic­ture of the life of the exec­u­tive who has nev­er “had to deal with so many pri­or­i­ties, tasks, dead­lines, and, most promi­nent­ly, emails.” With so many respon­si­bil­i­ties, it’s impor­tant to set pri­or­i­ties, and Bar­ta walks CMOs through some help­ful steps for pri­ori­tis­ing their time.

Bill Muller, CMO of Visu­al IQ, dove into the pri­or­i­ty of CMOs to mea­sure their brand mar­ket­ing efforts. CMOs need to be able to pro­vide ample evi­dence of the impact of their brand mar­ket­ing efforts to their C‑level col­leagues. Muller out­lines some impor­tant steps for deter­min­ing a brand’s engage­ment score. This gives CMOs greater con­trol over their brand­ing efforts, as well as a bet­ter idea of what direc­tion to go in next.

David Sealey, head of Dig­i­tal Con­sult­ing at CACI, dis­cussed the pri­or­i­ty CMOs should have to keep con­ver­sa­tions with indi­vid­u­als going in the midst of major cam­paigns. Every­one realis­es that a con­ver­sa­tion with a small group of peo­ple can be a chal­lenge. For mar­keters, the chal­lenge is ampli­fied when one cam­paign might reach mil­lions of peo­ple. Sealey shared that per­son­al­i­sa­tion at scale is the key to main­tain­ing these con­ver­sa­tions. He chal­lenges mar­keters to start small and focus on key points along the cus­tomer jour­ney that are like­ly to make the biggest dif­fer­ence to customers.

We hope you’ll spend some time engag­ing with our exclu­sive con­tent on CMO.com and learn­ing from some of the industry’s top mar­ket­ing pro­fes­sion­als. Please let us know what you think.