Navigating Constant Marketing Changes

Change is inevitable, but how you nav­i­gate that change is under your con­trol. As mar­ket­ing strate­gies and cus­tomer expec­ta­tions con­tin­ue to evolve, CMOs are under con­stant pres­sure to lead change in a way that ben­e­fits both the organ­i­sa­tion and the cus­tomers. Sev­er­al of our exclu­sive con­trib­u­tors to CMO.com over the last two weeks dis­cussed some of the chal­lenges CMOs face in the midst of change and how to nav­i­gate them.

Emma Jenk­ins, CMO of sofa.com, dis­cussed the chal­lenges mar­keters face with data in a world of con­stant change. Today’s cus­tomers expect brands to have every­thing togeth­er when it comes to the busi­ness of data man­age­ment. Although con­stant change makes it dif­fi­cult for brands to keep up, the ben­e­fits of per­son­al­i­sa­tion through data are clear. Jenk­ins shares some ways mar­keters can increase rel­e­vance with data out­lined in Adobe’s lat­est report “Man­ag­ing Anony­mous and Authen­ti­cat­ed Expe­ri­ences across the Cus­tomer Life­cy­cle.”

Lee Odd­en, CEO of TopRank Mar­ket­ing, shared the new expec­ta­tions for CEOs and exec­u­tives dri­ven by the explo­sive growth of social media in recent years. A company’s CMO, in par­tic­u­lar, is expect­ed to be active on social media. This type of engage­ment “helps build bet­ter con­nec­tions with cus­tomers, employ­ees, and investors.” Odd­en shares some prac­ti­cal strate­gies for CMOs to achieve social media success.

Richard Neish, man­ag­ing direc­tor of DARE, tack­led an often over­looked aspect of any major change in a com­pa­ny: behav­iour­al change. CMOs must ensure that every per­son work­ing in the com­pa­ny is on the same page and under­stands the behav­iour­al changes expect­ed of team mem­bers in order to deliv­er the best cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. Leish encour­ages CMOs to help build a com­pa­ny cul­ture that is open to change, and out­lines some spe­cif­ic steps com­pa­nies can go through to ensure pos­i­tive behav­iour­al change in the midst of dig­i­tal transformation.

CMO.com sat down with Joy Bhat­tacharya, man­ag­ing direc­tor of Accen­ture Inter­ac­tive Lead, UKI, to talk about some of the top issues mar­keters are fac­ing. One of the issues dis­cussed was lead­er­ship and cul­ture trans­for­ma­tion and how to get cus­tomers more involved in the process of trans­for­ma­tion. Anoth­er issue is marketing’s evo­lu­tion and how to tap into the rich diver­si­ty with­in an orga­ni­za­tion to sup­port this evolution.

Katz Kiely, founder and CEO of Kiely & Co, talked about the new change agents in an organ­i­sa­tion. Kiely shares some of the chal­lenges organ­i­sa­tions face when try­ing to spark change with­in the com­pa­ny. The result is often “a bar­rage of dis­con­nect­ed ini­tia­tives onto change-weary, and increas­ing­ly resis­tant, employ­ees.” Instead, organ­i­sa­tions should be look­ing for the change agents across every lev­el of the com­pa­ny and lever­ag­ing their influence.

We invite you to engage with our exclu­sive con­tent on CMO.com. Please let us know what you think.