21st Century Public Relations

Digest...

Here are five themes for the future which resonated across multiple surveys and form the basis for these predictions. Remember, they are made specifically for large and extra-large companies.

 

1. Customer Experience Will Be the Battleground Marketers Are Fighting Over

In 2016 customer experience will garner the highest level of marketing investment; it is one of three areas in which CEO’s expectations of CMOs will increase the most; and bleeding-edge technologies to improve it will be the top innovation project marketers undertake.

 

2.  How Marketers Use Customer Data Will Determine their Level of Success

Managing, collecting and making use of internal and external data was the second highest area of CEO’s increased expectations for CMOs. Marketers will analyze data less and synthesize it more, leading to better and more actionable conclusions. Distribution of the data to decentralized groups such as brands or business units will occur to allow for informed recommendations/decisions about what action to take.

 

3.  Digital Commerce Will be Inextricably Linked with Marketing

We found that in 25% of organizations, marketing has total responsibility for digital commerce, and in 46% of companies, marketing owns a digital commerce P&L now.  Whether you lead or support your company’s digital commerce efforts, plan for higher investment and a greater role in crafting compelling commerce experiences. 

 

4.  Marketing Will Set the Strategy for Not Just Marketing Technology, But for All Customer-facing Technology

Marketing will be intensely involved in all technology that touches the customer as it works on improving the customer experience with customer service, sales and operations. It already sets the strategy and develops the roadmap for marketing technology in over 90% of companies. In a growing number of companies it is moving into different elements of revenue management, including former sales systems. By the end of 2016, customer-facing technology strategy and roadmaps will be led by marketing in at least one quarter of companies.

 

5.  Marketing Innovation Will Come Out of the Closet

For the second year in a row we found that marketers are setting aside more than 9% of their budget for innovation. Leading a culture of change and company-wide innovation was the third highest ranked increased CEO expectation of CMOs. More marketing executives have innovation in their title.  An increasing number of CMOs manage product development as well as product management. Digital business transformation is causing many industries to shift their business model and offerings to digital vs. physical; putting marketing squarely in the middle of such innovation. 

 

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Via Marteq

Advanced/ Excerpt...

Looking at the latest marketing technology landscape, you might ask yourself, “How the heck do marketers make sense of all of this?” Increasingly, the answer is: they have a chief marketing technologist.

A terrific new research report by Laura McLellan of Gartner, How the Presence of a Chief Marketing Technologist Impacts Marketing, confirms that this senior hybrid role — “part strategist, part creative and part technologist” and “broadly the equivalent of a CTO and a CIO dedicated to marketing”— is growing in popularity. Within large companies — more than $500 million in annual revenue — 81% of them now have a chief marketing technologist role, up from 71% just a year ago. Another 8% expect to add that role within the next 24 months.

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Via Marteq

To come up with the Hot Marketing Tips for 2014, I turned to CMOs, authors, CEOs, and even a Dean. I asked the experts to provide their top tips for CMOs as we move from 2013 to 2014.

Advanced/ Digest...

Below are 5 of the best ideas (and a bonus one) that range from career to management to marketing advice.

 

Tip #1: Think ‘Cloud’ First

CMOs in 2014 need to think ‘cloud’ first as the vast amount of channels, systems, media and networks that make marketing ‘work’ will grow even more over the next 12-24 months. Being able to integrate systems and reconcile data on a daily basis is the only way the CMO’s business will stay aligned with the speed of today’s audience/consumer.”

 

Tip #2: Bias for Action

Marketers will be well served by getting into the market quicker, reading results faster, and being more agile in action.

 

Tip #3: Don’t Fall Behind While the World Moves Ahead

The technologies and data sources for tracking (marketing fundamentals) are changing at warp speed.  Failing to keep up is a certain recipe for falling behind, but today’s environment offers many more ways to stay abreast than in years past. 

 

Tip #4: Learn Google Analytics

Every CMO with a strong online presence should be fluent in how to analyze, understand and evaluate at a high level their online traffic.  This skill is necessary to ‘walk the talk’ with their team and gain credibility with senior executives. Should a CMO routinely spend time in Google Analytics? Probably not, but understanding the concepts of online analytics will make a CMO more effective in all aspects of their job.

 

Tip #5: Don’t Focus on Profit at the Expense of Growth

Many smaller / mid-sized firms are so worried about the bottom line that they adopt a state of analysis paralysis when it comes to planning for the future. Focusing on profit while ignoring the planning that can lead to growth can be costly and prevent the executive from achieving long(er)-term business goals.

 

Bonus Tip: Drive More Revenue from Content Marketing

The power of content marketing comes from leveraging the rich data captured within marketing automation to better educate and convert prospects to qualified leads and high value sales. CMOs that approach content marketing strategically, with disciplined processes and alignment to revenue will generate more value from the technologies already in place that are severely under-utilized.

 

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Via Marteq

Advanced/ Digest...

There’s a deep organizational chasm between [marketing and technology]. But worse, each has their own language, tools, and processes. Plain and simple, the two organizations don’t know how to talk to each other, and the result is the wrong technology for the right market (if you’re a marketer) or the right technology for the wrong market (if you’re a technologist.) Both ways, customers suffer and so do business results.

 

The biggest difference, however, is around customers. Where marketers pull, technologists push – can’t be more different than that. But neither is right, both are. There’s a huge need for translators – marketers that speak technologist and technologists that talk marketing. But how to develop them?

 

To transcend the language barrier, don’t use words, use video. To help technologists understand unmet customer needs, show them a video of a real customer in action, a real customer with a real problem. Technologists don’t believe marketers; technologists believe their own eyes, so let them.

 

To help marketers understand technology, don’t use words, use live demos. Technologists – set up a live demo to show what the technology can do. Put the marketer in front of the technology and let them drive, but you can’t tell them how to drive.  Marketers don’t understand technology, they understand their own eyes, so let them.

 

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► Receive a FREE daily summary of The Marketing Technology Alert directly to your inbox:  http://ineomarketing.com/About_The_MAR_Sub.html (your privacy is protected).

Via Marteq

The short version: the above graphic is the latest incarnation of my marketing technology landscape supergraphic (click for a high-resolution 2600×1950 version, 4.7MB).

Via Marteq, Ally Greer