The Modern Chief Marketing Officer Is Also Chief Change Agent
There’s a new trend manifesting across the business world: the “modern” Chief Marketing Officer doubling as Chief Change Agent. Today’s CMO/CCA is data-driven, predicts customer needs and delivers value-added, personalized experiences. Come along on the journey with Claire Darling, Vice President, Growth Marketing, Intapp in this article.
Like many elements of the tech industry, the CMO role is changing rapidly. What I see happening now in the data economy that we all live in is the chief marketing officer is increasingly doubling as the “chief change agent.” Fueling this evolution is the data-driven mindset that is now the norm for many enterprises and forward-thinking organizations worldwide.
At its core, this trend is powered by CMOs who embrace all-things-data and go all-in with transitioning their organizations from reactive to insight-based and predictive. When this initiative is successful, the rewards are substantial. What I refer to as the “modern” CMO is someone who is able to break down internal data silos to unlock the business power of formerly fragmented data. The same goes for breaking down departmental silos with different functional areas to build an effective internal coalition. By doing both, the CMO gains invaluable knowledge across the entire customer lifecycle and is able to use that data and internal expertise to predict customer needs and provide them with more personalized experiences. The end result? Delivering growth and revenue.
Learn More: Goodbye CMO, Hello CCO (Chief Customer Officer)
The keyword here is “when,” because making this transition from reactive to predictive is rarely smooth sailing. Having been through it at a couple large tech companies, trust me on this one!
The Modern CMO/CCA
What I would denote as forward-thinking organizations are those that, among other factors, view their CMOs as strategic collaborators rather than just senior-level marketers running a support function. In my experience, this dynamic leads to considerably more effective marketing and business development outcomes.
CMOs who can provide their fellow decision-makers with actionable insights based on in-depth customer knowledge and analysis of market forces are better able to build trust and gain the credibility needed to act as strategic change agents. The “spray and pray” approach that ruled marketing departments not that long ago is thankfully on its way out. Where the going gets rough, however, is having access to the tools and infrastructure needed to provide these pieces of the marketing puzzle.
The truth is that CMOs and their teams can only provide these insights if they have a seamless process to access, capture and connect data points and predict future customer needs with confidence. Armed with these high-confidence insights, the marketing team can collaborate with their sales, customer success and other teams to create data-driven growth strategies and plans.
If you’re thinking this is where artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) come into play, you are correct…sort of. The AI/ML combination is an essential element, but it’s not the panacea to all that ails the modern CMO.
CMOs today are fortunate to have near-endless options of marketing technology to choose from. While that’s great on one hand, it’s a ton of work to wade through the ocean of solutions on the other hand. The solutions that enable a CMO to double as a CCA certainly have AI/ML – that’s a non-starter in today’s B2B world.
To this non-starter list I would also add a purpose-built, cloud solution set for your industry with few limits on storage and processing capacity; analytics at near real-time speed; and the flexibility to be customized to your organization’s exact strategic initiatives. And, on the non-technical side, I would include the aforementioned CMO-built coalition of internal teams.
There’s another strategy employed by the modern CMO/CCA that has been around for a while in some way, shape or form, but is greatly amplified with data and collaboration: personas. This is a whole subject to itself, but what I’ll say here is that it’s an essential piece of the marketing puzzle for any organization that sells to multiple decision-maker roles. In fact, it’s critical to how my team and I operate on a daily basis since we engage many personas. What is important to a CIO is less so, or not at all, to a CMO, for example. So the messaging, tactics, channels and other marketing approaches need to reflect each persona profile to maximize effectiveness. Mapping out their needs, in their language, is what gets the engagement relationship activated.
Speaking of targeting…
The Pareto Rule – and Then Some
So, let’s say a CMO has ALL of the above figured out. The data, the systems, the buy-in from fellow decision-makers and, most importantly, the forward-thinking mindset to appreciate the situation. Now what?
My answer is “focus.” And there’s no better place to start than the Pareto Rule.
The Pareto Rule (aka 80/20 Rule) governs many things in business. In short, it says that 80% of revenue and profit come from only 20% of customers.
A trend I have noticed becoming more pronounced in the last few years takes the Pareto Rule even further, to what has been dubbed the “Super Pareto” effect. Think of this as the 95/5 Rule. A great example is the legal industry (one of the vertical markets my company builds solutions for), where many law firms now face the “Super Pareto” effect, with 90% to 95% of the profits coming from only 5% to 10% of the work. That’s more than just a rule of thumb, it’s a pattern with significant potential for driving growth. And who better to recognize and act on a growth-driving pattern than the person with a birds-eye view across the entire customer lifecycle – the CMO!
At most companies, CMOs are best positioned to champion data- and Pareto Rule-driven decision-making and the requisite infrastructure and process changes needed to fuel it. With a forward-thinking and data-driven CMO in place, an organization can see and act on patterns like Super Pareto. They are also better able to anticipate client needs and respond with key client programs that generate more revenue, stronger relationships and client retention.
The scenario described above leads into the next area I want to explore where the CMO engenders change: account-based marketing.
Learn More: CMOs Need to Focus and Scale in 2019
When Data Meets ABM, Change Happens
Based on my experience running global marketing teams, I am a huge proponent of account-based marketing (ABM) because, quite frankly, it works. ABM is a strategic go-to-market approach for designing and executing highly targeted, personalized marketing and sales efforts to drive business growth and deepen engagement with specific key customers.
Organizations that run ABM initiatives, adhere to the Pareto Rule AND use modern technology to manage their data often find this combination to be a data-driven and revenue-producing powerhouse. That’s the kind of CMO-led change that gets the attention of your company – from top to bottom.
The best ABM results don’t come from a one-size-fits-all program, however. Rather, a tiered approach is the most efficient and effective methodology for ABM success. Here’s an example:
1. One-to-One ABM typically includes deep-dive research into a small number of key customer accounts, long-term programs to strengthen competitive position and open substantial new opportunities, and a mix of custom programs and activities.
2. One-to-Few ABM takes the research-based principles of One-to-One ABM and applies them to small groups or clusters of priority customers with similar business issues and attributes.
3. One-to-Many ABM emphasizes customer targeting and personalization at scale, relying on technology and analytics to target the right customers and provide messaging, content and activities to engage and nurture the most relevant needs and opportunities primarily in digital watering holes they congregate around.
One popular initiative in the ABM domain in legal and other industries is the “key client” program. According to Wendy Bernero, CMO of the global law firm Baker McKenzie, “The success drivers of our key client program include deep client understanding, managing performance to KPIs focused on client-value-delivery, and account management of portfolios of clients along industry sector lines. Our recent implementation of a robust client development platform that brings all of our client knowledge, data and insight together in one place promises to accelerate our progress in the months and years to come.”
Stitching Together People, Process and Data Is the CMO/CCA’s Biggest Challenge of All
It’s important to reiterate that modern, forward-thinking organizations view their CMOs as strategic collaborators – and agents of change – rather than simply overseers of a support function. Getting there requires collaboration. LOTS of collaboration!
CMO/CCAs who actively and strategically transition their organizations from reactive to insight-based will accelerate their ability to win business with both new and existing customers. The most successful are those who are able to accomplish this by stitching together people, process and data to change the way their organizations operate and, ultimately, the growth trajectory of the business.
