The 21st-century CMO: How digital marketing is driving organization transformation

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1 The 21st-century CMO: How digital marketing is driving organization transformation Taking full ownership of customer experience management Table of contents 1: Demonstrating CMOs top-line contribution 2: Digital marketing: Addressing and re-addressing customers 3: Executing organizational transformation 4: WCM: The hub for multichannel pipeline growth 6: Summary: Customer experience management is a must The explosive growth of digital marketing is driving a significant organizational transformation in which chief marketing officers (CMOs) can redefine and elevate their role as never before. Today s CMOs now have a broad set of tools to impact and optimize customer experiences and ultimately drive revenue for their company. And thanks to recent advances in closed-loop marketing, CMOs can measure and demonstrate the effectiveness of their digital marketing efforts in terms of customer acquisition, customer retention, and revenue growth. This level of measurement is transforming the role of the CMO within organizations, paving the way for 21st-century CMOs whose tenure is on the rise as they become an indispensable asset to companies. In fact, according to a 2010 Spencer Stuart survey, the average CMO tenure has risen nearly 50% in the past two years, from 23.2 months to over 34 months. Today s 21st-century CMOs are pursuing digital marketing across a large number of channels simultaneously. As they do, they leverage the capabilities inherent in next-generation web content management (WCM) platforms to strike a balance between two conflicting goals: to spread branding and messaging as widely as possible, and to maintain control over their content as they deliver branding and experiences appropriate to each unique channel. This paper highlights the advances in closed-loop marketing that enable measurement and optimization of digital marketing efforts. It also describes the challenges that CMOs face when pursuing digital marketing strategies and how next-generation WCM solutions help CMOs overcome those challenges. Demonstrating CMOs top-line contribution As recently as 2008, the average CMO tenure was less than two years, due in large part to the inability of CMOs to clearly identify and articulate marketing s role and to prove its value to the organization (from Brandweek, CMOs Are Staying in Jobs Longer, June 25, 2010). This shortcoming has helped fuel the popular belief that marketing is not as critical to business operations as sales, engineering, or finance. In fact, the results of a recent Forrester Research survey, Corporate Marketing: Does It Matter?, reveal that fewer than 50% of marketers view themselves as responsible for increasing top-line growth or increasing profitability.

2 Marketers still need greater alignment to business objectives But recent advances in closed-loop marketing are enabling CMOs to significantly raise the level of understanding regarding the origin and quality of sales leads developed by marketing, providing organizations with quantifiable business results that can either indemnify or indict a CMO. The following capabilities provide CMOs with a wealth of data for measuring digital marketing results everything needed to engage a prospect and move them through the sales funnel: Multichannel campaign optimization Content targeting and multivariate testing tools are providing CMOs with a virtual cockpit for controlling messages across channels. CMOs can tap into critical data and customize messages so that every experience is engaging and optimal. Using multivariate testing, CMOs can then evaluate audience preferences and promote or pull campaigns based on response rates. Multichannel campaign management Campaign and analytics, such as opens, bounces, click-throughs Multivariate testing Landing page optimization marketing and analytics With results in hand, CMOs have begun to step into the spotlight. As more and more organizations recognize the growing impact of CMO performance on their bottom line, CMOs are seeing their performance evaluations aligned more tightly to revenue. Digital marketing: Addressing and re-addressing customers Digital marketing essentially transforms marketing from a transaction-based monologue to an interactive conversation with customers and prospects taking place on any digital media, be it a smartphone, tablet device, kiosk, computer, or television. If done in an integrated and methodical manner, digital marketing can help marketers grow their pipelines with more of today s savvy digital channel customers who seek to be engaged, rather than merely sold to, by vendors. Addressing and re-addressing the customer is key to success. For digital marketing efforts to succeed, CMOs need to focus on the manner in which they address their customers across the differing online channels. Not all channels are the same. For example, customers using tablet devices might be drawn to an interactive, gamestyled promotion while computer-centered customers seek in-depth educational materials. The challenge for CMOs is to maintain consistent branding and messaging while delivering channel-appropriate experiences that 2

3 engage each distinct audience. Having the right tools and processes in place to control and improve the user experience in each channel is essential. In essence, a multichannel engagement system or next-generation WCM is required to fulfill the digital marketing goals of 21st-century CMOs. What is a 21st-century CMO? A 21st-century CMO is one who leverages digital marketing to reach customers across multiple channels, filling a company s pipeline with well-qualified leads and demonstrating revenue growth from marketing programs. CMOs that do not embrace the benefits of interactive and closed-loop marketing will struggle to compete with their peers and can expect short tenures. Jeff Bell, vice president of global marketing at Microsoft s Interactive Entertainment Business, foresaw this trend years ago. According to Bell, The shorter tenure is in part a reflection of the change from failing traditional-marketing approaches to less-defined and more dynamic approaches. Clearly the skill set of CMOs is changing from TV, TV and more TV to interactive media. * CMOs who grasp the techniques and execute a sound digital marketing strategy can look forward to longer tenures with more influence at the executive roundtable. But even the savviest CMOs face tremendous challenges when implementing digital marketing programs. First and foremost, they are charged with numerous responsibilities that detract from digital marketing efforts, namely the critical activities listed in the following table. Marketing must usually manage the applications and external vendors that support these activities, which means overseeing a disparate set of systems and vendors to get the job done. The list can be quite daunting, and includes everything from marketing automation and business intelligence software to providers of customer data and event-triggered marketing. Traditional Interactive and Online Customer Satisfaction Marketing communications Social media marketing E-marketing Public relations Website management E-sales Database marketing Search engine marketing E-service Campaign creation and management Event management Search engine optimization Webinars Sales support Executing organizational transformation Managing so many activities and disparate systems inhibits progress along the path of organizational transformation. According to the Aberdeen Group s 2009 report, Next Generation Web Content Management, the problem is not a lack of data, but a lack of data quality and an inability to translate data into automated engagement. For instance, 45% of respondents surveyed by Aberdeen stated that their No. 1 marketing challenge is extracting insight from data. And a full one-third of respondents cited a second major challenge a lack of resources to derive quantifiable business value from web analytics data. To overcome these challenges, a majority of CMOs are planning to merge their disparate marketing applications and tools into an integrated marketing automation platform. As the following figure shows, nearly 87% of CMOs who do not currently leverage an integrated marketing automation platform are planning to do so. * AdvertisingAge, CMOs, You Have 23 Months to Live, June 19,

4 Adoption of integrated marketing technologies It is important to note that no singular technology can be its own marketing automation platform. That is why analysts and CMOs alike refer to it is an integrated platform. It is an integration of three key elements: Placing marketing applications into a well-thought-out architecture Selecting providers that integrate easily Ensuring that vendors provide the required business outcomes rather than merely installing sets of disparate functions For most 21st-century CMOs, next-generation WCM systems serve as the core of their integrated marketing automation platform. WCM: The hub for multichannel pipeline growth Today, WCM platforms incorporate a host of capabilities that expand their original scope. Next-generation platforms combine WCM with integration services for digital asset management and social collaboration. Together, these capabilities empower CMOs to deliver media-rich, community-oriented customer experiences that increase brand awareness, drive customer engagement, and build customer loyalty and campaign success. Serving as the marketing hub for CMOs, next-generation WCM platforms provide one central location for permission-based access and publishing of marketing messages and programs across all types of digital channels. In this way, these platforms have evolved into systems that help CMOs grow their pipeline of qualified buyers across different channels. 4

5 Benefits of using next-generation WCM Optimization of digital marketing budget spend Engagement of customers and prospects with channel-specific media Increased customer retention through highly personalized interaction One look under the hood of these next-generation WCM platforms leads to instant appreciation for the extra content control and interactive capabilities that they afford. CMOs should consider the following key components when seeking a next-generation WCM platform. Multichannel marketing Those CMOs that succeed with multichannel marketing do so by developing a strategy for each channel that enables them to maintain brand equity while satisfying customer expectations. The most essential tool for pursuing such a strategy is an online marketing platform that enables CMOs to deliver multichannel customer experiences and campaigns. Look for capabilities to perform permission-based publishing across a range of output channels, including , mobile, social networks, web, and print. This helps ensure that customers are fully engaged, independent of the channel, device, or geography. Standards-based repository Unlike stovepiping, which can result from using proprietary solutions, advanced, standards-based solutions help stave off obsolescence. Perhaps more importantly, they ensure platform viability across and outside your organization. Make sure that the WCM platform you choose supports standards such as Content Management Interoperability Standards (CMIS), Representational State Transfer (REST), and the OSGi framework. Adherence to these standards future-proofs, and even enhances, your investment by providing access to a rich ecosystem of applications and utilities that are prebuilt to interoperate with the multichannel engagement platform. WCM agility A short ramp-up time is a major factor in digital marketing. Tools should be intuitive and require little training so that they can be used quickly and widely across your organization. In addition, the WCM should feature easy-to-use workflows to create the parent-child relationships necessary for the multisite management that is typical in online marketing. Digital asset management On today s websites, rich media including images, video, and online presentations is what most attracts and engages audiences. As you repurpose digital assets to address multiple devices, formats, encoding rates, and metadata, you ll find yourself dealing with an explosion of assets. An easy-to-use system helps tame this chaos and enables syndication of assets across multiple channels. Social collaboration Every brand has a fan base, but not every CMO is leveraging it. Next-generation WCM allows you to create a network of relationships between prospects and the loyal customers that can influence potential customers purchasing decisions. These online communities also serve other benefits. They help build brand loyalty, which in turn leads to more repeat sales, and they potentially offload customer support functions. Features to look for include a shared calendar, the ability to comment, reviewing functions, rich media, and document sharing. Search engine optimization (SEO) Most site visitors find you via search engines. Tuning content to keep pace with top search terms is critical, but it can be a chore. Next-generation WCMs are built with hierarchical architectures that support the generation of search engine friendly (SEF) links out of the box to boost page rankings in search results. In addition, look for platforms that provide APIs to databases like Alchemy for keyword enhancement and are involved in efforts like the Interactive Knowledge Stack that aim to make content more visible to search engines. Content targeting Unlike old media, digital channels offer a range of information that marketers can use to better target their messages. Whether it is as simple as geography or as complex as past buying behavior, a solid marketing platform enables you to tap into critical data and customize messages so that every experience is engaging and optimal. Campaign optimization Sense and respond is the mandate for today s CMOs. With support for A/B testing in a platform, marketers can sense audience preferences and promote or pull campaigns based on response rates. Analytics Because CMOs live (and die) by reports, gaining an instant and historical view into campaign performance is critical. Best-of-breed solutions include integrated analytics that can interface with leading standalone analytic offerings. Localization Marketing has no geographic boundaries and, like online commerce, is global. As a result, you need to adjust to local audience needs without compromising your brand. An advanced WCM solution allows a single change to be proliferated across sites without delays. 5

6 IT agility and the cloud Best-of-breed solutions should work across multiple IT environments but, most importantly, need to be deployable on cloud-based services like Amazon s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). This provides the ability to instantly scale and ensures that CMOs are never victims of their own campaign success. When these WCM capabilities work in unison, CMOs can take full advantage of a broad range of digital marketing techniques, without losing control of the customer conversation. At the same time, marketing efforts can be streamlined, because WCM provides business users with the ability to repurpose content across multiple channels. The end result is a vastly larger pipeline of qualified leads at a much lower cost. Summary: Customer experience management is a must Digital media channels are the new battleground for customer growth and retention. Your ability to compete relies on having a robust digital marketing strategy and infrastructure in place to engage customers in a meaningful conversation across every channel. The challenge for you as a marketer is to grow your pipeline without losing control of branding and the customer conversation. To achieve this, you need the tools and processes to control user experiences. Nextgeneration WCM platforms provide just that, enabling you to effectively and efficiently engage your customers and grow your pipeline of new sales and sales opportunities. With WCM in place, your ability to sense and respond to changing market conditions will be near real time. This will transform your marketing team from a cost center to a revenue generator. Ultimately, with marketing tied to revenue, your importance to the business grows significantly, making you an indispensable component of the executive management team. Over 200 leading brands including those in the commerce, packaged goods, and travel and hospitality industries take advantage of CQ5 Web Content Management software as their WCM platform. For examples of how Adobe software powers digital marketing efforts, visit Adobe Systems Incorporated 345 Park Avenue San Jose, CA USA Adobe and the Adobe logo are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved. Printed in the USA /11 6