For CMOs, Accountability Remains a Challenge
What are the biggest challenges facing marketers today? Not surprisingly, they stem from accountability and making the organization aware of what marketing really contributes to the big picture.
Chief Marketer recently chatted with several marketing executives, to get their takes on what were the biggest hurdles facing CMOs today.
Mitchell Goozé, president and founder, Customer Manufacturing Group Inc., says what he sees as a hurdle is defining just want marketing means in an organization. “Is it just promotions and advertising, or is it aligning the goals of the company with the needs of the marketplace?”
Marketers were allowed to do whatever they wanted to do for decades. Now, that is no longer true because of simple accountability, says Goozé.“Recent surveys show finance departments don’t have faith in marketers’ ability to accurately judge ROI.”
That, says Tom Camp, COO of Executive Edge,is why measurement is a crucial challenge for marketers to master. “The top issues today center around metrics. How do you tie together the metrics of demand generation, closing sales and geographic indicators?”
“You need to understand your goals and what you want to tie the metrics back into,” says Gary Katz, founder and CEO of Marketing Operations Partners. “If people don’t feel there is a clear sense of direction, it’s harder to be as passionate and follow through with decisiveness.”
Accountabilty can be a multitierred problem, he says, noting that as companies get bigger they sometimes develop siloed “fiefdoms” that operate all too autonomously. If management doesn’t understand who does what, the internal reward systems might be misaligned and, for example, benefit sales but alienate marketing.
“You need to be able to demonstrate the value of what marketing does, and how that ties into the overall metrics of the organization,” says Katz. “If we’re trying to organize around the customer, we need to understand how each part of the organization is trying to do that.”
Nichole Kelly, director of social media, Ascend One Corp., says another big challenge for many companies is the convergence of marketing and technology.
“Project management systems are going online. CRM systems are becoming integral to the business as a whole. Companies are adding on marketing automations systems. Web sites aren’t static any more,” she notes. “Companies are looking at how to adjust their IT resources to meet the needs of marketing and still be able to handle the needs of the organization as a whole.”
Marketers must also contend with how social media is changing the landscape of customer relationships. “The conversation is two-way now, so transparency and trust is key,” Kelly says. “People want to know there are people behind your products they can trust.”
