It is variously reported that the average tenure of the CMO is between 18 and 29 months, what ever the truth is, we know that it is short.
Why is it that the chap who dared to wear a polo neck jumper with his suit to board meetings and brought images, pizzazz and a certain creative flair to proceedings failed to gel with his commercially and financially driven colleagues? What is it that organisations want from their CMO?
There are only really two important topics discussed in the boardroom. Revenue and Profit and everything else is about sustaining and building upon them. The CEO is in reality the Chief Profit Officer and will weigh the value of his team based on their ability to generate revenue and minimize cost.
In the past the Marketer would build a brand, would push messages to potential customers and sales would ride in on white chargers to monetize their efforts. Sales would earn more and would also take the bulk of the credit. The marketer had spent a huge budget and sales had recovered it and added to it. The marketer was regarded as a cost centre.
The modern marketer has to operate in a different world where potential customers are allergic to push marketing. Brand is still critical but now the successful marketer must generate demand for their company’s products.
How on earth does one get people who are unaware of your product to come and ask for it?
First of all, you have to really understand your audience. How can you reach them? When you do reach them, how do you engage them? Advertising is still an important part of the marketing mix, after all you have to get their attention but thereafter you need to educate them, demonstrate the benefits your product, and bring them to the point where they are ready to buy from you.
The Marketer has a whole host of modern tools that have allowed them to take ownership of a significant portion of the sales cycle. The internet and social networking have allowed the marketer to strike up a dialogue directly with future customers, they can determine where they are in the buying cycle and serve them with information that is relevant and capable of moving them along the sales funnel. If the customer is ready to buy, there is a hand off to sales to close but if they are not then the marketer hangs on to them and nurtures their interest until they are ready to buy.
To support this process, the marketer has access to software tools like web analytics and marketing automation platforms that allow them to serve complex multi channel campaigns and measure the effectiveness of every marketing £ spent. By integrating with CRM systems they can serve hot leads to sales, observe them being closed and measure return on marketing investment.
In this scenario, the role of the marketer is business critical, they are driving demand and they own the sales pipeline. They have evolved from CMO to Chief Revenue Officer and have earned both their seat on the board and have greatly extended their tenure.
I recently hosted a working lunch of senior marketers, half of whom were accountable to Sales and half of whom were responsible for sales. The shift in the power of the marketer is clearly making good progress. In a modern organization marketers should be held accountable for revenue generation.
Sales are not irrelevant in this scenario, the business still needs to closed, but their time is optimized and you can either expect to close more business.