With all the strategies, tactics and plans involved with modern marketing, your chief marketing officer is one busy person indeed. But no matter how busy your CMO may be, it’s essential he or she is an ongoing master of the following five activities.
Demand generation is at the core of every marketing department, or at least it should be if you want to sell stuff. This activity involves generating interest, enthusiasm and a genuine need for your product or service, and it can be done any number of ways. Wise CMOs will turn to inbound marketing to showcase content that supports the value of your product, service and brand.
Even companies offering local or regional products and services need to take a global worldview with their marketing. You’re always running the risk of competitors homing in to replicate your success and duplicate your tactics. Always keeping your eye on your next best market helps to ensure your sales can continue to thrive, especially if you take advantage of technology to help your marketing efforts soar.
Synchronization refers to any activity that helps ensure all company players and functions are on the same page when it comes to marketing your products. Sharing your marketing data with your sales department so it can take action on it is one form of synchronization. App development, customer relationship management integration, and synching lead data to your enterprise resource planning system are others.
We’ve already established that you’re CMO is one busy guy or gal, and we’re going to guess that the rest of your marketing team is even busier. When the workload starts to outweigh your manpower, what does your company do?
Hiring, onboarding and training a new marketing manager can take eons, and the same holds true with other marketing team members. Combine this with the rapidly evolving marketing automation technologies, and you can find your marketing department falling dangerously behind.
While your marketing department definitely needs long-term leaders and managers, it should also have the flexibility to source individuals and teams on an as-needed basis. Whether it’s for a short-term campaign or a long-term goal, it’s essential you’re able to fill the gaps with experienced pros when needed.
Related: Marketing ROI Template
Visualization refers to your ability to accurately illustrate the success of your marketing team’s efforts. While it’s essential for CMOs to be able to perform this activity for any number of select audiences, the most important audience they need to impress is their bosses.
You have a variety of ways to articulate information, with options that include presentations, dashboards, charts, graphs and reports. Not only do you need to be able to pass along the information in a way that’s easy to understand, but you must choose the right metrics that back up your success.
What if, for instance, all indicators except for sales were on the rise? A savvy CMO would know how to frame the result in a way that still foretold of the marketing team’s success.
Remember, these five activities are not designed to add an even bigger burden on your CMO’s plate. In fact, adding these five activities to the list can actually make the rest of the work flow more effectively and success more readily within reach.