The Digital World Challenge Faced By The Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) In 2013

My first guest post for SEJ in September 2010 was about the shift from the traditional media of marketing to the internet media of marketing http://www.searchenginejournal.com/the-traditional-media-of-marketing-to-the-internet-media-of-marketing/23947/ at that time this question of who should manage the digital media which demands a multiple partner proliferation had just started brewing . In 2013 it has reached a turbulent stage as is described by the 2012 CMO Insights survey by Accenture.

The 2012 CMO Insights survey is the third in a series of studies sponsored by Accenture and aimed at understanding the opinions, challenges and points of view of senior marketing executives from around the world.

Results are based on online surveys across 10 countries with 405 senior executives who are key marketing decision makers in their companies.

According to this survey,

Turbulence is the new normal for chief marketing officers (CMOs). The main reason being competing business demands, proliferating channels and partners, and a disconnect between the talent they have and the capabilities they need.

Every digital marketing company I am sure will be able to relate directly to this as we face a real challenge when an overall ROI has to be calculated. It becomes more challenging when there are multiple marketing services providers but the tasks of each of these service providers are mutually inter-dependant for overall success.

For example if SEO , Social Media , Content Creation are handled by different agencies with no clear strategic leader coordinating all these activities then a lot of confusion, chaos and the blame game begins which is not less than a catch22 situation.

According to the survey for business survival CMOs need to:

• Fundamentally change the marketing operating model.

• Build new skills internally.

• Get the right set of partners.

• Drive digital orientation throughout the enterprise.


The Partner Proliferation list according to the survey is as follows:

When all these activities are to be managed in-house it requires a very big budget and specialized skill sets or if outsourced it needs precise coordination. The challenge that the online business owners small or big brands face today is how to the get the maximum ROI from the selected set of the above activities they decide to focus on for a wider and a qualitative digital presence.

From the list above it is very clear that the digital orientation is the most important demand of the day but 19% of the CMOs say that digital orientation suffers from the lack of integration across the business and when it comes to other partners they are weak at execution and delivery.

Hence the need of the hour is to:

· Fundamentally change the marketing operating model

· Build new skills internally

· Get aligned with the right set of partners

· Drive digital orientation throughout the enterprise

The main focus being the digital orientation which is needed throughout the organization. The shift is not only on the media used for marketing but a shift is needed towards a whole new process of thinking from the digital perspective in order to gain a profitable overall ROI .

The whole survey is summarised as below and the full report can be downloaded on http://www.accenture.com/SiteCollectionDocuments/PDF/Accenture-CMO-Insights-Report-PDF.pdf

Why Setting Up Of Targets Is Important For Business Performance

Every journey starts with a destination and time frame in mind. If there is no destination then that is called wandering. Business is also a journey which you embark because you want to achieve something – money, fame, knowledge, satisfaction for something done with the best of abilities, etc.

 When you set up targets at the beginning of the year you get a direction for the future and you get a chance to analyze and look back  at the plus points and the minus points of  the past year.

Once you set realistic and smart targets it is possible to chalk out a plan for achieving them. Hence , they give you a direction and you start thinking of how to make them real. Some of the things which get included in the plan are:

• What resources you need to achieve the target?
• What strategies you need to set to achieve the target?
• What is the financial implication for achieving  the target?
• What improvements are needed in the existing structure of the organization?
• What would be the KPPs – The Key Performance Parameters?
• What attitudinal changes are required in the organization -  as the first step taken in order to hit the target is to set a positive frame of mind that it is achievable and possible?
• The whole team has to have that positive spirit?

The answers to these very questions give you the direction and you start seeing the path ahead.

But, the targets should be smart , realistic , achievable and time bound as only then responsibilities can be assigned and valuable resources like time and money can be allocated.

I believe that brain storming to set the targets  on the basis of past performance and the future trends  is a must at the outset of every year .

The periodic review of the targets set surely give a clear idea about where the business is heading to and if inspite of a lot of effort and planning the targets become difficult to achieve then those situations tell you a lot about the market conditions and hence again you can gear the direction accordingly.

Workshop On Web Marketing In The Age Of Search Engines And Social Media

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It Is All About Integration When It Comes To Internet Marketing Success.

The Online marketing scene keeps on changing at a very fast pace and every year we have new trends emerging unlike the traditional form of marketing where more than the trend it was the strategies which had to be kept on changing.The emerging online marketing trends are due to the technological changes and the improvements in the internet services which have reached even to the remote and not so developed places .

As the year end approaches we keep on hearing that one form of marketing is a passé and some new form of marketing shall rule the roost in the forthcoming year. We have heard statements like Banner Ads. Are Dead, Email is Dead, SEO is Dead in the past years but inspite of all these claims we still see that these banner ads., email and SEO are still very much alive along with the fast emerging trends like social media.
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Is Your Internet Marketing Plan Creating A Valuable Long Term Online Presence Of your Brand?

Marketing is active storytelling , PR is reactive storytelling - Internet marketing is real time, active and reactive and has a local And global reach.

Everyone in the corporate world is aware of the need to advertise, market and brand the product of their company. Even though there are so many books, experts and plethora of online information about all this available, putting all the 4 Ps of marketing together and being at the right place at the right time with the right message is always a challenging task.

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Just SEO Is Not Enough .You Need A Web Culture In The Organization For Overall Online Success. How Healthy Is The Web Culture Of Your Company?

If You Think That You Have Signed A SEO Contract And Now You Are Going To Win The Web Market Then You Are Wrong.

SEO is the art and science of understanding the technology, the EQ , the IQ and of course thereby the algorithms of the search engines to make the websites rank high on the search engines to tap the targeted market.
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Social Media Marketing And The Online Presence Of Your Business

All marketing plans, efforts and strategies revolve around people and understanding the potential customer or catering to the existing customer is the main focus of any marketing campaign.

The social element can never be ruled out from any business activity as a whole because every business caters to some or the other want or requirement of people.

As all people involved in any kind of marketing are aware of the four Ps - Product , Place, Promotion and Price. We can see that we cannot decide about the product without keeping the people in mind, we cannot decide about the place without keeping the people in mind, we cannot decide about any promotion campaign without keeping the people in mind and again the price also is a people centric decision.
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Online Reputation Management And Monitoring

Reputation is the opinion or a social evaluation of the group of entities toward a person, a group of people, or an organization . It is an important factor in many fields, such as education, business, online communities or social status.

• Reputation can be considered as a component of the identity as defined by others
• Reputation is 'the result of what you do, what you say, and what other people say about you'.
• Online Reputation is a factor in any online community where trust is important.
• An online identity, internet identity, or internet persona is a social identity that an Internet user establishes in online communities and websites.

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