Last week’s exclusive stories on CMO.com were focused on customer engagement in the maturing digital economy. As technology continues to become more pervasive in consumers’ lives, more and more CMOs will need to adapt to the changing ‘digiconomy’. Data-driven marketing enables companies to get closer to customers and have more control over the customer experience. This week’s engagements outline some top strategies for CMOs to adopt to optimize their customer engagement.
Doug Mow, CMO and Head of Strategy at Ness Software Engineering Services, began the week’s discussions by looking back at the role of CIOs in the 1990s. CIOs were in a position to exercise significant influence over what business would look like in the future in the 1990s. However, companies began to adopt the belief that CIOs didn’t truly understand the needs of the business. Though that opportunity was lost, Mow says, CMOs today are in the same position of influence when it comes to reaching customers through technology. There’s no doubt that customers live and do business in a digital economy, and CMOs have the opportunity to be change agents, influencing their companies to embrace new technology and reach customers through many channels.
However, technology brings some new challenges to bear. Everyone becomes a publisher.The rapid increase of content for consumers to sift through has many businesses lost in the mix. It takes engaging content to break through all the noise but many companies don’t take that seriously. Gregory Pouy, Digital Marketing Strategist at LaMercatique, calls this the “content saturation era.” Research indicates that content production is going to continue to increase in the coming years. This means marketers will have to develop new strategies for getting their content in front of potential customers. Fortunately, Pouy outlines ten strategies for how to shape your content so that it breaks through the noise.
Last week’s CMO.com interview with Stephen O’Kelly, the Marketing Director for Guinness in Europe, focused on Guinness’s reputation as a story-telling brand and how the company is continuing to adapt its marketing in a digital world. He shares the ways in which digital has helped the brand to reach more customers. Though the brand has been known for story-telling, O’Kelly shares how the company’s marketing efforts have become more of a two-way engagement rather than just one-directional storytelling. This means keeping up with current events and consumer sentiments is critical to being able to have a meaningful conversation in real-time.
Grégoire Pauty of the EMEA Business Value Consulting Team at Adobe brought the Internet of Things into the conversation. Specifically, he mentions the way in which companies miss the opportunity to create additional value by adding a piece of connectivity. He argues that gadgets must be used to enhance relationships with customers and increase usage. He uses the examples of Uber and Airbnb in using the IoT to get closer to customers and increase usage by simplifying the process. Pauty challenges marketers to use IoT to transform the ways in which companies create value for customers and encourages them to approach it from a strategic and a time-to-market perspective, outlining what this looks like in action.
Patrick Munden, Head of Marketing and Communications at Salmon, looks ahead to Black Friday and how marketers and businesses can avoid some of the mistakes of last year. The popularity of Black Friday continues to increase in the UK with four times as many shoppers planning to shop online during this year’s sales. The customer experience during Black Friday and the days leading up to it is a vital consideration for any company. It’s important for marketers to communicate with the other organizations within their company to ensure that everyone is on the same page and every component is working together seamlessly. The goal, according to Munden, is for companies to give customers an exceptional experience that will earn customer loyalty and generate peak sales on Black Friday.
We invite you to read and further engage with our exclusive content on CMO.com and benefit from the help and ‘how-to’ guidance from leading marketers and industry influencers.
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