Marketing Leadership That Embraces Change, Drives Revenue

Examining how marketers can equip themselves with the knowledge they need to facilitate the change to a digital customer-centric system that drives revenue.

Marketing has undergone more transformation than any other business function over the past decade.

As a result, CMOs face constant challenges in their quest to stay on top of a diverse and changing landscape and be the driving force for revenue growth and customer experience for their organizations.

This first article in this series will address how marketers can equip themselves with the knowledge they need to facilitate the change to a digital customer-centric system that drives revenue. We aim to empower marketers to understand their role as change agents and customer experience champions.

Change: The Catalyst for Marketing Progress

Today’s marketers operate in a hyper-digital world with sophisticated buyers and heightened expectations. They must now be the masters of change. In addition to traditional marketing, they are now the owners of a majority of the customer journey, sophisticated customer engagement and management platforms, content development and activation, data architecture and governance and managing an ever-changing and complex tech stack — all while reporting on and providing their impact on revenues.

In 2016, there were approximately 3,500 marketing technologies to choose from. By 2022, that number had grown to a total of 9,932 martech solutions.

Change also involves mastering a new mindset. Every marketer knows that “the customer journey” is the path to revenue generation, but building one requires a far-reaching plan that brings together people, processes, technologies and data into a customer-centric system that implies every business line, not just marketing .

We need to think differently about everything, including marketing’s purpose in the organization, its relationship to other business functions, and the role technology plays in supporting the overarching strategy.

Related Article: CX Decoded Podcast: Rhoan Morgan on Marketing-Led Customer Experience

Technology: Your Ticket to Scale and Improved Experience

Not only are CMOs facing the rapid digitization of their discipline, but the marketing and martech landscapes are shifting rapidly beneath their feet.

The good news is that today’s marketing technology is more stable, reliable and easy to integrate, adapt and manage. With the right mix of technology and strategy, marketers can now scale operations exponentially through automation while enhancing the customer experience through responsive technologies, personalization, new forms of media, broader sets of marketing channels and connection points.

It’s easy to see technology as the silver bullet. However, it is not the technology alone that will bring about the change needed to become more competitive. It’s also moving away from the old habits that seem harder to kick than anticipated. We need to refocus on connected strategies, revenue influence and creation and the data and analytics that will drive growth. We need a framework for identifying and leveraging the resources we need to deliver business growth. We need a framework for change.