Sherpa: Rumors are that CEOs are firing CMOs faster than ever when the CMO can't get results quickly -- yet these CEOs won't give CMOs good analytics budgets to help. Is that true?
Harry: It happens, but I'm not sure analytics software is the issue as much as poor communication between the CMO and the CEO. Analytics software is like the dashboard of a car: Yes, that information is critically important. But where are you going? What route are you going to take? Does your value proposition resonate with your target markets? Does your multichannel operating model deliver consistently on your brand's promise across every customer touch point? To quote Jim Collins, "Do you have the right people on the bus?" I'd rather be vaguely right on these big issues than precisely wrong on the little ones.
Today's CMO's would be well advised to remind their CEOs that there are only four ways to grow a business:
- Selling OLD products to OLD customers
- Selling NEW products to OLD customers
- Selling OLD products to NEW customers
- Selling NEW products to NEW customers
By convention, the sum of all four ways must total 100%. Now, the question is: How do you want to grow the business? Evenly across all four areas? Or with 75% of your resources selling OLD products to OLD customers and 25% split between the other three areas? Either way is fine. But whatever strategy you choose, your ROI expectations and the CMO's job requirements, skill set, and compensation plan should be in alignment with your strategic plan.
And it goes without saying that all of these things should be in alignment with how and how often -- the customer actually buys in each marketing channel. The whole process requires a lot of customer-centric forethought.
I encourage hiring managers to look at their marketing hires in terms of what they want the marketer to accomplish in 30, 60, 90, 180, and 360 day increments. The marketer's success metrics should be ...
- Relevant,
- Objective,
- Measurable, and
- Controllable
And ideally, both leading and lagging indicators of success should be developed. For a software company, a leading indicator of success might be Number of Whitepapers Downloaded or Number of Demos Given. A lagging indicator of success might be Growth in Operating Revenue.
Naturally, lagging indicators are less controllable by the marketer than leading indicators but it still pays to track and incentivise them wherever possible.
More Q&A tomorrow. For previously posted portions of my interview with MarketingSherpa, please click here.
____________________________________________
Q: Need the number of a recruiter who "gets it?"
A: Download Harry's contact info for future reference.
