CMOs Rethink Their Roles

Marketing continues to assume increased importance within any company aiming for robust growth. People in marketing positions, like those with ecommerce marketing jobs, email marketing jobs, healthcare marketing jobs, brand marketing jobs, and the like, would tell you how fast consumers are changing in their demands, tastes, and needs. Consequently, one of marketing managers' biggest challenges has been to remain open-minded in order to keep pace with consumers. Marketers who fail to keep up with mercurial consumers can pay a huge price.

The people most affected by this situation are the chief marketing officers, or CMOs, of companies, who have to stand ready to respond to these transformations in consumer behaviour with marketing strategies that will generate profits.

Why has there been a shift in consumer behaviour? The Internet has played a big role. Consumers aren’t relying on TV advertisements any longer. Instead, they are searching the Internet to gather information before buying a product. A variety of new media are vying for consumers’ attention today, and, as a result, marketers need to divide their marketing budgets into more parts. This often means a smaller share for a particular marketing medium, a share which is often not sufficient to create the desired impact.



New markets are proliferating and asking for the marketer’s attention, while the traditional developed markets are not growing anymore. It is thus important for marketers to understand consumer psychology in the newly emerging markets.

Given this scenario, CMOs who used to focus on building brands, effective advertisements, and market research to lure the consumer today need to focus on changing their company’s strategy, communication, and product itself to adapt themselves to consumers’ evolving needs.

CMOs need to spread of their communications equally across newly emerged media like blogs, social networks, and online video sites. They not only need to reach consumers with the right intensity today but also need to anticipate what consumers will want tomorrow.

What do new CMOs need to do to accomplish these goals?

• Measure the impacts of their marketing efforts in order to show others in their companies how their marketing strategies are working out. To achieve this, today’s CMO needs more analytical skills than the traditional CMO, for whom creative skills were more critical.
  
  
• Exploit emerging markets and marketing channels to reach the consumers.
  
  
• Get an insight into consumer needs and channel efforts to build brand loyalty in consumers.
  
  
• Use various metrics to measure the impacts of their marketing efforts, and take corrective actions if those efforts fail to hit the mark.

CMOs need to think of ways for closing the gap between what the customer wants and what their company offers. However, offering what consumers want is not the sole responsibility of CMOs. Other actions need to dovetail with that effort in order to best deliver what the customer is looking for. Marketers need to figure out ways to create good relationships with their internal and external audiences, which will help them tap into consumer information, expand into new markets, and introduce innovative products.

The CMO is then, in some respect, the voice of the consumer to other parties in his organization. Only a successful CMO can elicit the requisite response within an organization to adjust to changing consumer needs in the marketplace.