Marketing Governance

Though frequently at odds, marketing and IT executives agree that harnessing Big Data is imperative to building a customer-centric corporate culture, SAS.

They also agree that a lack of CMO/CIO alignment, rigid silos, unclear responsibilities, and a lack of leadership impede an organization from using Big Data to its full potential, the survey of CMOs and CIOs found.

Big Data is important to achieving a customer-centric culture, according to the study:

• 40% of marketers and 51% of IT executives said its critical for improved decision making.
• 36% of marketers and 23% of IT execs said data drives the ability to personalize customer experiences.

Below, additional findings from the CMO Council study, titled Big Data’s Biggest Role, Aligning the CMO & CIO.

Access to in-depth data, and the ability to translate it into insights, is a competitive advantage according to 70% of marketers: 30% say it is critical, and 40% say it is part of the overall picture.

However, most respondents view the flood of incoming data as part obstacle and part opportunity: 61% of CMOs and 60% of CIOs say so, admitting they have a long way to go still in using Big Data properly.

The main challenge, according to 52% of marketers (and 45% of IT professionals), is that functional silos block aggregation of data from across the organization, making it difficult to truly achieve customer-centricity:

Moreover, 39% of CMOs say the corporate culture is not aligned around the needs of customers.

A likely explanation for the lack of total customer focus is that no clear ownership of the customer exists. Among marketing executives, 18% say that ownership rests with the CEO, 17% say the CMO, and 19% say sales. IT professionals assign ownership to the CEO (20%), CMO (19%), and sales (17%).

Organizations that report they have achieved total partnership between CMO and CIO also have clearer ownership of the customer.

In such organizations, marketers (24%) and IT professionals (30%) say the CEO owns the customer. Furthermore, marketers and IT executives in total partnership organizations are highly satisfied with their companys ability to engage the customer (42% of marketers, 31% of IT execs).

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Doremus optimism is rising among global executives around the world.

Across four key metrics—global economic conditions, local economic conditions, industry economic conditions, and corporate outlook—more senior-level executives project improvements over the next six months vs. the same period a year earlier some 41 percent are expecting global economic conditions to improve over the next six months, up from the 25% who did so a year earlier.  No more then 52 percent expect improvements in their own businesses over the next six months, up from the 39% who did so in 2011.

The outlook differs by geography: North Americans were the most optimistic overall, particularly about economic conditions locally and within their own industries. By contrast, Europeans were the most pessimistic, particularly regarding local economic conditions.

For the first time in nine years, senior execs ranked improving market share/competitive position (47%) as their top goal for the year. That shift pushed cost cutting into the No. 2 spot (43%), while developing/marketing new products/services (39%) ranked No. 3

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New Media Forecasts report, ZenithOptimedia found that the leading country in 2012 terms of new media adoption was Norway, with an average penetration rate of 38.8% across three key digital technologies – smartphones, tablets and IPTV.

It was followed by France on 35.7%, the Netherlands on 35.1%, Sweden on 31.3% and Denmark on 31.2%. However, balance will shift a little towards 2015. ZenithOptimedia expects the Netherlands to be on top in 2015 with a penetration of 65.1%, followed by France 60.8% and Ireland 50.2%.

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Pinterest is one of the social media channels businesses cant make up theirNetBase have prepared a pros and cons list. Pro: its very popular in the USA, especially among women. Con: its a timesuck. Pro: it looks clean and is easy to use. Con: the technical issues. Scroll down and see for yourself if you think Pinterest is worth including in the marketing mix.

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Creative Group, the specialist recruitment firm, discovered that just 7% of companies are actively utilizing this service.

Elsewhere, a further 10% intended to start doing so in the future, while 17% were aware of the site but proved hesitant about its potential benefits from a company perspective. An additional 44% of the sample displayed no interest in using Pinterest, and 18% had never even heard of the rapidly-growing social media property.

The research did, however, reveal differences in attitude depending on the size and type of organisation concerned. As an example, advertising executives at larger agencies were more active on Pinterest than their peers representing smaller agencies and their corporate marketing counterparts.  Read More

Brand owners such as Unilever, Ford and Coca-Cola are still attempting to fully prove the payback from using Facebook, but remain confident in the potential it provides to engage consumers. Recent research by Facebook covering 63 ad campaigns found a majority yielded three times the original expenditure, whereas only a single case delivered a return below one times the initial outlay.

A campaign run on behalf of Suave, the beauty range manufactured by fast-moving consumer goods group Unilever, generated $8.41 for every dollar spent, according to these figures. Keith Weed, chief marketing and communications officer at Unilever, told the Wall Street Journal this return on investment (ROI) was impressive, but warned Facebooks journey had just begun:

As a businessman and marketer, ultimately, you care about ROI. At the end of the day, you will get the early adopters of the large companies who can see [Facebook] as a big trend but you wont get sustained businesses without people understanding how ROI is concerned. Read More

Weve analyzed the brain of the marketer before, concluding that marketing is both an art and a science. Creating great campaigns and ads requires the creativity and inventiveness that the right brain half harbors, while marketers also need the analytical skills that reside in the left brain for the operational and data side of marketing.

But what about the consumer? This infographic picks the brain of the social shopper it identifies the six psychological principles that underlie online buying behaviour: social proof, authority, scarcity, like, consistency and reciprocity. Some of these principles apply to marketing in general, others are specific to the new, social, form of marketing. Click the image to explore the mind of the social consumer.

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Five years ago, not everybody could have foreseen the huge role social media would play in marketing today. Today, almost any brand realizes the importance of social media and either has or is working on a social media strategy. Some brands were among the early adopters and have taken a head start in social marketing, while others are still trying to figure out the best way to incorporate social into the marketing mix.

But social media are not like traditional media and require a different approach from a marketing point of view. Its inherently interactive, and ever-evolving. Social media is more than ever about the relationship between customer and brand. This does not only take a different kind of communication, but also a different kind of data analytics. Social media are a potential source of a wealth of consumer information, but the question on everybodys mind these days is how to get the best information from this vast pool of data.

The CMO Council report The Social consumer Brand Compatibility Model introduces a new way of analyzing social media data:

Social Consumer Brand Compatibility modeling is an emerging area of marketing science that seeks to navigate the mountain of social media data and take-away insights regarding customers and their interests. By analyzing posts, likes, and rich media content sources from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other social networks, brands can glean richer information about media consumption, psycho-graphic, lifestyle, and personal interests. [...] Social data delivers heightened insight, allowing marketers to improve media selection and buying, as well as the relevance, resonance, and response of ad and promotional buying.

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Ok. So youve got your Social Media plan all worked out. Youve launched a Facebook campaign, pasted the city full of QR code stickers, customers can leave a comment or complaint about the brand via Twitter. Everythings fully integrated and youve even got the software (such as this) to support it all.

But how do you have a social media policy in place? What can your staff share, what cant they share? In this infographic, Mindflash gives a crash course on how to train your workforce to work with social media. From Savvy Technologist to Digital Newbie.

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For many marketers — and other professional communicators in public relations, advertising, entertainment and even journalism — there’s something downright scary about social media. Words (and images) matter. And in professions where people make their livings by crafting messages and relating ideas, it’s easy to strike fear into people by suggesting that the future of media calls for them to surrender control over at least part of their message.

After all, social media success can’t be effectively measured without tracking virality, and virality can’t happen until the message has passed through a whole lot of hands. Take a look at this whitepaper for a bit more on how social networks have grown, how to go about deciding what social spaces are worth using for your particular strategy, and why DAM can be a key part of streamlining your social strategy. For so long, marketing principles, processes and tools have been designed, in large part, to help people exercise control over messages. And yet, here we are watching advancements in technology strip that control away.

We know we can change. Of course, it’s not easy, but we know that we can adapt our thinking and our practices to capitalize on these shifts in the way communication is done. But what about our tools? How nimble are they? Are they holding us back, or is readying them for a paradigm shift simply a matter of wielding them differently? Read More