With the start of the new millennia, field of marketing began changing so rapidly that it completely redefined the CMO’s job description. This wind of change started with AdWords in 2000, continued with real-time bidding (RTB) in 2009 and ad exchanges in 2010, and is now blowing even faster with the emergence of new channels,...
With the start of the new millennia, field of marketing began changing so rapidly that it completely redefined the CMO’s job description. This wind of change started with AdWords in 2000, continued with real-time bidding (RTB) in 2009 and ad exchanges in 2010, and is now blowing even faster with the emergence of new channels, new technologies, and consequently new ways of customer interaction. What’s more, these new ways of customer interaction create unimaginable amounts of data. Insights derived from the smart use of that data can be extremely powerful and adding them into ongoing marketing campaigns is becoming the drive principle on the road to success.
In all that fuss, CMOs have moved beyond leading marketing and have become a vital part in an organization’s strategy, innovation, and vision.
It really is a marketer’s world these days. Still, most of their days get eaten by endless meetings with their clients and their team, leaving them with very limited amount of time for actual marketing.
So, how can CMOs optimize their workday and find the time they don’t have? Here are 4 things CMOs can do to make their lives easier and find time for some actual marketing.
1. Treat your time as your most valuable asset
If you take a moment and look at some of the most successful people in history such as Napoleon or Ben Franklin, you will realize that they treated their time as the most valuable thing they have. By waking up early in the morning, they used their abundance of energy to maximize their productivity and cross as much items of their to-do lists as possible.
If you take a look at your average workday, you will notice that most of your time gets eaten by meetings. According to a research study, more than 60% of meetings have no agenda, while 45% are internal meetings. Low 21% of meetings consist of information sharing. With 73% of attendees admitting that they are doing other work during meetings brings us to the conclusion that most meetings are a complete waste of time.
Take a closer look at your calendar and eliminate meetings that you think are not necessary and use that time in a smarter way. If you cannot cancel a meeting, make sure that you start them on time and keep them confined in 10 or 15 minute windows.
2. Learn to delegate
The definition of marketing is becoming broader each day. Analytics is becoming an essential element of marketing, same as design, social networks and content marketing. In order to juggle between all these elements and vast quantities of data, a CMO’s day would need to have at least a double number of hours. That is why every CMO needs to start delegating to increase efficiency and ease up their work schedule.
You didn’t become a CMO by avoiding responsibility but now you have too much on your to-do list and it will not take much before you keep missing deadlines.
You need to recognize the task that you can delegate to your team. By doing this, you will have time to breathe and focus on what really matters.
3. Connect with your CTO
According to Stephen Ingledew, Managing Director of Standard Life, CMO and CTO have just got married. Earlier in time, CTOs have mostly been interested in Sys Ops and security while CMOs were focused solely on their marketing initiatives and brand management. Today, that bond between CMOs and CTOs is no more.
Today, the success of a business depends on CMO and CTO truly coming together to overhaul old processes and deliver new that will be able to address the new threats and grab into new revenue streams. Things such as big data and digital technologies are just some of the common languages they have. By staying friends with your CTO, you can empower yourself with his experience in picking the right solution, right partners, and the right tools that will not only ease up your life, but significantly improve your overall results.
4. Listen to your customers
Most CMOs find the concept of listening difficult. This is because it is easy to get lost in all the meetings, things, and different metrics they need to keep an eye on. With most of those metrics being tied to the customers, listening to them is more than important.
By knowing your customers wishes, needs, and problems, CMOs can quickly address the issues and use the other information to better target their customer base with various marketing initiatives.
We’re not saying you should do what Jeff Bezos does, but you can truly know what your customers want without investing a great amount of time in doing so. Have a look at these 3 customer centric lessons from Amazon. With customer surveys, CMOs can extract valuable and actionable insights to quickly spot problems and opportunities.
