Showing posts with label technology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label technology. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

What do you do if customer networking platforms, technologies, and customer communities change faster than you can plan for?


Last night at our Denver CMO CLUB dinner, as we went around the table each sharing an important challenge we have as CMOs, this notion of keeping up with consumers and where they engage was a big challenge. Think about it. Two years ago, photo sharing sites were hot only to give way to Facebook ( aggregator of all these technology specific sharing sites for photos, videos, etc.). Shopping sites come and go. Hot fashion, cooking, cycling, etc. this year will be quiet a year from now. So what do we do as CMOs?

I think in these times of constant change, less loyalty to brands and sites, identifying, engaging, getting to know and building loyalty with your Net Promoters is more important than ever. You have a subset of customers that love you, support you, and like sharing your value to friends and colleages. Do you know exactly why they like you, what drives their movement to new sites and communities? Do you have good relationship with them where they will tell you whats new, better, etc.

Another approach to this dilemma is to provide solutions/products that can be purchased or leveraged regardless of the delivery platform or community site. So not site specific but consumer value specific. When you develop your marketing plans for the year, ask the question, “what happens if all the media vehicles we plan on using no longer carry the traffic or customer segmentations we care about?". Your answers may become part of a marketing adaptability program.

Finally, a number of CMOs in the club place company flexibility and speed to change, speed to delivery as a key competitive advantage. What are you doing as CMO to ensure your company is more flexibility and quick to respond vs. last year?

Sunday, November 1, 2009

The CMO CLUB Weekly Poll Question: As CMO what new Marketing Technologies are you most interested in for your business?


90 CMOs responded
35.6% - Integrated Mkting Operations/Planning
22.2% - Search Optimization
15.6% - User Generated Content Platforms
13.2% - Social Community Platforms
6.7% - Online Advertising Optimization
6.7% - Mobile Applications

Better decision making, freeing up time to focus on customers, UGC platforms for listening vs. selling, and social network platform's ease of use were some of the key reasons behing CMOs priorities around new marketing technologies.

A few Quotes from CMOs in the club who responded:

“I have to do more with less and need planning, campaign development, and execution tools that link and help me make the best decisions. I am interested in tools that help with my decision making.”

“Integrated Marketing tools are a big piece of my strategy for effective global marketing management. Every hour spent messing with marketing operations work arounds is one less hour focused on our customers and customer engagement.”

“UGC platforms are important to us as we continue to think thru our engagement plans with our customers. Not just for selling but for listening.”

“As we look at Social networking platforms, it’s not about flash and bells and whistles, it’s all about ease of use and ease of sharing content across stakeholders. We are looking at platforms that do the best job of this.”