Making a Strategic Impact

When GreenFig approached me about participating as an instructor in its new Digital Marketing Science Course, I was not only honored but thrilled to have a chance to participate in a new, innovative program to build savvy digital marketers.

Traditional university marketing programs set a great foundation for marketers, but their ability to stay current on the incredibly fast-moving world of digital marketing falls flat.  I have hired many marketers over the years at AT&T Mobility, Microsoft, and others, and I have hesitated when hiring early career graduates.  The learning curve for being able to hit the ground running for digital marketing roles was just too steep when you have an already stretched marketing team.  I have typically needed someone who could make an immediate strategic and tactical impact on my digital efforts. The GreenFig Digital Marketing Science microdegree seeks to bridge that gap for the new graduate or the professional wanting to deepen their skill set. Digital marketing is now driving most of the marketing strategies across all industries and it continues to grow. Congratulations to students on taking a giant leap forward toward becoming a digital marketing professional.

The course I am teaching is called, Planning for ROI-Baseline KPIs for CMO Dashboards.  In this session, we will have some fun addressing the following key areas:

• The evolving role of the Chief Marketing Officer and its role in the C-Suite. Perhaps no role has evolved as quickly as the CMO role over the last 5 years.  With an incredible growth in marketing technology, the CMO has gained more insights that have transformed marketing’s impact on the business.
• Understanding the Customer Lifecycle and Marketer’s unique role in driving it. The customer experience(CX) is driving a company’s differentiation like never before and marketing has the most holistic view of the customer engagement touchpoints throughout the customer lifecycle.  The challenge is driving the insights to impact CX excellence.
• Identifying the key metrics a CMO cares about along the customer lifecycle. Metrics tell a story and the CMO is the company’s chief storyteller.  Marketers must focus on the metrics that tell the story of revenue growth, return on investment, and customer experience enhancement.
• Learn the strategy, categories, and content elements of a CMO Dashboard. A Dashboard is not just a collection of figures.  It knows its C-suite target audience, highlights marketing’s contribution to business objectives, highlights areas that need executive focus, and drives new initiatives.  The challenge is to not overwhelm the target audience.
• Discuss the different types of marketing attribution and their challenges for enabling the story of marketing impact. The ability to track influence and impact for online and offline marketing activities has dramatically improved, but it still has its challenges and a CMO’s peers will frequently point them out if your data and attribution strategy is articulated well to your stakeholders.

Finally, we will touch on marketing’s alignment with the sales team and the importance of collaboration between the Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Sales Officer.  Marketing drives pipelines in the B2B world but rarely closes a deal.  Locking on the key measurement for ROI together and having a single source of truth for measurement, like a Marketing Dashboard, can help you stay focused on driving results.

By Ray Kemper