CMO's Handbook: 9 Critical Challenges Faced by a Marketer

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As they say, “Go big, or go home”. With the recently announced strategic partnership, InMobi and Microsoft, under the leadership of Naveen Tewari and Satya Nadella, have double down on going big to disrupt the Marketing industry as we know it. The deal works towards solving for 9 critical challenges faced by a CMO of today and tomorrow.

Why you may ask? First, let us do the numbers. In the United States, the marketing consultant industry was a $43 billion business in 2016, consisting of nearly 198,000 businesses, as reported by the market research group IBISWorld. India’s digital advertising market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 33.5% to cross $3.8 billion by 2020, as reported by India Brand Equity Foundation. Hence, why not grab a larger share of a bigger pie with a more integrated seamless solution for marketers than just compete on mobile advertising business landscape.

Think about it. InMobi with its mobile-first innovative solutions and data prowess will enable marketers to get a 360-degree view of every customer, while Microsoft with its global Azure infrastructure built on the back of its cutting-edge technology, including artificial intelligence, machine learning, and analytics, will help provide actionable insights to the marketers with 365-days availability. A feat so far unheard of beyond the advertising giants such as Google and Facebook, primarily due to their competitive advantage of cross-device targeting and, understandably so, their unwillingness to share their proprietary data with the outside world.

How you may ask? A CMO’s world is not as simple as take a product to market, show an ad, and people will suddenly start flocking to brand stores, building brand loyalty, and giving repeat business. Only if it was that easy. The real value proposition of InMobi-Microsoft partnership lies in creating a one-stop-shop for most, if not all, of a CMO’s needs. Although the American Marketing Association (AMA) has identified some challenges of marketing, but I think there are some additional critical challenges that InMobi’s cloud-based Enterprise Platform for Marketers is working towards solving for CMOs of the world.

What you may ask? First challenge for a marketer has to do with demand landscape mapping or market segmentation. It is to identify the highest value source(s) of growth for a brand, product, or service because of its disproportionate impact on growth and return-on-investment (ROI) potential for a business. The real challenge is in finding the need that is not adequately filled and reaching the people who may be interested in your brand without wasting your time on those who will never be.

Second challenge for a marketer is there are multiple schools of thought on what should be a role of marketing function and a CMO in a corporation. Some companies view it as a separate marketing function, while some put it under responsibilities of an analytics or IT group. Some organizations centralize marketing activities to save cost, while some have decentralized marketing and pushed it to the front lines. Marketing is fine, but what about customer experience, brand management, and public relations? Can small and medium enterprises afford a CMO without inhouse marketing capabilities and tech wherewithal?

Third challenge for a marketer is digital transformation and how to cope with it. Marketing is not a one-way street anymore. Now customers are taking control of products, services, and, most importantly, communications. Unless you have ears to the ground 24x7, you cannot survive for long, especially with multiple-ways communication between customers in a marketplace. It is not just about targeting an advertisement to the right potential customer and closing a sale, but completing the feedback loop across various platforms to increase brand’s sticky factor. Perception is reality and disconnection from reality is not an option anymore in any field, irrespective whether it is a private enterprise or public office.

Fourth challenge for a marketer is generating insights and turning them into action. While other CXO’s are worried about scaling business and maintaining competitive advantage, a CMO is worried about leveraging social media for marketing communications, examining various mediums for customer experience, and using Big Data Analytics to gain insights and, hence, help alleviate her co-worker CXO’s worries about business survival and market leadership. While our data and knowledge graphs are growing rapidly, but our actionable insight is not. It is not just about insight generation, but how to collect, store, share, and, most importantly, use an insight to drive revenue growth.

Fifth challenge for a marketer is move aside multi-channel and cross-channel, omnichannel is the new name of the game in town. With mobile-first generations gaining in demographic strength, multi-channel of Internet of Things (IoT) and cross-channel of Online-to-Offline (O2O) are fast becoming the old normal and omnichannel is the new deal. It is no longer just about brand targeting across various devices and giving offers on sale only at their brand store. Omnichannel is about true continuity of customer experience universally and it extends beyond a single brand’s universe.

Today it is presumed by a customer that the device-based responsive design of a brand’s website should match its native mobile app and thematically reflect the look and feel inside its offline store in order to give a consistent cross-channel customer experience. However, what about a customer who is interested in buying say a Tissot watch, but buys it offline at Macy’s rather than brand’s own store after comparison shopping? The fundamental problem is not the maximization of a particular channel, but drop offs and handoffs between channels since some of these interfaces may not even be in a brand’s control.

Sixth challenge for a marketer is competing in dynamic global markets, predicting competitive shifts, entering uncharted territory, globalizing quickly, and identifying emerging competition.

Seventh challenge for a marketer is balancing incremental and moonshot innovation. Every innovative company worth its salt deals with the dilemma of whether to fuel necessary innovation in the present or invest in disruptive technologies, business models, partnerships, and customer experiences for the future. If, when, and how to transform from a product company to a conglomerate with entire ecosystem of products, platform, information, brands, and retail experiences. How to run market tests and fail-fast without revealing too much to competitors and losing the first mover’s advantage.

Eighth challenge for a marketer is data handling, security, and privacy. It is oft-repeated that data is the new oil, but I think, if not handled ethically, legally, and securely, data can turn into kryptonite overnight. It is a sad reality at many enterprises — small or big — around the world that in their race for growing market share and improving bottom-line, data handling is the least of their concerns. And when a company is not even sure if and how it should run a marketing function, how is it even supposed to know if it needs to invest in data security. Misinformation, misunderstanding of laws, ignorance of AdTech and MarTech data flow, and lack of legal counsel makes it even more complicated and risky for firms.

Data is an asset, but it can soon turn into a huge liability if not protected properly. How big a liability? Under the European Union GDPR law, penalty per infringement is 4% of annual global turnover or €20 million, whichever is greater. There are similar local privacy laws in-effect around the world and so is the jurisprudence principle of “ignorance of law is no excuse”. Minimizing your data mishandling penalties risk by leveraging experienced Enterprise Marketing firm such as InMobi sounds like a steal now, doesn’t it?

Ninth challenge for a marketer is standardized versus custom marketing solutions. When working with the giant 800-pound gorillas of the advertising industry, you have to make-do with what is offered. It is not to take away from any trend-setting innovations and research done by these great giants, but depending on the size and location of your firm and reach of your contacts, you largely have to take it or leave it. What most marketers want is to build a long-term relationship with a representative of a mobile-first Enterprise Marketing firm, which is willing to educate on best-practices, learn, and grow together, while providing them the right solution as needed. Marketing needs a human touch and contact; it is the nature of business.

Startup or not, an innovative company has to constantly be on-guard about how it wants to make an impact on its industry. One may choose to grow organically, but it takes time, effort, and money. One may grow through a merger or an acquisition, but it takes effort, money, and a right match with synergies. And then there is the partnership route, which requires two or more partners with similar clear vision, excellent execution team, and groundbreaking products to work towards a common goal and “make the whole greater than the sum of its parts.” Such moments are rare in a corporation’s life, when it gets a chance to pivot, create differentiation, and grow exponentially at the same time.

If executed right, InMobi-Microsoft deal has the potential to give the so-called tech walled gardens and varied AdTech and MarTech companies a run for their money. As Peter Drucker once said, “the best way to predict the future is to create it.”

Agree? Disagree? More to it? Let me know in the comments section below…



This is a republished copy of my popular LinkedIn Pulse article “CMO's Handbook: 9 Critical Challenges Faced by a Marketer” and Medium story “CMO's Handbook: 9 Critical Challenges Faced by a Marketer”.