Through a special arrangement, presented here for discussion is a summary of an article from The eTail Blog, a source of exclusive content generated by and for the e-commerce community.
According to a new report, The CMO's Role in Technology Purchasing from Forrester Research, digital marketing tools are threatening to undermine the role of chief marketing officers (CMOs) who do not have a strong technological understanding.
Because technology has advanced so quickly in such a short time and many CMOs have traditionally focused on the creative side of marketing, many of them are grappling with the challenge of learning enough skills to stay relevant in their job space. Marketing execs who do not choose to advance their technical skills may run the risk of being left behind and surpassed by more agile counterparts in their departments.
As the number of marketing channels increases, marketing must rely on technology to handle that fragmentation, as well as marry it with internal data sources, the report found.
Tech advances give marketers a way to tie customer viewpoints to a business strategy by using customer data to respond in a very precise way. That ability will require more tech savvy leaders. Because of how fast digital marketing tools have advanced, some CMOs have simply gone rogue and purchased tools they thought they needed without going through IT. Such a solution is a quick fix but lacks perspective, according to the report's findings. When CMOs miss the integration points of their tech tools and allow the technology to dictate process and strategy, they may be treading dangerous waters.
To avoid such mistakes, it is recommended that CMOs develop a technology strategy and start by building a list of technology must-haves, determine the role of the marketer in making vendor selections and develop tech skills appropriate to the company's needs.
Forrester then recommends CMOs define and execute a road map based on their buyer's journey. This includes identifying which technologies are most marketing intensive, such as customer facing, customer enabling, marketing operations and analytics technologies. Additionally, CMOs must find vendors that support and map to their strategy, says the report.
But it all comes back to the tech skills that the CMO has. In order to make those vendor selections and these various strategic decisions, CMOs must develop the technical skills to evaluate vendors and plan strategically around the technology the department will employ.
Forrester interviewed 15 companies for this report including SAP, Marketo, Pitney Bowes and more.