Top 4 Success Factors for CMO’s

1. Senior level (with a marketing knowledge) involvement in recruitment and procurement
2. Seeking strategic alliances, not agencies
3. Making targeted long term investments in people, companies and systems
4. Developing strong processes in marketing

Note that these differ from the original article.

So what is the solution today?

Find a digital agency which understands from the business of marketing.

I know it is extremely hard to find one, but I know it is not impossible

The successful Marketing directors of the future will be the ones who will spot the right digital agency - not the “flashy ones” - which understands from the business of marketing . One clue that I can share with “Radical Marketers” is that, they should look into the DNA of the digital agencies and understand the backgrounds of key employees.

Of course, only spotting the right agency will not bring much success to the marketing directors, but creating the right environment for an efficient and long lasting relation will do.

Also note what Advertising Age says on traditional agencies:

“For every marketing challenge, their solution is “better creativity.”

This is really harsh, but to tell you the truth, this is mostly the case in the industry.

Another good finding was:

“As much as people like to talk about the agency of the future, it will never happen until the client gets there first.”

I see many clients with great expectations, but mostly the organization, the human capital and the vision of the marketing department are mostly the bottleneck why digital agencies aren’t ready to lead.

See the full Advertising Age article which inspired me for this post at Why Digital Agencies Aren’t Ready to Lead – Advertising Age – DigitalNext.

One of the major obstacles on the move towards new marketing is the lacking decision making in the choice of digital agencies.

Recently, iMediaConnection had an article on this issue. (To see the full article please visit; A CMOs guide to hiring a digital agency – iMediaConnection.com.)

You can find my takeout and thinking on this article below.

Three things not to miss when choosing a digital agency:

1) Understand that nobody serves a perfect full service and you need either a great team or a lead agency.

from the article: “Do you opt for a “specialist” agency — a social media shop, for example — to work in a highly technical area, or do you hire one agency that can bring it all together at the risk of sacrificing some key knowledge in an emerging area?…

… If you have the time and staff to orchestrate across multiple specialists, then you have the option to spread the love. If youre like most organizations, however, and youre short-staffed and time-crunched, then you should find and assign a lead agency and have them sub-contract for the specialists.”

2) Don’t try to catch up with each trend yourself, it doesn’t pay off

from the article: “digital creates new communication channels faster than advertisers can figure out how to use them…

…If you try to have a specialist for every niche, you’ll constantly be searching for a specialist for the next new thing,”

3) Look for thought leadership and be courageous to empower the thought leaders (even if they are outside of your company).

from the article: “If you have a lead agency responsible for bringing holistic thinking, then they will have the responsibility to be constantly searching for those specialists and providing you with thought leadership and success.”

Also, the article correctly pointed on an often problem creating area; the view of the CMO and the marketing team.

“the assumption that the onus is on the agency to make its client happy won’t get a CMO very far in the long-run”

That is so correct, and just a change in this view might change the total outcome of the marketing efforts (needless to say, if the company was smart enough to choose the right agency).

Couple years ago, an eConsultancy study found  that nearly half of all respondents (45.5%) do not have a structured approach to managing their web projects. You can reach the study at Web Project Management: Best Practice Reports . This was in May, 2007 , unfortunately not much has changed so far.

As the report correctly states;

“Companies without a structured approach are the least likely to achieve their project goals, least likely to deliver customer satisfaction, are least able to deal with change during the course of the project and are less likely to achieve deadlines, meet budgets and deliver positive ROI.”

The difference between the “visionary” marketing managers and the “doers” is;

First, a good understanding of the web (the team members must be living in the new web)

And second, a good team with a project management skills (of course this comes with web project experience)

Your team with good project management skills will be using probably a good project management system as well. Below are the Top 10 open source web project management softwares by CyberCiti;

1: Codendi
2: Redmine
3: ProjectPier
4: Trac
5: Project HQ
6: Collabtive
7: eGroupWare
8: KForge
9: OpenGoo
10: ClockingIT

See the complete list and download information at: Top 10 Open Source Web-Based Project Management Software

It is so right. I was trying to explain this to companies for the last 10 years (unfortunately not in these 6 simple words). Internet put the Customer Service process in front of all our customers, and social media become the new catalyst for customer service experiences (to spread faster on the internet).

Today, all the research reports that highly influential consumers are using social media channels to share their personal customer service experiences and learn about others’ care experiences when making purchase decisions.

You can also see one of these researches at; SNCR Study, 2008.

Top 10 Marketing Events

Oh, did you say, there are 12 top events on the list?

Yes, I gave you two bonuses (in case you can not make it to the original ten top events). Also do not forget, these events are a good opportunity to meet likeminded “Radical Marketer”s.

1. You shall believe in “web centric integrated marketing” and know it is the right way of new, “radical” marketing.
2. You shall know that “Marketing cannot be left to Marketers only”. Marketing and strategy should be hand in hand, and the top management (or the top brains of the corporation) should be very close to the strategic marketing issues.
3. You shall not just seek for “Market Shares” but “Soul Shares”.
4. You shall see that “Marketing is not a cost center, but a profit center”.

The “Radical Marketers” should focus on  two important issues here;

First, we should always put the ease of purchase portion of the costs in our decisions and strategies.

Second, we should not only focus to drop our costs just by focusing to decrease the price, but think about droping the costs by increasing the ease of purchase.

Online world is providing us many opportunities for improvements on the ease of purchase, and the “Radical Marketers” has to plan and execute on this front for a competitive advantage.

Below you can find portion of the article;

Time and time again I see the discussion about free content, free services, free products, and how they’re going to liberate/destroy/change the current economy, especially when it comes to the Internet. Often, one important point is neglected. When it comes to free, it’s not the price that’s crucial.

It defies logic: after all, if you offer someone a free donut, he/she is going to take it because the price is zero, right? Well, not exactly. In the online world, there’s another equally important currency: availability. It can be defined by the number of steps it takes to do something or download some content. The bigger the number of steps, the bigger the cost of the product/service.

In case the idea is not very clear, I advise the full article; You Think ‘Free’ is About the Price? It’s not..

This award is given to the agency that obtains the highest score for entries in the Cyber Lions sections, irrespective of whether these have been entered by the agency or another party.

1. GOODBY SILVERSTEIN & PARTNERS, San Francisco, USA

2. CRISPIN PORTER & BOGUSKY, Boulder, USA

3. BOONDOGGLE, Leuven, Belgium

This year, I hope to see a rise in Radical Marketers who invest in good quality agencies to do web centric integrated marketing campaigns.

Martin Sorrell, chief executive officer of WPP Group was on Charlie Rose on My 21st for the first time. It is a show worth watching. You can find some of my quick notes from the interview below;

Martin Sorrell quotes;

CMOs are mostly old people, and change is the last thing they have in mind.

Currently, digital is 25% of our business (& emerging markets is 27% of our business)

Traditional look to advertising: 33% TV, 33% Print, 33% Other media

Now, balance is shifting: 25% TV, 25% Print, 25% Digital, 25% Other media

In a few years there will be a big change: within couple years (it will be fairly quick), all media is becomming digital

Listening to this interview one question came to my mind; Can you spot me one Turkish CMO who spents 25% in digital?

I think irrational behavior is something that all the marketers and sales people have to learn and excel. These ideas comes to good marketers intuitively, but sometimes it is hard to explain the teams involved with marketing. Dan Ariely brings a great framework for the decision process, which should be an important part of the sales and marketing teachings.

twitter.com
facebook.com
friendfeed.com
slideshare.net
linkedin.com
delicious.com
youtube.com

Of course based on your sector and special interest there are many more sites you shouldn’t avoid. But I won’t be getting into them today.

Social Media’s (&social marketing’s) effect on Web Marketing can be considered as being similar to Web’s effect on marketing.

Social Marketing is to Web Marketing,

what Web was to Marketing!

The effect is total change, a need for a different mindset, different organization and people with different skills.

You can see the full article below;

“Social media is much more than a tactic. The more you participate in social media and learn what can be gleaned, you will soon realize its potential. Rich, valuable and instantaneous feedback from your audience. Lots of opportunity to conduct primary research. A wealth of information from online discussions as informative as the very best focus groups.”

via Ad Agencies Please Know That Social Media is Not a Tactic « FUEL LINES Fueling Ad Agency New Business Through Social Media.

via Microsoft’s profit sinks 32% – Apr. 23, 2009 .

Did you see the latest numbers from Microsoft Online Advertising Revenues? I still don’t get it. How is it possible that a company like Microsoft cannot come up with a software which is a real rival to Adwords? (knowing that Adwords system is much simpler than most of Microsoft’s software and Adwords has still a lot of areas for improvement)

I am not sure whether Microsoft has the right team to tackle this issue. I believe a healthy competition in this area would be very beneficial for both publishers and advertisers.

On a second thought; the only party which will not benefit from this competition is USA. But we are living in Obama times now, hopefully, we might even see a Microsoft with a good advertising foundation.