Sure, marketing is still responsible for generating engagement with the company’s target audience. But today, that is just the first step in building long-lasting and profitable relationships with customers. The CMO Club, in partnership with IBM, conducted research among 100 of the world’s top marketers — with budgets of $1 billion or more — and discovered that marketing was becoming less about the funnel and more about the journey as budgets were increasingly spread over the whole lifecycle of the customer. That should come as no surprise.
This research points out the need for CMOs to design and implement new operating models, investment strategies and communication processes that will maximize the ROI from the customer experience over time. The IBM Report goes on to say, “CMOs can no longer afford to dedicate a majority of their budget to customer acquisition and allocate market spend by channel. Marketing focused solely on awareness and / or the purchase funnel is obsolete.”
Leading CMOs are starting over. They are clearing the slate and using the customer journey as their roadmap for strategic planning, budgeting and staffing. While some CEOs and executive teams may not have the appetite for this reset — it is the right business and financial decision in the long run. Companies that reconstruct their approach to marketing, with customer experience at the epicenter of their strategy, will ultimately gain and maintain greater marketshare than their competitors.
