On August 12, Korn Ferry revealed results from its 2014 Marketing Pulse Survey. The results indicate that marketing executives are under increasing pressure to demonstrate how their work drives revenue and contributes to business goals. In fact, 57 percent of CMOs cited the inability to directly connect marketing efforts to tangible business goals as a top reason for low CMO tenure. Another factor contributing to high turnover for CMOs is the lack of alignment between marketing deliverables and CEO objectives as well as the inability to drive organizational change through marketing efforts.
According to the survey, what concerns CMOs the most is the need to create “sustainable and engaging customer relationships while improving the customer experience.” CMOs know that engaging customers is paramount to accomplishing all of the above-mentioned challenges.
“Customer engagement is critical and must be a key focus, but CMOs need to remember that the overarching purpose of driving this engagement is to drive business results. In order to be successful in today’s business environment, CMOs and marketing executives need to be learning agile and strike a balance, achieving both internal and external objectives,” explained Caren Fleit, senior client partner and head of Korn Ferry’s Global Marketing Center of Expertise. To drive business results, CMOs must focus on creating compelling and consistent customer experiences, which requires infusing the corporate story into employee training programs, sales enablement processes and tools as well as thought leadership content.
In today’s customer-driven market, companies must create a compelling and cohesive customer experience. This starts with having a clear, compelling and consistent Messaging Platform to drive corporate messaging continuity across all channels.
