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How Complicated is Marketing These Days? Part 2

Written by Tina Miletich | Jan 31, 2018 2:00:00 PM

If you haven’t already, check out Part 1 of our “How Complicated is Marketing These Days? Part 1” series.

The modern marketing landscape is more complex than ever. It’s a place where CMOs and marketing professionals must balance a huge variety of skills all while managing customers across a multitude of channels. Let’s dive into a few more reasons why it’s harder than ever to be a marketer: 

 Data-driven marketing is key

Today there are an increasing number of tools to predict consumer behavior.  These tools can track everything from ad clicks to email opens to times spent on web pages. Access to these numbers have turned marketing into a science, which means data insights must inform all decisions and marketers have less of an excuse for not knowing what your customers want.

While this sounds like it should make the job of a marketer easier, it’s putting pressure on marketing and communications teams to make wise and effective decisions based on a plethora of data. This requires highly analytical teams that are able to draw valuable insights.

Creativity in Marketing is shifting

Creativity used to be a nebulous term in the marketing world. Traditionally, the quality of a piece of content or a campaign was the measure of successful creativity. These traditional campaigns took weeks or months to develop and were typically guided by subjective instinct.

This has changed drastically in today’s technology-driven business landscape. The measure of creative success is the value of the output, whether that’s awareness, leads, or sales. To this point, creativity is less subjective because it is backed by data.

Additionally, it requires working with customers to weave their experiences with creative efforts. This means that marketers must focus on the entire customer experience from start to end -- including the product, the buying experience, customer support, etc.

CMOs need more skills

There has been a shift in the skills needed for companies to compete and succeed. With digital, social, and mobile media, and big data rising, CMOs have had new job roles thrust on them. Adaptation is key and can ultimately define a company’s success. Some new skills CMOs must possess in the modern business landscape include:

  • A focus on statistics and data analytics and how they can be used to drive change.
  • An ability to quickly assess new platforms and technologies.
  • A deep understanding of the digital marketing space, such as search, design, eCommerce, user experience, and social media.
  • Content creation and community management skills.

Read our blog to learn about more skills CMOs need to succeed.

While marketing is definitely - getting more complex. This complexity is helping the adaptable and skilled Marketing teams capitalize on the change by targeting consumers more directly with more relevance.