How Emerging Marketing Technology Impacts the Role of the CMO

For modern CMOs, keeping pace with, let alone getting ahead of, ever-evolving trends in emerging marketing technology and platforms is a major challenge. For example, while 88% of millennials currently receive news from Facebook, trends predict the generation’s overall usage of social media will decline as they begin to correlate it with missed, personal experiences. As recently as 2012, Instagram was considered a “new thing,” yet the platform has now reached over 700 million active users and continues to expand.

Due to consumers’ increased online influence, the role of CMO has become inseparable with technology. Marketing strategies have entered a new stratosphere of complexity due to the emergence of numerous available channels to display content coupled with consumers’ demand for personal relationships with brands. In order to increase market share, differentiate from other brands, and create a seamless experience for consumers, CMOs now focus heavily on leveraging new technologies to aid data-driven strategies.

As a result, the desired CMO skillset has evolved in tandem with technology trends. Modern CMOs must cultivate a keen understanding of technologies and analytics to generate stories that align with company values, market position, and are backed by statistics. CMOs are tasked with constantly innovating their approaches to improve KPIs from month to month. On a deeper level, CMOs are also required to question and validate whether their metrics and indicators of success are the right ones in today’s environment

It is no surprise, based on their revamped job description, that CMOs have been spending more on emerging marketing technology. According to research conducted by Gartner, CMO technology budgets are projected to exceed CIO technology expenditures in 2017. And in many marketing organizations, technology expertise is becoming a requirement of positions and roles, as marketing strategies have shifted toward investments in digital channels. In the same research, the top three areas of that investment include digital advertising, digital commerce, and website. We often hear (and agree) with the importance of sales and marketing alignment, but with this transition in marketing strategies, add the importance of marketing and IT alignment as the consumer experience becomes an integral component to achieve growth objectives.

In the consumer products industry, CMOs are discovering and quickly implementing new ways to engage their consumers and provide refreshing experiences with their brands. Tracking new marketing technology and future trends will play a key role in how CMOs develop creative brand narratives and increase demand generation in the future.

Co-author and contributions by Adam Kershner.

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