5 Challenges of Being A CMO in 2020

There are always challenges CMOs have to overcome for both themselves and their teams as a whole.

Your team will always look to you to solve a variety of problems and almost always think you will have the answer to solve these problems - but that may not always be the case, and it can often pose more issues.

Here we look at what CMOs must consider moving forward in 2020 and beyond.

Standing out from the crowd

Everyone is trying to get their message across - most of the time it seems to be the same message, so what is it differently you need to consider to grab your customer’s attention? As the marketing landscape changes and attention spans shorten, CMOs are needing to push harder to reach and engage with the customer.

The customer is always at the heart of your marketing strategies and goals, and seeing your marketing strategies in the mind’s eye of the customer at every level of your marketing team is imperative for success.

Ensuring you are putting out a positive brand experience throughout your company is a fantastic goal and achievement, but how do you actually get that out there?

If your expectations and claims are out there, backing it up is key. Perhaps your customers’ needs and expectations have actually changed? Revisit these and remember you are human too, so getting that level of understanding and authenticity is key. Trust can easily be formed on that basis instead of coming across too automated.

Customer insight is great to harvest, but harnessing it and honing it for a clear and defined brand voice is critical. Get that right, across the board, you can position your business to that level of being a brand that consumers are able to trust.

The all-important customer experience

When it comes to customer experience (CX), drive your focus towards managing expectations, brand loyalty and so much more.

Innovation is constantly changing how brands connect with and market to their customers. With these developments, a major one being mobile, how are organisations able to give such a consistent and high-quality experience to them?

To be able to improve the CX in the first instance, marketers should already have a definite handle of the whole customer journey. This whole customer experience involves how the customer feels about their experience and their connection with the business, while the journey aspect relates to all of the key touchpoints when engaging with the brand.

Marketing is becoming more responsible for owning this whole customer journey at every stage. The increased presence of digital channels throughout this means that the idea of consistent omnichannel brand messaging is maintained.

Mobile has added more complexities to optimising the customer journey, however, it is still an incredibly valuable resource in mapping specific goals. Having this customer journey map means you can get a real insight and understanding of customers’ pain points and needs in real-time. Having this customer understanding, you can really optimise the journey to the best of your knowledge.

Keeping it personal

With the sheer amount of data and technology at hand, businesses and brands have the perfect opportunities to get themselves right in front of their audiences in a provocative way.

To genuinely stand out to your customer, personalisation rules.

Having a more personal campaign, you can deliver that content that is relevant to that customer. It goes without saying that if someone finds you relevant to them as a brand, engagement will be increased.

Increased engagement, particularly those that have that personal dynamic, have been proven to increase the purchasing intention.

At this time, consumers are expecting smooth experiences and hyper-personalisation with the content that is being delivered, and more so at the right time.

Whether it is social media posts, emails or other forms of advertisement, it all combines to the overall customer experience. Developing technology such as artificial intelligence and other learning programs gives marketers extra help in building strong, coherent and targeted experiences that tap into the emotions of consumers.

Above all, making it personalised for your consumers requires having the right team, their skills and making the most out of the available technology at your disposal.

Protecting privacy and keeping things secure

Despite personalization being a key priority for CMOs, data protection and security need to be treated the same, if not with even more care.

The EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) needs to be considered as it significantly impacts data which is processed of EU citizens. Its success and implementation could stretch further across the world if proven. This means businesses, EU and beyond, need to really think about how customer data and privacy is handled.

Organisations can best approach customer privacy and security by being straightforward and honest. Making clear the regulations, how you collect the data, what is collected, how it is used and also how you keep it safe gives confidence and trust to the consumer.

With the GDPR set up, it's never been increasingly significant for advertisers to support their associations with clients and upgrade client commitment. In spite of the fact that information protection guidelines mean access to less information to educate advertisers, they can use the intensity of AI to improve the experience for every client.

It’s never been more important since GDPR came in to effect for marketers to manage better their relationship and understanding of customers, whilst also better engaging with them. These regulations do mean slightly less access to data, the power of AI can also help the experience for each and every customer.

The rise of the machines: artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been a keen interest for marketers for some time.

Making the right decisions from finding, investing and integrating the correct and most suitable tech is a major worry for marketing teams. Getting that right solution for CMOs for efficiency and productivity is a big challenge.

Like other marketing initiatives, using technology needs to be considered with the consumer in kind. Getting the right technology in place alleviates the need to spend time on time-consuming tasks - getting something just packed with features can be detrimental so take the time now to get it right.

AI is changing dramatically how brands interact with consumers and using this to the best of the brand’s ability to help automate processes will stay ahead of the pack. All businesses will get to the stage of using AI, even if they are at that stage right now.

But be warned, no technology can ever replace the actual value of a human mind and emotional decision making; both need to co-exist to be as successful as they can be.

Going forward

It goes without saying that there will always be obstacles but facing both the challenges presented in the here-and-now as well as what may be further down the line is important for CMOs in an ever-changing role.

Knowing the responsibilities and being prepared at how to face problems will help get the best out of you and your team and achieve goals. However, keep remembering there will be more challenges ahead but be confident in knowing you are making the right decisions now to help you go forward in the future.