CMOs are dropping like flies these days and are being replaced and retitled as chief customer officers, chief strategy officers, chief revenue officers, and chief growth officers. Marketing is no longer being viewed as an isolated separate function. Marketing is now integrated holistically across the organization across product, technology, sales, and operations.
In 2020, some serious companies - including Uber, Johnson& Johnson, and Taco Bell - have killed off their CMO position. Organization sare becoming more aware of how many aspects of the business are touched by marketing. Marketing, sales, and the product in the modern SaaS business model work in complete conjunction with each other. While every department of the business has their role, companies are now taking bigger steps to rid themselves of departmentalized thinking and operating silos. Marketing needs to have a familiarity with every aspect of the business as now it often touches almost every aspect of the business.
The strategies that are developed in marketing need to play well across departments, everything from common narratives of the brand, culture, growth, and deployment of resources. In order for many of marketing’s functions to work, an integrated approach needs a mandate that helps drive long term value for the organization.
Advertising is not marketing – it on its own isn’t the sole driver of revenue. Brand growth alone doesn’t not always translate into business growth. Brands need to be built on a combination of communications, product, and tapping into the customers soul by understanding their desires. Brands are living breathing things, marketing helps to craft the brand, the brand also comes down to the reputation of the product. Product reputation goes beyond simple quality control, it extends to the level of thought that has been put into solving the customers problem or answering their desires before they’ve even realized that they had them.
Good marketing can be your organizations competitive advantage beyond creativity but as a lead driver of revenue and a conduit from the customer to the product development and in software developing the product itself in a way that it can drive its own growth. This is why marketing roles are evolving. These departments that were once considered marketing are now becoming builders of systems and strategies to drive revenue and long-term growth.
