Technical Competency

 You simply cannot make it in today’s business climate as a marketing officer without solid technical competency and familiarity with technology. Marketing teams incorporate a broad range of professionals with skills that range from web programming to business intelligence, content creation, and digital media buying. The CMO must be able to understand how all of these people interact and be equipped to lead and engage in internal strategic conversations.

About half of all marketing positions currently require technical skills, and marketing leaders are struggling with a massive skills gap.

Marketing Skills Shortages and surplus

Younger professionals fresh out of college, or with some work experience, are sometimes more attune with newer marketing technology than long-established professionals who started their careers before the tech boom in marketing.

CMOs must know technology to make appropriate hiring decisions and to encourage strategic development and implementation that is typically tech-driven.

Data Analysis and Interpretation

Historically, a high-priority skill for marketing professionals was creativity. While you certainly still need people to come up with effective promotional strategies and designs along with compelling content, analytics skills are now equally important — or even more so in some cases.

No company can survive in the digital age without a data-driven marketing system that includes a robust software solution and the capacity to collect and analyse big data.

CMOs need analytics skills to participate in the formulation of strategy and infrastructure development, data collection processes, analysis, and program development. Even after the correct tech setup and procedures are in place for gathering data and turning it into reports, CMOs need to interpret results from critical reports.

Quality interpretation leads to optimisation of the customer experience, targeted marketing efficiency, and high return on marketing investment.

CMO analytics skills

Account-Based Marketing Approach

The single lead or contact-based approach to lead generation exists, but it is not the way top revenue-generating companies go about things. Account-based marketing focuses on the needs of an organisation and breaks it down by department, channel, and decision-maker.

ABM allows your firm to optimise revenue by getting in touch with the right people at the right time with the right message. Successful connections lead to high levels of customer satisfaction, repeat purchases, and higher revenue. Additionally, rather than selling to just one contact inside an organisation, your business could sell to several decision-makers of the buying process within a company who have different needs and interests.

Customer and User Experience

As already noted, customer and user experience are driving forces in successful businesses in the digital era. The expansion of the internet and mobile technology gives customers access to many options for meeting their needs. Leading providers realise that delivering a high-quality user experience on websites and mobile apps, and throughout the buying processes produces higher sales and happy customers.

Dave Bollard Chief Marketing Officer Utah and firms now have dedicated user experience experts. These professionals understand all facets of researching and optimising UX. For CMOs to successfully lead people in this area, they too need to know how CX and UX are evaluated, developed, and continually improved.

Innovative Thinking

The need for creative thinking by marketing officers is closely tied to UX skill requirements and the executive leadership role. Customers and behavioural data gleaned from them are primary sources of feedback on company performance and future direction. This information puts the CMO squarely in the driving seat at identifying opportunities for additions, deletions, or modifications to products, services, and processes.

By monitoring and improving the UX, the CMO naturally looks for indications that customer approaches and demands have shifted. If your company can get solutions in place at the time of peak demand and update buying paths to suit market preferences faster than anyone else, you can cement your leadership position in the market.