Forbes’s 2018 marketing trends overlapped with tech: virtual reality, artificial intelligence (AI) and voice search topped the list. In 2019, marketing may be about bringing these trends together, redefining the traditional chief marketing officer (CMO) job description.
#1 Beauty Is A Beast: Mastering Design
Design is rising as a core marketing competency. CMOs own the consumer experience -- and they can’t successfully guide that without being well-versed in user experience (UX) and user interface (UI), typography, color and other visual elements.
Apple released its first-generation iPhone in 2007; Pinterest and Instagram launched shortly after. We are a decade into consumers’ relationship with the visual -- beautiful photography, illustration and design at every turn of the smartphone. Americans check their phones every 12 minutes -- 80 times a day -- on average, according to a study from global tech company Asurion. We have to acknowledge that customers’ expectations on the aesthetic front are higher than ever before.
A decade ago, a startup could launch a product that prioritized functionality and features, compromising on aesthetics. That will no longer work. The minimum viable product (MVP) has shifted to minimum viable experience (MVE), and arguably, the CMO is the gatekeeper of that experience. From preventing clunky design, confusing copy and nonintuitive user experience to prioritizing award-winning graphics, the CMO is the steward of the MVE. A successful steward must hone design expertise and devote time and resources to building core competency.
#2 2019: A Tech Odyssey
Advances in marketing technology are moving brands infinitely closer to achieving the ultimate goal of the “segmentation of one” -- the ability to target and tailor marketing to a single person. This progress is powered by AI applications, including programmatic buying and AI-driven email drip campaigns where the timing of the message is fine-tuned for maximum effect.
This applies to the entire customer journey. Lookalike targeting happens at the prospecting level with Growlabs; social media advertising offers behavioral targeting across devices; multivariate page testing for landing pages is made easy with Unbounce; integrated multichannel marketing and personalized buyer journeys are now possible with Drift, and the list goes on. According to the “Marketing Technology Landscape” report, the martech landscape reached a staggering 6,800 companies in 2018.
When companies use these tools effectively, customer experience is not only relevant but can exceed expectations; it can evoke surprise and delight. Instead of casting a net wide and hoping to catch something, therefore dissatisfying most and tanking return on investment (ROI), marketers continue to gather data, learn and refine targeting.
#3 The Writing On The (Facebook) Wall
The role of the CMO is part data scientist, part psychologist. CMOs need to balance quantitative and qualitative evaluation skills, tracking measurable data but also asking open-ended questions that lead to deeper insights. To drive companies to success, CMOs must ask “Why?” incessantly. This simple question helps identify problems customers might not have been able to define. And once the problem has been identified, solutions can be explored. “Why” is the CMO’s North Star.
As general manager of Closeli, I developed the first home video camera with face recognition, simplicam. At launch in 2014, we targeted advertising at parents on Facebook. Surprisingly, our early roadmap came directly from feedback provided by people who had watched those early ads. One comment simply read: “Why can’t it just stop recording when it knows I’m there? This way I’ll never have to turn it on or off.” As a result, our first feature integration came to be, and it was about privacy and not customization.
This was a revelation to me: Advertising, in my mind, had been a one-way street where brands were talking “at” people (here, look at my billboard!). Social media advertising revolutionalized that! Not only was it a new way of targeting (behavioral targeting versus traditional proxies for demographics), it was now a conversation. We could hear what consumers and customers thought. We now had a qualitative research tool with the fastest feedback mechanism I’d ever experienced.
#4 Agile Development: Fast, Not Furious
In response to the first three trends, marketing leaders are now adopting agile product development methodologies. Long gone are the days of marketers conducting focus groups and then launching worldwide campaigns with billboards or newspaper ads based on that information, and then hoping for the best. Recode reported that digital advertising spend is outpacing TV and radio in 2019. CMOs now run iterative sprints, adapting products in real time based on market conditions and feedback.
This is not to say that focus groups or methodological messaging is dead. Instead, it is one of the many tools in the CMO’s toolbox. Today’s approach is a multichannel, multidimensional, metric, qualitative and iterative approach. Initial spends are smaller, and teams are more responsive and have to be more creative. Agile development in marketing has the added benefit that creativity has embraced meritocracy. Not only is testing cheaper and faster to execute than a marketer could have dreamed pre-social media, but it has also broadened the number and type of consumer that can be reached. Today, the best ideas get their chance to be made into a campaign and to make the broadest impact.
#5 Fightin’ Words: Marketing Owns Product Again
The “marketing mix,” as defined in 1949 by Neil Borden, is made up of the four “Ps”: product, price, promotion and place. Note that the very first “P” is product. Only in the late ’90s did marketing become a synonym of “promotion,” being reduced to the perception of creating Super Bowl ads.
It may be a controversial statement, but in 2019, the CMO is going to reclaim product development. Now that marketing has access to the breadth, depth and volume of feedback in the marketplace in almost real time, product will make its way back solidly into the CMO’s domain. To product, data is oxygen -- and integrated marketing is the oxygen tank. For companies to stay competitive, product will need to be lockstep with market feedback and that process works best when owned by the CMO.
