Each year I look at the predictions from agency and consulting land and wonder if anyone spent any time with a real marketer. The published CMO agenda always seems to differ so greatly from what those informing it think matters.
So as I sat down with Australia's leading marketers this week at a series of events Simple hosted, I led with one simple question: "What's at the top of your agenda?" A few themes popped:
Theme #1: Agitated by agile
Agile is running rampant in financial services and now making its way into other marketing teams. Agile philosophies and approaches definitely have a place in marketing - but the system itself seems to be struggling. More on why that is in another post. One of Australia's largest marketing teams, for instance, is about to abandon it. What is needed is an operating system that can support Agile but address the broader process and brand automation to scale marketing. What should make us more efficient must also acknowledge that the make-up of a modern marketing team is very different from a software team. We remain big on Agile, but bigger on making it work for marketers.
Theme #2: Weaponising Speed
Most marketers were frustrated that marketing still runs too slowly. From agency on-boarding and integration through the time needed to develop and launch campaigns, marketers are struggling with time-to-marketing. All are investing more in the "how" of marketing. The investment in the last decade in distribution and analytics platforms -- the "where" and the "why" -- are now being matched by smart investments in the platforms to fuel them. Productivity initiatives and a direct assault on marketing complexity are in full swing.
Theme #3: Tech stack indigestion
The decade-long investment in martech has resulted in some serious indigestion. Marketers are now moving to always-on training and stack simplification. Our capacity to distribute and analyze has far outstripped our ability to create. Attention is rightfully swinging back to how to make more -- orchestrating and creating beautiful customer experiences. And, most are realizing the “marketing cloud” is a big sell to lock you into one platform - greater emphasis is now being placed on integration and interoperability.
Theme #4: Agency in, agency out, agency on board
Most marketers have the migration of digital and programmatic buying firmly locked on their agenda. Broadly, though, all are looking to tackle the speed at which agencies deliver results - and which part of those agencies are better suited to being in-house. Most are building components of a studio. Many are building full studios. This is as much about tighter ownership of the creative product as it is the output from creative teams. All are investing in platforms to simplify and automate production.
Theme #5: Sales transformation
All marketers are looking at how they can interrupt traditional sales cycles with frictionless selling and beautiful customer journeys. And how they can transform old-world sales teams to make them more social and agile. Current approaches have been put out of business by information asymmetry. Content (coupled with approaches such as Challenger Selling) is the key ingredient here and all are looking for platforms to standardise and scale content development processes. All are looking for platforms to ingest huge volumes of data and create maps of the customer that are more intimate and relevant than anything available through industrial-scale platforms such as Linkedin.
Andy Lark, chairman of marketing operations platform Simple