The Role of a CMO has become immensely important in today’s dynamic and fast paced world. A CMO is responsible for consistently defining the brand and keeping it competitive. In a red ocean of competing brands, a CMO has the challenging yet fun responsibility to position the brand in the minds of consumers in such a way that differentiates the brand and delivers maximum impact.
A CMO must continuously and consistently build the brand and increases the target audience’s exposure to it across all platforms. Furthermore, she/he must stay abreast of new niches where the brand can enter while monitoring the key performance indicators depicting the health and visibility of the brand in question. This is only possible through implementation of robust strategies.
With great power comes great responsibility. As the brand keeps growing, so do the responsibilities and expectations associated with it. To help modern-day CMOs get their brand where they need to, with today’s dynamic market, consumer behavior and competition, we have created a list of six strategies they must implement:
1. Think Global, Target Local
The marketing strategy supporting any brand should be global: reaching members of the target audience that are not within the geographical limits of where they currently operate. The vision should be broad. The branding strategy should focus on ideals customers in various geographical locations. This requires understanding and categorizing different customer-bases. You should develop strategic and long-term partnerships, networking to further develop their own unique reach into the target audience. These capabilities should then be leveraged to find out more about the habits of the target customers.
2. PR Strategy
A CMO should be able to come up with a PR strategy that is robust and helps in overall strengthening of the brand. This means having a solid image in the minds of all the stakeholders in the brand, including shareholders, the target audience and the immediate community of the brand at large. The CMO should do a deep dive into the core vision of the brand and align the PR strategy with that vision. For example, Coke is associated with happiness due to the continuous efforts of its marketing team.
As CMO, you should ensure that the message is consistent and reflected in the PR strategy. This requires developing and adhering to guidelines for engaging and communication with the target audience, stakeholders, and media across all channels. The brand should show genuine appreciation for the support that the brand has garnered over the years, across all channels of communication. This will show that the brand cares to give back, gaining the trust of the target audience even more, thus growing the brand.
3. Content Strategy
The CMO should have in place a content strategy that is aimed at growing the following of the brand with relevant, meaningful, inspiring, insightful, educational and/or entertaining content. As CMO, you are responsible for sharing a vision, mission and story of the brand, which is then reflected in the content that is created. The content strategy should put the right type of content that is relevant to the target audience of the brand across the many touch points across both marketing and sales funnels.
The content strategy should include a robust content calendar with relevant topics, develop an editorial calendar well in advance, monitor the content being published, and delegate tasks to meet publishing and development deadlines as well.
4. Creating Inter-departmental synergy and collaboration
As CMO you are responsible for aligning the goals of the company’s different functions so that the brand’s promise is delivered upon. There is an immense need to communicate the objectives across the different functions well and that all bottlenecks and miscommunication be minimized or eliminated completely. A CMO should develop a strategy for improving and streamlining collaboration across cross-functional teams, spread across different departments. Ensuring the goals are properly communicated, tracked and monitored and so is the progress of all teams involved is crucial for ensuring success.
5. Creating an Agile brand
The brand should be able to seek new trends and keep up with news on social media that will help it go forward and aid growth. The CM should monitor the changing dynamics of the market including traditional and digital platforms and channels for any changes that may provide the brand with a chance to grow. It involves taking a closer look and reverse engineering what competitors are doing well and leveraging the strengths of the brand to create a winning and innovative strategy directed towards the target market.
6. Growth
To summarize, a CMO is responsible for the overall growth of a brand, and should be motivated to seek relevant opportunities and new niches that can expand the target market of the brand and target that niche effectively: gaining and developing trust in the form of long term, profitable relationships that are important in the overall growth of the brand.