Why CMOs Must Bridge the Gap Between Love and Money

"CMOs must overcome certain challenges in order to satisfy customers and shareholders. When navigated smartly, the path to mitigate these challenges is a very rewarding one."

The above excerpt from The CMO Dilemma: Bridging the Gap Between Love and Money - a study and corresponding eBook from Aberdeen Group, spells out in a nutshell the life of a CMO. On one hand there are the customers (love) and on the other are the boards of directors/shareholders (money).

The figure below highlights the fact that CMOs are under pressure to incorporate (and align) the expectations of both customers and shareholders with their activities to resolve the dilemma of keeping both equally happy and engaged. Not an easy balancing act to say the least but as you can see the benefits of doing so are many.

Ok that's the good news. CMOs who successfully bridge that gap and keep both parties happy, can live long and yes, prosper. There is no magic wand to wave and suddenly both your customers and board of directors are equally smitten with the work you've done as a CMO.

It is of course a challenge - the aforementioned challenge to satisfy customers and shareholders alike.

Don't Stop Believin'

Those who know me know I am a huge fan of infusing pop culture into my writing and since the key to achieving balance nirvana - meeting the needs of the customers AND board, has to do with journey management... see where I'm going?

Rest assured customer journey management is not a new concept, but the modern marketer needs to keep both the growing needs of customers and shareholders in mind. When executed effectively, journey management is a powerful activity that helps marketers attain the short-term and financial expectations of the shareholders, as well as meet and exceed the rapidly changing demands of customers.

It appears, however, many marketers still struggle mightily with customer journey mapping as 96% of CMOs reported they are not satisfied with their ability to use existing data when designing marketing programs to orchestrate buyer journeys.

That's why we created the Journey Management Benchmark Assessment tool, which was created specifically to evaluate how well CMOs are managing the balance between shareholders and customers to ensure their meeting the needs of both.

Be sure to take the assessment AND download The CMO Dilemma: Bridging the Gap Between Love and Money to find out how top performing CMOs are able to overcome this challenge by using journey management, omni-channel, and analytics as key ingredients of their activities.