Reinventing Digital Marketing and More | CMO Perspectives (30th March, 2016)

“Social Customer Care, Isn’t it Time?” Was the theme of a recent NICE guest blog post by Donna Fluss, President at DMG Consulting LLC. Apparently so! If the content featured in this week’s CMO Perspectives blog is anything to go by. Find out what Ashley Zeckman [Toprankblog.com] has to say about ‘brandividuals’ and where they fit into the B2B customer journey; See what Jeanne Bliss has to say about why bad CX leads to no social media love [customerbliss.com]; and finally what does Will McInnes say are the 5 KPIs you should be measuring in order to be a successful social CMO [marketingland.com]? Enjoy!

Even Jay Baer @jaybaer agrees, the time for social customer care is NOW!

Social Customer Care: Isn’t it Time? https://t.co/5nx8myChFg@NICE_Systems

— Jay Baer (@jaybaer) March 26, 2016

Everyone is familiar with the term influencer or influencer marketing. Ashley Zeckman has written a star piece on where influencer marketing fits into the B2B customer journey. But she says that while there are many powerful ‘brandividuals’ (we LOVE this term) that can help advance your brand message. Before you can jump into how to incorporate influencers into different types of content, it’s important to take a step back and recognize that the term “influencer” does not just apply to popular brandividuals that many companies are all chasing after to add to their marketing campaigns. You also need to consider incorporating niche industry experts, experts from reputable brands, your own customers and even employees into these content campaigns. What a cracking idea!

CX Guru Jeanne Bliss says that in most organizations, anything that decision-makers pay attention to typically has to meet one of these criteria:

• It’s measured
• It makes money
   

In a customer-obsessed organization, however, the concepts need to be much different, citing customer experience as the key to earning social media love. She gives a great case study of how Trader Joe's earned social media love.

Although we tend to pick more recent pieces to highlight in this blog, given the current theme of Social Customer Service, we still think this piece by Gerry Moran published in July last year is worth highlighting. It may be titled, 30 LinkedIn Sales Triggers, but most of these are more about good social customer service and experience, the upside being happier customers and more sales of course. Here are Morgan’s 5 Reasons why it’s important to pay attention to social selling triggers. Have you got any good tips to add?

1. Get on their buyer’s journey radar
2. Nurture a relationship with a prospect, who is not ready to make a decision
3. Sustain your relationship with your customer
4. Accelerate the sales process by adding value with content and insight
5. Develop your reputation
    

Will McInnes asks, "How do you know if your social data efforts are making an impact on your business?" He goes on to say that beyond an occasional pat on the back from the big boss, there are several ways to measure the success of a social CMO or marketer. The following key performance indicators (KPIs) can help determine if your efforts are moving the needle and making a real difference in your business and on the bottom line, or if you need to pivot and change your strategy:

1. A rise in engagement
2. Social conversions
3. Tracking sentiment
4. Uncovering influencers
5. The “so what?” Taking actions from insight
    

This is a well presented piece that will help lead you to being a better social CMO, and if you are still an aspiring CMO, then check out our next piece from Adage.com on being a young successful CMO.

This is Jeff Jones's call for industry leaders to market marketing better by getting back into the classroom where they can influence new and young talent before they become tainted by industry habits and history. Although it is not all doom and gloom for back in 2009, Jones wrote a piece for Ad Age making the case that marketing needed its own chief marketing officer. Now more than six years later, the industry has made up some ground. Marketing's influence and oversight spans beyond advertising to strategy, operations, communications, consumer experience and more. Contributions are being valued across the C-suite and far more sophisticated tools to measure performance have been developed. In fact, despite a slight drop in 2015, CMO tenure has increased more than 25% since 2009, from about 35 months to 44. It's a ripe market for new talent and we can't wait.

Our TWEET OF THE WEEK comes from the great @GlenGilmore with his checklist for #socialmedia success. We would suggest you add B NICE ☺​

✔️Checklist for #SocialMedia Success:

LISTEN
B Friendly
B Accurate
B Helpful
B Fun
Add UGC
Measure
Adjust
Adapt
Bring IRL
REPEAT #smm#cmo

— Glen Gilmore #SocBiz (@GlenGilmore) March 29, 2016

We hope you enjoyed this week’s CMO Perspectives, be sure to respond in the comments or tweet us @NICE_CX or follow us on LinkedIn.