In the past it was sales that closed the deal, and marketing that was creating the opportunity. But today, the value of a company is so linked to intangible assets, such as brand value and the external perception of a company, that marketing’s role has expanded from simply driving leads and running events to bringing the corporate persona and narrative to life – it is the impact of company intangibles and brand that today create the market perceptions and impact company valuations. According to the Forbes CMO Marketing Accountability report, these intangible assets now make up over 80% of shareholder value and increasingly drive the stock price of a company.
Of course, there has always been pressure on CMOs to be accountable for the investments they make. Marketing departments traditionally spend more than many other parts of a business and, as a CMO, you’re constantly being asked to justify your budgets. What was your return on investment? Did you run effective campaigns? What worked? What didn’t work? What resonated and was compelling with your customer base or your new prospects?
But the role of marketing is changing as activity is increasingly linked to the overall valuation of a company, and for good reason. From advertising to apps and everything in between, driving a great customer experience – and maintaining a positive brand identity – is a core responsibility of marketing. In our multi-touch world, the real challenge for marketing is to determine the true impact of each customer touchpoint – to identify what really influenced a customer’s decision to buy.
To meet the challenge, marketing must change. While visual identity, brand narratives and product innovations are vital elements of marketing, you also need to have verifiable data backing your decisions. Today, it’s about demand and brand to revenue, increasing your market relevance and driving enterprise value. This means you can no longer rely on the gut instinct of the Madison Avenue “Mad Men” – you need the data to derive insights from internal and external information, and to empirically demonstrate where and how marketing is impacting the organization.
And that includes having a 360-degree view of your customers and prospects to understand how, when and where those touchpoints are converting to revenue. It’s about where we engage with a customer, not just at the front end of a deal but all the way through the customer journey.
But it’s not just about engagement with the customer. It’s also about how people perceive your brand and what you stand for; it’s about the impact the company is making on a more societal level. Your Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) efforts, the strides you are making in inclusion, diversity and sustainability are all factors in the perception of the company and the brand. But without the data, how do you know what impact this having? Do customers and prospects connect your company’s brand to a broader story? Do they believe it?
We all know that you can’t manage what you don’t measure. And at OpenText™, we are increasingly data-centric – across all areas of the business, but especially in marketing. Being data-centric enables you to course-correct. It means you can ensure you are getting the optimized value from the dollars spent and that you’re having the desired impact with customers and prospects from pipeline to conversion.
At OpenText, we use our Enterprise Information Management (EIM) technology to create an information advantage within marketing – from the creation of highly intuitive user and customer experiences, all the way to enabling rigorous data interrogation with analytics and AI solutions. All of which helps marketing to create more value for the enterprise, and a better relationship with our customers.
