If you look online, in specialist business magazines or in the news you will find endless statistics regarding the shelf life of Chief Marketing Officers. If you haven’t already done this, all you need to know is that their shelf life isn’t all that great. In fact most Chief Marketing Officers are in and out of their jobs within about 18 months. This clearly indicates that the role of Chief Marketing Officer is a tough one. But what is it about this specific role that makes it so difficult? Read on to find out the key things that Chief Marketing Officers need to stay on top of in order to do well and increase their shelf life. After doing so you will come to realize why the role is as tough as it is.
Sales Management
Sales management is an enormous area, which helps keep most Chief Marketing Officers busy. One of the tasks involved is looking over sales reports, which are often put together by specific departments within the business, and making changes based on the information within these reports. This can be quite a task because the Chief Marketing Officers have the final say and bad decisions are often pinned on them rather than on a sales report that has been badly put together.
Another important task is sales planning. This involves implementing strategies and targets, for example setting profit-based goals and writing and implementing a well thought out sales plan. There are many more tasks as well, which as you can imagine makes keeping on top of this area an extremely difficult thing to do.
New Product Development
Simply put, new product development is the entire process of bringing a brand new product to market. This usually involves cooperation and interaction between multiple different parts of a business, which is an extremely complex task to get right. The Chief Marketing Officer is in charge of overseeing this entire process and making sure that everything runs smoothly. Therefore if mistakes are made during this period it’s the Chief Marketing Officer’s head that is “on the chopping block” so to speak. Thus, keeping on top of this area is crucial for any Chief Marketing Officer if they wish to do well.
Marketing Communications
Market communications involves the promotion of a specific product or service. This is something that is crucial for the success of a product or service. One small slip up and things can turn bad extremely quickly. For example we all know at least one marketing campaign that went terribly wrong. One of the most essential parts of any marketing campaign is making sure that it gives off the right message and ensuring that this message is the same across all the different kinds of promotion. As long as Chief Marketing Officers get this right, they usually go on to do incredibly well.
Customer Service
Ensuring great customer service is essential for any Chief Marketing Officer that wishes to succeed. However customer service is an area that a lot of Chief Marketing Officers tend to forget about and neglect a little more than they should.
A good chief marketing officer should keep a close eye on customer service and make sure that it’s being delivered to a high standard. A fantastic way to do this is to build it into the company culture and make it something that your employees want to do instead of making it feel like a chore. If this is done correctly the results that will be seen will be better than anyone could ever expect.
Maintain A Thorough Overview Of Everything
As you have probably gathered maintaining an overview of all the marketing processes within a business is one of the most important parts of being a Chief Marketing Officer. This is by no means an easy task and is in fact incredibly difficult to master correctly. However, if Chief Marketing Officers maintain a thorough overview of everything it is much easier for them to notice when something needs to be changed. Then because of this they can set the right goals and implement the correct procedures in order to keep the business succeeding.
If you are not sure about yourself and these information are not enough for you, attend a change management training.