It’s interesting to contrast the top stories and concerns of large company Chief Marketing Officers who have huge budgets, large marketing departments and dozens of agencies and consultants to advise them on marketing, with what small business owners wearing too many hats are most concerned with related to marketing and growing their business.
CMO.com is a wonderful site owned and managed by software company Adobe. They describe themselves like this, “CMO.com is the senior marketing executive’s one-stop shop for digital marketing insight. We help CMOs stay informed and save time so they can more effectively lead their companies in the digital world. ”
Here’s their list of Top 10 Stories from 2011 for CMOs and our summary of the key insights from each of these stories…
1. CMO’s Guide to the Social Media Landscape – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr, YouTube, Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Tumblr and how they rate for customer communication, brand exposure, building website traffic and helping with SEO (search engine optimization).
2. What CEO’s Want from CMOs. Answer = greater accountability and then these other things…
- A Focused Financial Steward
- A Consistent Innovator
- A Customer Whisperer
- A Dedicated Brand Steward
- A Social Media Maven
- A Business Strategist
- A Capable Crisis Manager
- A Data Analyst
- A Customer Advocate
- A Motivator-in-Chief
3. Building Your Next-Gen Marketing Team
Importance of finding a CDO, Chief Digital Officer who can lead the organization into the new frontier of digital marketing.
4. 10 Details CMO’s Overlook (But Shouldn’t)
- Your Shadow Marketing Team – Everyone in your company is a marketer.
- The Dissatisfied Customer
- Return On Relationship
- Selling!
- Unfolding Crises
- Web Site Performance
- Agency Proliferation
- Who’s Answering The Phones?
- Hidden Customer Data
- The Next Big Thing
5. Digital Marketing Outlook
6. How to Make Your Brand Meaningful
7. Marketing Metrics: The Good, The Bad, and The Irrelevant
8. New Technologies CMO’s Need to Know About
Listening tools for what people are sharing online; apps; real-time customer analytics; content curation tools; marketing resource management software; QR Codes; Customer Advocacy Platforms; and Location-based Applications.
9. The Positive Effects Of Cause-Related Marketing
10. Marketing Rule Breakers
Here’s a link to read all these stories
Always good to know where the Supertanker-equivalent CMO’s are doing at these big companies to learn from and leverage from them.
Small Business Marketing Top Priorities from 2011 and into 2012…
What small businesses are (still) most interested in: Sales!
How can marketing can help them…
- Get customers
- Keep customers
- Sell more to existing customers
- Sell more profitably
- Offload unprofitable customers/clients
- Get more referrals
- Build their personal and company brand reputation
Small Business Marketing. Small business owners want to know:
How to spend less time and money on marketing.- What’s the 80/20 rule applied to marketing: what’s the 20% they must do and invest in for an 80% return on their time and money spent on marketing their business. What’s the best ROT (return on time) for marketing. Does social media marketing work? Does blogging work?
- Who they can hire (and trust) to help them with marketing.
What do you have to share about the top priorities for small businesses related to marketing? Join the conversation!
www.MarketingZone.com, the source for small business marketing.
I must admit it sounds nice and simple solution when reading, but I’m 200% sure it will be complicated for most of users anyways.
You’re right Grant. Nothing is simple, easy to set-up. Wish that wasn’t the case. I think of it like landscaping for your yard – hire the people to do the hard work of setting up the sprinkler system and getting the soil all prepared. I’m happy to do the planting and upkeep. You might think of the return on your time and decide it’s worth it to pay someone to do the work you don’t want to for setting up your marketing automation system.