The Rise of the Super Connector CMO

The Gist

• Insufficient traditional CMO model. Traditional organizational management and siloed thinking will guarantee your inability to deliver personalized experiences effectively.

• The CMO strategic super connector. The CMO role, when repurposed to integrate data, creativity and strategy with a relentless focus on the customer experience, drives lasting customer relationships.

• Customer centricity. Focus on putting your customer in the middle of your integrated strategy and execution. This is where deep customer understanding lies, and it allows you to develop and deliver exceptional brand experiences.

We naturally believe that a balanced focus in our role directly leads to effective outcomes and positions us for success. But markets are changing. Customer expectations are increasing, and opportunities to build lasting brand loyalty are becoming more difficult to sustain.

For the CMO role, it may be tempting to believe that as long as balance exists, success is to follow. Or maybe it seems that a few small changes in data and analytics, content creation or strategy will be enough.

But this isn’t true. A CMO responsible for brand positioning and strategy, with strong analytics and content, knows that success does not come from a simple rebalance. True success requires a transformation.”

This rebalance begins with a customer-centric approach that aligns the customer experience with every internal marketing function. This holistic shift transcends traditional organizational structure and introduces agile, outcomes-driven decision-making. Essentially, everything becomes interconnected, and the one organizational role that brings this together is the CMO.

Here’s how repurposing the CMO role into a strategic super connector brings the balance we seek, as well as the customer outcomes that distinguish a brand along the customer journey.

Table of Contents

CMOs Move Beyond Traditional Boundaries

The experience economy compels us to bring unique, branded customer experiences and personalization that drives brand loyalty. But are we expertly organized and positioned to identify and capitalize on changing the way we think and work? Let’s explore why we need to repurpose the CMO role not just as a department leader, but as someone who drives insights across the organization. This is how we create the CMO as a strategic super connector.

Traditional Silos Don’t Work

Conventional thinking increasingly creates limited, linear thinking. Many organizations are siloed, with one function staffed and separate from another, even if they report to the same leader. Data analytics is separate from campaign execution. Creative and branding are separate from data analytics. Even worse, the strategy is high-level without a deep, integrated view of the real customer and their behavior.

Basically, traditional thinking guarantees that long-term strategy isn’t supported by short-term execution. The specific personalization opportunities that you need to create today aren’t identified because of silos and incongruent strategy. 

Market Shifts Demand New Marketing Models

Connection, experiences, personalization and the customer journey are not just buzzwords. They’re evolving, differentiating strategies to build brand awareness and loyalty. They also demand critical, deep, insightful viewpoints of your individual customer and customer personas. Siloed thinking inherently fails to identify the strategy needed to develop insightful data analysis. Consequently, your creative and brand content won’t evolve to uncover the holistic customer view you require unless it’s strategically integrated. 

Agility is a critical imperative for identifying and capitalizing on these evolving strategies. Your traditional thinking and approach, by their very nature, mean that you won’t effectively identify or capitalize on these crucial opportunities.

The CMO as an Organizational Connector

The answer to overcome these challenges is the evolution of the CMO role into that of a strategic super connector. This unifying approach is inherently holistic, and it guarantees a dynamic, interconnected approach. This is a strategy that seamlessly brings strategy, execution and continual refinement together.

By centrally aligning design and delivery with a deep understanding of the customer viewpoint, the super connector brings impactful personalization and exceptional CX to life. This level of integration transcends mere balance, and it creates true harmony across all marketing and branding endeavors. It ultimately amplifies their value and impact to generate truly memorable customer experiences.

Related Article: 10 Ways to Turn Organizational Silos Into Collaboration Engines

Three Benefits of a Connected CMO Approach

Markets and customer behavior continue to change, and this creates the requirement for our marketing functions to change and align accordingly. We need to act faster than we ever have before, and we need to solve new problems with forward-thinking. Instead of trying to balance the CMO role, let’s explore the three main benefits of redefining and repositioning the CMO as a strategic super connector.

Clear Goals Drive Focused Results

Unifying disparate activity through super connectivity brings together goal development and goal achievement. This holistic approach allows you to prioritize goals to produce and maximize the greatest outcome. A CMO who brings intended outcomes to the forefront and to every conversation increases accountability to every decision and initiative. They transform tasks and activities from scattered, one-off efforts into a unified body of work that drives meaningful, lasting value.

Agile Leadership in Marketing Today

Prioritizing once is good, but superconnected CMOs use situational awareness every day and every situation. They’re willing to reprioritize and adapt to take full advantage of market conditions, opportunities or challenges. This agile leadership stance continually seeks to move resources and focus to the right initiative at the right time to achieve the intended outcome. Super connectivity brings intended outcomes to the forefront, and agile leadership makes sure that they remain there.

Driving Loyalty Through Integrated Journeys

The CMO super connector inherently understands that intended outcomes through agile decision-making cultivate a continually connected customer experience. If your marketing teams across data analytics, content, brand promotion and strategy are fully integrated, your ability to design and deliver personalized customer experiences will be much stronger. Every customer touchpoint is supported through an interconnected approach that, at its foundation, brings deep customer connection to your brand throughout the entire customer journey. Continual connection becomes less about isolated efforts and more about a steady flow of two-way, meaningful relationships.

Steps to Transform the CMO Role Quickly

The journey from a traditionally defined CMO to a strategic super connector doesn’t happen overnight. It’s a deliberate transition in your mindset and your operating practices. The challenges of a fragmented customer journey and a siloed organization are substantial, real and pervasive. But you can overcome these challenges and help your role and team reach new levels of lasting value.

Here are three key strategies you can use right now to become a CMO super strategic connector. These will repurpose your marketing team’s purpose and function, and they’ll rebalance your role into an evolving customer and brand advocate.

The Relentless Mindset

Changing your approach begins with transitioning your mindset to a singular focus that everything you manage, develop and execute is and remains customer-centric. Looking through the customer lens, your focus on advocacy transforms perspective. It shows that everything relates back to building enduring relationships and delivering exceptional value and brand experiences. Each action you take should deliver a unique experience for your customer every time.

Creating Cross-Functional Hubs

With your customer-centric mindset in place, it’s time to progress and become intentional in how you build and manage your teams. Cross-functional hubs represent tangible landing points for regular interaction, shared understanding between functions and integration potential. 

Think of continual feedback. Take a strong stand and blend your siloed organization using these hubs to directly inform and collaborate across both function and initiative. Consider this a fluid, dynamic exchange of data that turns into actionable insight, all purposed to create those customer-centric, personalized experiences. These hubs can take the form of projects, dashboards, meetings or something else, as long as they’re designed to produce an intended benefit to drive the customer experience. 

Connecting Touchpoints Without Big Budgets

Even without a fully integrated martech stack or the capital to scale, you as the CMO super strategic connector must still prioritize mapping and connecting every customer touchpoint. If you visualize and map this holistic journey, you can identify the critical touchpoints and gaps. This helps you develop goals, define metrics and build content strategies that can capitalize on opportunities or avoid problems. With this journey mapped out and your team working together, you can bring a unique, branded customer experience to each customer.

Related Article: What CMOs Know About Being Customer-Centric

Aligning Strategy with Customer Experience

This table distills the article’s core concepts on transforming the CMO role into a strategic super connector, which brings customer-centricity to your strategic and operating decision-making.