Rohit Prabhakar

I build agentic revenue systems for Fortune 50 companies

Innovative B2B Marketing Strategies for 2022

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Many businesses experienced 2021 as a year of great uncertainty and volatility. These situations were fueled by epidemic situations and continued to affect the ways businesses operate globally. Whereas such uncertainties always pose challenges, they also lead to inevitable innovations. Here on this topic, we are excited to share with readers what the future holds with B2B marketing strategies. As you think about your plans for the upcoming years, consider these innovative B2B marketing strategies.

Digital Transitions 

The epidemics have changed the way a business interacts with its customers. The remote interactions have taken the place of in-person interactions. Therefore, the customers now like dealing with a business at the comfort of their home throughout their entire purchase journey. To fulfill this requirement, they request a high-quality digital experience.

  • Now 90% of B2B customers start their purchase journey by searching for a provider online.
  • Customers are already done with 50% of their purchase process before making their final selection for a potential provider.
  • 73% of the customers are millennial, and about a third of them are the sole decision-makers.

The concept has turned from digital marketing to market in the digital world. If your business has not yet realized your customer’s journey in the complete online manner or you haven’t adopted a digitalized marketing strategy, don’t be late anymore. Doing so is now too vital to ensure your business meets all the expectations of your B2B buyers and your service remains relevant in the digital market world.

The Opportunities

  • Upgrade your business website to meet customers’ expectations with their online journey. The website works as the most prominent tool for any business sale promotion. It is the biggest marketing asset in the current market that works over the internet mostly.
  • Build your website for optimum mobile experience as Google now ranks that website on the top mobile-friendly in the SERPs. Thus, most customers are online for their purchase needs using their mobiles only. So you have to ensure they have the best online experience when they visit your website.
  • Explore and refine digital event opportunities because they will not get off the market anytime soon. There are also hybrid events on the rise that facilitate both in-person and digital options together. 

Customer-Centric Content Prioritization

When you create content that assists your B2B customers in making decisions, you showcase your expertise and values. This shift towards a digital purchase journey makes customer-centric digital content more crucial to ascertain business growth. 

  • 41% of the customers read certain content first before contacting a business.
  • About 70% of customers search and read content directly from a business website.
  • 77% of B2B businesses follow a Customer-Centric Content marketing strategy.
Innovative Marketing Strategies

The customers now prefer to seek more and more content online. If your business fails to showcase its expertise with content marketing strategy, you will miss a grave business growth opportunity. Moreover, strategic and relevant content helps your customers understand that you understand and care about their needs at each step of their purchase journey.

The Opportunities

  • By conducting a content audit, you will understand what sorts of customer needs are being encountered with your current content and where you can make modifications.
  • Make content targeting each step of the purchase journey. Therefore, consider hitting the correct range of content to meet customers’ expectations anywhere in their purchase process.
  • Invest in search engine optimization and marketing to confirm your customers find your content online and make connections with you through it. 

 Ai-Enabled Marketing

Automated B2B marketing initiatives based on AI and machine learning is already benefiting marketers with more effective and faster insights and analytics. AI can assist with everything from targeting the right audience to segmentation, personalization, lead scoring, and content marketing insights.

  • 2/3 of the B2B marketers have been taking steps to evaluate and implement AI for marketing and sales initiatives.
  • AI and machine learning are here to generate more than $1.4 trillion in value by helping marketers solve marketing and sale concerns over the coming three years.
  • The implementation of AI by marketers soared between 2018 to 2020. It took a jump from 29% to 84% within these two years.

Corporate data and analytics have become gravely sophisticated, and they are converging with AI to unlock new customer insights so marketers can drive new marketing opportunities.

The Opportunities

  • Leverage AI’s predictive capabilities for analytics. The use of website cookies to track user activities has now become a customer privacy concern. New regulations resist you from doing so. AI can come in handy to fill that void by utilizing predictive analytics to tell marketers what customers are doing online.
  • AI content strategy tools offer a plethora of customer intent data. It helps target the right audience looking for your products in the market.
  • Custom-made campaigns based on AI can help reach people who conduct specific keyword searches when visiting a website. Therefore, this data can help you target potential customers using custom-made marketing campaigns.

Final Takeaway

The coming time is going to be exciting for innovative B2B marketing strategies. The marketing world is becoming increasingly digital. Also, it’s turning personal too. Hence, AI-driven initiatives provide more meaningful insights and help marketers create more effective and targeted campaigns and strategies. The key lies in figuring out how we can integrate these modern-day trends to lead us to our desired enterprise goals.

What is Chief Growth Officer (CGO)- Skills, Requirements, Job Description

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With businesses striving to stay ahead of the curve and meet customer demands, it’s no surprise that a new role has risen in C-suite positions. The Chief Growth Officer (CGO) is accountable for driving overall growth within an organization. This executive leader must map out strategies to increase revenue, attract more customers, improve retention rates and bolster competitive advantage with proficiency — all key skills needed to be successful in this capacity. It’s likely you’ve heard mention of this title before as its importance continues gain recognition across industries worldwide!

But what does being a successful CGO entail? This article delves deeper into all things related to this position – from its overall purpose to key skills required by those who hold it in order to achieve success at every level.

In this ever-evolving, dynamic business landscape with its fluctuating stakeholders, markets and customers – a leader is necessary who can guide growth while being flexible in their approach. We are looking for an individual mustering the unparalleled abilities to remain agile amidst continual change.

What is the Chief Growth Officer (CGO)?

A CGO is responsible for developing and implementing a growth strategy that aligns with the overall business objectives, helping the organization stay ahead of industry trends, build customer relationships, and increase its profits. The Chief Growth Officer must have the foresight to anticipate customer needs and understand how best to use technology, data, and other resources to meet those needs. A Chief Growth Officer is also responsible for leading several core functions within an organization’s growth strategy, such as marketing, sales, customer service, product development, branding, and analytics.

The Chief Growth Officer is a unique and powerful position, requiring an intricate mix of leadership acumen, organizational capacity, technical prowess and much more. To take on this multifaceted responsibility with success the CGO must display strong interpersonal finesse combined with exceptional communication skills as well as excel at problem-solving strategies. They will also need to be able to penetrate data analysis plus leverage technology for growth purposes in addition to having collaborative capabilities that span multiple departments within an organization’s purview.

The Chief Growth Officer is a leader in driving the organization’s overall growth strategy. They must possess the vision to create innovative solutions that align with both customer needs and organizational goals. In addition, Chief Growth Officers should have an understanding of the financial and operational implications of their decisions, as well as be adept at inspiring team members to work together towards the organization’s common goals.

They possess unique skillsets that enable them to shape organizational growth strategies in order to maximize returns and ultimately achieve success. By leveraging data, technology, and customer insights to develop comprehensive strategies and manage multiple facets of an organization’s growth strategy, Chief Growth Officers play a pivotal role in the success of their organizations.

Chief growth officer is a trusted leader on CEO‘s team, who has ability to define growth and execute on those plans to achieve growth. There is no other role from on CEO ‘s team that has responsibility to strategize and execute on long term growth. Chief Growth Officer is an essential position if your organization is:

  • Stuck in past and there is no/negligible growth
  • Loosing market share
  • Processes across organization are old, non-functional and most importantly siloed
  • Product offering and pricing is not focused on future customer needs
  • Not agile and cannot adopt to quickly changing market needs

Chief Growth Officer (CGO) also enables organizations by breaking the silos so that a unified long-term strategic growth plan can be executed. A strategic growth comes from long term focus on key areas like business transformation, process improvements, technology investments and workforce transformation. This is a leader who can understand all those complexities and come with a plan to make that happen.

What is the role of a Chief Growth Officer?

The Chief Growth Officer (CGO) is a pivotal role in any organization, responsible for driving growth, revenue, and competitive advantage. CGOs are senior-level executives whose main objective is to identify opportunities for expansion and develop effective plans for achieving these goals. CGOs must have an in-depth understanding of their company’s product, market position, and competitive landscape in order to develop strategies that will attract new customers, increase customer loyalty and retention, and strengthen the company’s competitive advantage. CGOs must also collaborate with other departments within the organization to ensure that their growth strategies align with overall organizational goals. The Chief Growth Officer is a critical role in today’s market, serving as the bridge between strategy and execution. CGOs are essential in helping organizations reach their fullest potential through thoughtful, effective planning and successful implementation of growth strategies.

How much salary does a Chief Growth Officer make?

The average base salary of a Chief Growth Officer can vary depending on factors such as the size and location of the company, industry, and level of experience. However, according to Glassdoor, the national average base pay for a Chief Growth Officer in the United States is around $186,000 per year. This number can range from $106,000 to over $300,000 per year based on various factors. It’s important to note that compensation packages for executive-level positions often include additional benefits such as bonuses, stock options, and other incentives.

  • Chief Growth Salary from Glassdoor data seems more accurate and inline with what I have seen.
  • Another good link that seems inline

Essential Skills For Chief Growth Officer (CGO)

A Chief growth officer should have this basic set of well-honed skills to find innovative ways of advancing a business towards strategic objectives.

Must Have Skills

  • Strategic Thinking: A chief growth officer must be capable of strategic thought when determining how to increase a company’s revenue and client base. It entails creating a long-term plan for the business and figuring out the measures necessary to accomplish its objectives. Additionally, strategic thinking considers the company’s resources and how to use them most.
  • Marketing: The company’s marketing strategy is directly under the leadership of chief growth officer. They could also be responsible for developing and carrying out marketing strategies. It necessitates familiarity with marketing methods and strategies, such as how to make compelling commercials and assess a campaign’s effectiveness. In some companies, CGOs are responsible for developing and executing strategies that lead to increased revenue, customer acquisition, greater customer loyalty and improved competitive advantage.
  • Financial planning: A chief growth officer manages the company’s financial targets. Thus they must possess great financial planning abilities. They must know how to make a budget, project revenue, and control costs. They must also be familiar with financial instruments and resources, including credit, loans, and investment possibilities.
  • Business Acumen: Chief Growth Officers must have a strong business acumen, deep understanding of their target market, the ability to create successful marketing campaigns and the technical expertise needed to develop, implement and measure the success of those campaigns.
  • Leadership: Chief Growth Officers must also have the leadership skills needed to inspire and motivate the team, drive continuous improvement and innovation, and foster a culture of collaboration. CGOs are the stewards of growth and play an integral role in helping organizations reach their fullest potential. Since chief growth officers frequently supervise a team of people and are in charge of a company’s growth, leadership abilities can be a crucial component of their skill set.
Understand Customer - Chief Growth Officer CGO
  • Understand Customer – #1 focus of Chief Growth Officer (CGO): In the current competitive market conditions, a business needs to enhance customer experience and satisfaction to get an edge over its competitors. Trust building, understanding their expectations, and listening to their needs are vital skills for a CGO. A CGO needs to analyze whether the business is capable of matching customer needs and if not, adjust business strategies accordingly. All these efforts help a business to retain and add new customers for the long-term.
  • Analyze and Understand Market Trends: One of the critical skills for a chief growth officer is understanding today’s market and future market conditions. The success of their role depends upon finding innovative ways to extract these insights. A CGO needs to understand the emerging market trends and keep customer needs at the center of business activities by optimizing internal processes and reducing costs. Analyzing the market conditions and carrying research to know their business strengths, weaknesses, future business opportunities, and future growth threats. All these business activities help analyze the chief growth officer to plan long-term business growth.
  • Harness Technology: The advancement in technology has put artificial intelligence at the center of all business success. A CGO needs to work closely with the technology team, analysts and work to evaluate potential partners. It is one of the important skills for a CGO to understand the technology and its limitations. This vital information helps in making smart investments to utilize business growth opportunities effectively.
  • Communications: For a CGO, having a great vision of the business is not enough. Without every person working together to achieve a particular goal, it will be hard to be successful. It is no exception every person is dedicated to achieving a goal with a common vision, resulting in better output and performance. CGO must be able to share and communicate his/her/their vision to each individual in the organization. It will help everyone understand the value of their work and work in harmony to achieve business growth.

Nice To Have Skills

  • Break Internal Silos: As culture eats strategy for lunch so does silos throw growth strategies off track. Hence Chief Growth Officer should collaborate across silos to resolve issues, formalize processes across functions, innovated and collaborate.
  • Improve Business Processes: The next important skill for a CGO is to simplify the internal processes to serve customers better and increase customer satisfaction. While doing so, it is important to keep in mind the employee’s needs and create a space to improve their productivity. Addressing customer and also employee needs is essential while evaluating and improving the internal processes. They were empowering employees to create innovative solutions and develop an internal process to serve customers better. Improvement in internal processes will help in the long-term retention of employees and customers.
  • Create New Product Offerings and Pricing: There is no denying that customer taste and needs change with time, and a product needs to evolve accordingly to cater to them well. It is an important skill for a CGO to conduct market research to analyze the market requirements and change customer needs. A CGO must stay on top of product development and improve products and pricing to create new growth opportunities.
  • Business development: Finding and exploring new business prospects is the process of business development. Business development is a crucial ability for a chief growth officer since it may increase the company’s revenue and earnings. This ability may assist you in developing new strategies for expanding the clientele for the business and elevating worker happiness.

Education and Experience Requirements

The following qualifications are normally necessary for a chief growth officer:

  • Education: Most chief growth officers hold a bachelor’s degree in business, economics, or a closely related discipline. A master’s in business administration is something that several chief growth officers decide to pursue as an (MBA). Chief growth officers may develop their careers and raise their earning potential with an MBA. Chief growth officers normally have at least 10 years of experience in a leadership position. 
  • Training & Experience: They could have held a senior role, such as a chief operating officer or financial officer. They may have worked in various fields but frequently have financial services expertise. Chief growth officers could also be trained on the job while they do their duties. They could learn about the company’s products and services, the market, and the customers they cater to. They might discover more about the management team’s leadership style and the company’s culture.
  • Certificates & Licenses: Chief growth officers are not obliged to hold any particular certifications. However, many CGOs hold various certifications that attest to their leadership skills and capabilities.

Sample Job Description Chief Growth Officer (CGO)

The Chief Growth Officer (CGO) is a senior executive-level role responsible for driving overall growth in the organization. The CGO is an organizational leader who understands how to create and execute on strategies that increase revenue, attract new customers, improve customer retention and loyalty, and strengthen the company’s competitive advantage.

He/She/They must possess a unique blend of leadership, organizational, and technical skills to be successful in their role. These include strong interpersonal skills, excellent communication abilities, problem-solving expertise, strategic thinking ability as well as deep understanding of customer needs. Moreover they should have an aptitude for leveraging data and technology to drive growth while simultaneously being able to collaborate with stakeholders from various departments within the same organization.

Responsibilities of the Chief Growth Officer (CGO)

– Develop and implement strategies that align with the organization’s overall business objectives to drive growth

– Anticipate customer needs and understand how best to use technology, data, and other resources to meet those needs

– Lead multiple core functions within an organization’s growth strategy such as marketing, sales, customer service, product development, branding and analytics

– Leverage data and technology to drive growth while collaborating with stakeholders from various departments

– Have an understanding of the financial and operational implications of their decisions

– Inspire team members to work together towards the organization’s common goals

– Create innovative solutions that align with both customer needs and organizational goals

– Leverage data, technology, customer insights and creative thinking to shape organizations that are well-positioned for success.

Skills and qualifications

– A Chief Growth Officer (CGO) must have a deep understanding of marketing, sales, product development and other areas that contribute to the growth of an organization.

– An advanced degree in business or related fields is often required, such as an MBA or Master’s degree in Economics, Business Administration, Statistics or a related field.

– Chief Growth Officers should possess strong interpersonal skills and excellent communication abilities in order to effectively collaborate with stakeholders from various departments.

– Chief Growth Officers must also have problem-solving expertise, strategic thinking ability as well as an understanding of how to leverage data and technology to drive growth.

– Chief Growth Officers are ultimately responsible for leading an organization in its growth journey and must have a deep understanding of customer needs and the financial and operational implications of their decisions.

– Chief Growth Officers play a pivotal role in the success of their organizations by leveraging data, technology, customer insights and creative thinking to develop comprehensive strategies that maximize returns.

– Chief Growth Officers are critical drivers of success in any organization and their unique skillsets enables them to shape organizational growth strategies for the better.

Preferred Abilities and Credentials

  • An undergraduate degree in marketing, business, or a closely connected field
  • MBA or another graduate degree
  • 10+ years of marketing, sales, business development, or a closely similar sector experience.
  • Working knowledge of startups and high-growth environments

Final Words on Chief Growth Officer

In conclusion, Chief Growth Officer (CGO) is a vital part of any organization’s strategic team. Chief Growth Officers must possess the necessary blend of leadership, organizational, and technical skills to be successful in their role. Chief Growth Officers are ultimately responsible for leading an organization in its growth journey and must have a deep understanding of customer needs, an aptitude for problem-solving, the ability to strategize and plan ahead, as well as the ability to leverage data and technology to drive growth. Chief Growth Officers play a critical role in driving organizational success by leveraging data, technology, customer insights and creative thinking to develop comprehensive strategies that maximize returns. Chief Growth Officers are a critical asset to any organization and play an important role in driving its long term growth.

There is no doubt that a CGO is a hybrid position designed to get the most out of investments and guide businesses towards sustainable growth as time passes. Even if a CEO in an organization devotes time and energy to grow revenue, there is always a scope to utilize more firepower. The right person in the position of Chief Growth officer is similar to a second “CEO” focusing on growing business and ensuring long term growth. For businesses looking to remain successful and innovative, it is time to hire CGO to support CEO efforts and vision, expand the company’s direction to capitalize on new growth opportunities and get those missing growth drivers much needed for the business.

Data Life Cycle in Customer Experience Journey

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When enterprises work on the customer experience, they focus on touchpoints – the single transactional points where a customer interacts with different facets of the business and its various offerings. And it is quite logical as well. These touchpoints represent critical points in the customer life cycle that must be understood and served very well. Data and Technology are the Key enablers to delivering the right and just-in-time experience. Unfortunately, most of our enterprises struggle with disconnected data and not-so-well integrated technology stacks. Even companies that have well-integrated MarTech stacks often struggle with silos of data. As we solve these silos, it is critical that we also understand this concept of Data Life Cycle in Customer Experience Journey. Yes data has it’s own lifecycle!

Understanding every aspect of customer experience and the end-to-end customer journey over a period is vital for businesses. Opting for a data-driven, outside-the-box approach toward customer experience journey helps to put customers at the core of business strategy, thus driving loyalty and revenue. The data generated and sourced from various touchpoints and its analysis can be of different forms. It can be descriptive analytics based on operational data to deducing customer sentiment and behavior from real-time data feeds from all channels and applications. Powered by a range of data analytics tools for operational, streaming, and processing unstructured data, businesses can connect the dots among the key touchpoints to optimize the customer experience journey.

The 4 main types of data that make the Data Life Cycle in Customer Experience Journey are:

  • Intent Data: Collection of behavioral signals from Deep Web that help interpret purchase or renewal intent.
  • Behavioral Data: Data that reveals new insights into the behavior of customers on the web, eCommerce platforms, online games, mobile applications, and IoT.
  • Customer Data: Wide variety of data like demographic, personal information collected by businesses to understand, communicate and engage with customers.
  • Product Usage Data: Data that helps to understand how how-often users interact with your product and their behavior while using the product

Here is a highly recommended article to read about the various technical systems like DMP, CDP and Data Lake to identify what your enterprise needs to connect and use these data types.

Data Life Cycle in Customer Journey

Phase 1: Discovery

Also known as the ‘Reach’ or ‘Awareness’ phase, this phase marks the official beginning of the customer lifecycle. Though it is tough to pinpoint the customer’s exact first contact with the business, it is vital to track the initial touchpoints as accurately as possible to design further marketing and advertising strategies. The data that can be collected during this phase includes the typical search terms, which are bringing people to the business website, the number of new visitors on the website, the point of return of visitors to a website, online reviews, new followers on social media business page, customers’ interaction on social media, data from AdWords and pay-per-click, and the usual prospects and current customer surveys.

Key data from Data Life Cycle in Customer Experience Journey at this stage are:

  • Intent Data is available mostly as anonymous data that is stitched together to make a best guess on the intent of that account or customer. ABM Tools are a very good example in B2B marketing space.
  • Behavioral Data is also available as anonymous data which can be stitched together to a specific anonymous profile.
  • Customer Data is available in case this is an existing customer trying to buy a new product.

Phase 2: Acquisition (Learn/Educate)

The contact initiating phase begins when the company comes on the radar of the prospect. The sole purpose of this phase is to convert the marketing contacts into leads or potential sales contacts. During this phase, it is vital to know the audience and develop messaging strategies according to specific buyers’ persona. The acquisition phase can provide factual data that is easy to analyze. Now, here there are two types of data involved: what and who. What data includes the view sources and referrals, traffic, event, and goal-related data. Who data consists of the business website’s viewers, their landing point after signing up or registering, and how the business website or app is utilized.

Key data from Data Life Cycle in Customer Experience Journey at this stage are:

  • Intent Data is available mostly as known data that is stitched together with behavioral data to make more targeted and personalized experience.
  • Behavioral Data is the best data available at this stage. As the prospect has clearly identified themselves, hence all their web history can be stitched together to understand their journey on your owned media to be more targeted and useful in their journey.

Phase 3: Conversion (Register/Sign up for Trial)

Conversion is the phase where the rubber meets the road. Here the company completes a qualification event when the sale is completed and a prospect is turned into a customer. The pillar on which this phase’s success lies in selling not just the products or services but the relationship. For instance, customers interested in B2B SaaS solutions aren’t merely looking for suppliers but businesses that can become their partners. Here the most critical data is conversion rate, which showcases the percentage of leads that turned into customers. Conversion rate can be tracked in respect to other metrics as well, such as website traffic. Now all prospects will not convert and will abandon the journey. It is the point where the customer lifecycles of such prospects will come to an end. Analyzing the data and finding out what went wrong with these prospects can help tweak the future marketing and strategies.

Key data from Data Life Cycle in Customer Experience Journey at this stage are:

  • Behavioral Data changes from a prospect and marketing behavior to behavior within the product and other customer-facing digital media.
  • Customer Data is officially in play at this stage as we start collecting and processing that data
  • Product Usage Data may be minimally available to inform any recommendations

Phase 4: Support

Once the customer onboarding process is complete and the product utilization is started, it becomes vital to keep all communication lines open if the customer has any issue or query. This is especially critical during the first 90 days because if the customer fails to see or leverage the product or business service’s value, he will likely leave the association. This is what is called churn. In other words, the churn rate is the percentage of existing customers a business is losing and the speed of this loss. To make a customer experience journey rich and seamless, a proactive approach toward support is the need of the hour. This phase involves different data types such as total volume by channel, the average response time, first contact resolution rate, help delay and abandonment rates, and moments of delight. The complete analysis of this consolidated data can help businesses provide their customers the best support experience possible. At this stage product data becomes a major player especially product onboarding and usage data is a critical indicator.

Key data from Data Life Cycle in Customer Experience Journey at this stage are:

  • Behavioral Data and
  • Product Usage Data In product customer behavior data becomes one of the most important but mostly under utilized data at this stage. In most companies, this data lives in silo behind the walls of product teams.
  • Customer Data continues to become mature and can be used to stitch together the best experience to wow a customer.

Phase 5: Expansion

For several companies, upselling and cross-selling are a way of drawing out as much revenue as possible from every client and customer. But this approach can backfire negatively. Instead, the company’s expansion approach should have the goal to help their customers draw out the maximum value of the purchased product or services. This value optimization can be done by creating a customer experience that delivers growing value over a while, developing a natural increase in base-product utilization, a sensible expansion into the additional features and functionalities, and adoption of logical and suitable other products or services of the company. This is the phase where data generated and gathered in the first four stages is consolidated and analyzed to launch an intelligent, insights-driven expansion strategy, one that is designed to deliver the true value. Additional datasets like product data and customer data is of great use at this stage as you identify what is the next best product can offer.

Key data from Data Life Cycle in Customer Experience Journey at this stage are:

  • Behavioral Data
  • Customer Data
  • Product Usage Data

Phase 6: Renew

It would be a bit unfair to call the renewal phase as an individual phase as it is the resultant of a robust customer lifecycle management. Renewals don’t lead a great customer success; rather they are the outcome. If an organization is facing the challenge of lower renewal, it is due to the dissatisfaction in the lifecycle such as issues in onboarding, incomplete adoption of the product, failure of utilizing the complete features that would have brought the desired value to the client, issues with ROI, etc. During this phase, a general customer consensus can be achieved by conducting surveys or through online reviews. Another key performance metric of this phase is churn rate. To sum it up, the data gathered in all the above-mentioned stages, its analysis, and utilization decide the success of the renewal phase. Most importantly, this activity should start few months before the renewal date and not few days before.

Key data from Data Life Cycle in Customer Experience Journey at this stage are:

  • Intent Data is available mostly as known data that is stitched together with behavioral data to make a targeted and personalized experience. Also, data from the deep web can be stitched together to understand if the customer is shopping around and should be offered appropriate offers or solutions to create stickiness.
  • Behavioral Data especially Product Usage Data come together to put together a very customized experience to ensure that the strong value proposition and ROI can be demonstrated to the customer so that they are motivated to renew the service. This data can be combined with Customer Data to offer the best promotions or renewals with no promotions.

Mapping the entire customer experience journey with the right type of data at each phase helps a business understand their customers’ experience and delivery an amazing experience at every touchpoint. To sum up, it is a CONNECTED and COMPREHENSIVE data-driven, outside-in approach to deliver an outstanding, seamless, and rich customer experience that wins both the game of customer experience and business growth. I hope this Data Life Cycle in Customer Experience Journey helps you enable great growth for your enterprise.

You can follow the discussion at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/data-life-cycle-customer-experience-journey-rohit-prabhakar/

We cannot be everything to everyone!

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Learnt this wisdom from a serial entrepreneur today – “We cannot be everything to everyone!” When we try to do that, It is confusing not just for others but for ourselves too. We must prioritize what and where we should focus on. Clearly defining the “Why” behind what you we are doing is absolute must to define what we are focused on.

Know your why, define what you must focus on and then execute.

Power lies in Product Adoption

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Power of system is realized when users adopts the system. Number of subscriptions or units sold is a great metric to calculate revenue and initial success of a product but the true to success of the product is based on how well it is adopted. Once a product is well adopted, it confirms all aspects of its success like product objectives, customer impact, profitability, market share etc. As product managers we must focus on adoption as the key goal/OKR besides the normal financial metrics.

Most importantly, adoption doesn’t means it has to be a fancy solution. On a product demo from a vendor, I learnt that the most adopted feature of their financial planning tool for CFOs and their financial teams; is the ability to generate data loaded cubes in excel. Who will believe that in today’s world, but that is what finance teams want. Providing the solution that the customers need and continuous improvement is the key to product adoption.

Top 5 Leadership Values and Principles Essential for Leaders

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Skillful leadership is essential for the success of a business and achieving set goals. Some people are born leaders, while others develop the skills and abilities to lead business efficiently. A leader in an organization have specific day-to-day duties that bound them in a pattern and addresses only the pressing concerns. Many leaders have fallen into this trap, watching their next step and not being able to see what’s down the road.

A leader helps a business to make detailed plans with a vision in mind and set smart goals to achieve them. The leader’s role is to design a strategy and execute them to make the most of it. The key is to understand how to create a winning strategy and work collectively to reach the desired goal.

This article will read about guiding principles of leadership and values that help leaders shift their focus from single steps to the bigger picture.

core leadership values and principles

Assign Responsibility and Encourage Ownership

A leader has a lot to learn about core leadership values and principles from history. History remembers leaders like Napoleon and Genghis Khan for their strategic leadership as they shaped the world as we know it. It’s important to understand that none of the great leaders accomplished on their own. Both leaders had a loyal army at their back, who trusted their commander’s order and believed in their leaders’ great vision. There is a lot to learn about leadership qualities from history, although you may not be focusing on conquering nations. A leader’s role is to find the right people, assign them their responsibility and give them adequate resources and autonomy to do their job well.

While handling a new project, it is essential to make a plan first. Don’t start assigning responsibilities, duties and micromanage your team or soldiers. If there is a need for additional training or assistance for handling a particular task or entire project, make it your priority. Encourage team members to take ownership of their duties and be accountable for the task’s success or failure. Lastly, a leader needs to give commendation to the right person who did the work.

Take Strategic Risks

You can’t get a job unless you apply, you can’t get a date unless you ask, and you can’t paint a masterpiece without putting color on the canvas. In business and life, there is nothing that comes with 100 percent surety. As a strategic leader, you should not be afraid to take risks. However, there is a big difference between a “risk” and a “gamble.” Like a poker game, you evaluate all the possibilities for risk or failure and take strategic risks to mitigate losses and get the most out of the opportunities. Even though most people consider “Poker” as a gambling game, it is truly a game of skill. 

A leader, just like a poker player, needs to predict the success of a plan or decision with relative accuracy, even when the odds are not in favor. For a leader, it is essential to have a clear understanding of what you stand to gain and what you stand to lose. A leader should take the risk in business in the same way. Not to go all-in on something that has a marginal chance for success or where there are only meager returns. Examine your options and make prudent decisions, but don’t be shy to bet on the winning hand.

Encourage Collaboration

The rise of AI and digital technologies has changed how businesses used to operate earlier. To adapt to this changing environment, a leader needs to create a collaborative ecosystem to speed up the evolving process. Companies that struggle to keep up with the breakneck pace risk being shut down. There is always a risk that a business will isolate itself and fail to adapt to the changes happening around us.

Organizations are further divided into departments and individuals that often fail to meet the larger goal by not realizing how they as a team or individual can contribute to achieving goals. A leader’s role is to create a collaborative culture and ensure every employee knows how they can contribute to achieving the bigger goal with resources available. Encouraging a collaborative environment in an organization makes sense of inclusion, and team diversity can cultivate innovative ideas.

However, not every department needs collaboration. For example, there is no need for the manufacturing team to collaborate with the accounts team to keep records in the car manufacturing industry. Keeping the communication channels between the different departments of the organization is a great idea, especially when one team’s efforts impact the other team.

Vision

Having a vision is a vital leadership value for a leader. To reach a destination, you need to know where you are going and how to get there. A journey without a goal is just wandering, and a leader can’t afford to wander in this highly competitive environment. To be successful, it is crucial to explain to his team what success looks like for the organization, the team, and every individual that is part of the project. Describing the vision to everyone will give them an idea about what steps need to be taken to achieve that vision. A goal needs to be reasonable and well within reach, but something makes the team stretch a little while attaining it. A leader must set a goal after analyzing the relevant information and using strategic thinking skills. Before setting a goal, a leader should set standards on achieving a goal and measure its success and failure; otherwise, the vision will be flawed.

Drive Change

We have already explained how a leader should encourage collaboration among different organization departments to adopt advanced processes faster. A business and a leader need to drive change to keep up with the new technological trends and excel in the professional world.

Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg is a famous name that adapted to the change and brought a new revolution in the business world.

A leader needs to take strategic risks and be ready when presented with a good idea or an opportunity. Change is necessary, and at some point, organizations and individuals should realize that they can’t continue doing things the same way. Eventually, for survival, a business needs to change, and it’s better to change sooner for the more significant benefit of the business.

Final words

It’s not that easy to become a leader, and implementing these principles certainly requires some hard work. If you are worried about how to develop leadership principles and values, to become a leader – work on these leadership values until the hard work pays off. Leaders become the trendsetter and steer their organizations through dangerous waters while going through changes and innovation. If this is what you aspire to become, it’s time to start implementing these leadership values and principles.

Top 5 Benefits of Implementing Marketing Technology in Your Business Strategy

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Technology is moving faster than ever before and with this customer’s expectations are getting higher too. MarTech marketing technology is becoming key for organizations to meet and exceed customer expectations. MarTech helps organizations fill the digital gap created due to the rapid advancement in technology and evolving consumer behavior. The advancement in artificial intelligence, analytics, and automation helps marketers catch up with recent market trends and speed up the organization’s changes. This blog will discuss the top five benefits of implementing MarTech in your business strategy.

Data unlocking with analytics tools

In this fast-changing digital world, data is the key to sustainable growth for a business. With access to more data than ever before, marketers now can unlock data that most well-funded organizations just a few years ago. The data has now become the resource that needs analysis and refinement to deliver the best for a business. This is why the analytics industry is estimated to grow 10-15 % by 2022.

Analytics tools have now become necessary for companies to add in their marketing technology to utilize data fully. With this, an organization can increase the ROI and effectiveness of its marketing strategy. Due to this, companies are now bringing analytics into the center of the decision-making process to remove any bias and become data-driven to serve their customers better. Change in an organizational culture where data can be utilized to improve and optimize social media marketing, SEO, PPC, and email personalization.

Marketing automation for increasing efficiency

Brands need to maintain their strong presence in consumers’ minds to influence purchasing decisions. But due to so much noise in the digital world, maintaining a strong presence now becomes a challenging task for marketers.Automating the marketing efforts has become important for brands to scale up their efforts and engage consumers in this digital world. Move forward from one size fits all marketing policy to cut through the digital noise. Customers are moving away from products and ads that they don’t find interesting or improve their lives. Automating the market processes allows marketers to connect with consumers in a more personalized way that offers real value.

Marketing automation is improving the productivity of the business by 15-20 percent. Marketing automation is a critical component that helps in increasing and scaling the scope of campaigns. The number of people doesn’t limit a marketing campaign’s success as automation allows in increasing the digital world’s brand footprint and provides better ROI. automation is enabling the organization to sustain its relationship with the existing customers and attract new ones.

Increasing engagement with management tools

Social media has become a great medium for businesses to connect with customers and increase sales. Even after this huge popularity, some businesses are failing to make an impact on these digital platforms. With the right management tools, creating fresh content, responding to customer queries, and increasing brands looks like an easy and achievable task. Marketers need a MarTech stack to fill in the customer expectation gap; automate and optimize customer interactions with brands over social media platforms.

Social media management tools help in publishing and schedule posts when there is maximum engagement. Automatic reposting of high engagement content to increase reach and monitoring competitors to find the latest trends and topics to improve business marketing strategy. Social listening becomes an important tool for brands to understand and analyze what people are saying about their brand, products, and competitors. With these valuable and unbiased insights, businesses can improve their marketing and business strategies.

Improving customer experience

Marketers are expected to focus largely or entirely on customer experience with the brand in the next two years. Today’s consumers are more inclined to buy from brands that offer better engagement, relevance, and personalized solutions as per their needs. This seamless customer experience is hard for companies to achieve without a MarTech stack. Artificial intelligence helps organizations analyze and process vast customer data to give that personalized experience to their customers. In a survey, many marketing executives have shown concerns that their organization is not mature when it comes to providing a personalized touch to customers. This is a clear indication of organizations’ slow response and how critical marketing technology is to meet customer expectations. 

Without the MarTech stack, organizations will become an impossible task to track the buyer’s journey. Marketing technologies are empowering the organization to analyze the customer data and forge connections in real-time. A streamlined ecosystem ensures that every customer gets a seamless and personalized customer experience.

Improving ROI and productivity

Organizations are looking to streamline their processes and become more efficient in managing their digital assets with the help of digital asset management. Marketers are creating digital content like images, videos, audio, and other content to target every stage of the buyer’s journey. It is vital to create an easily accessible and organized digital library to track all these digital assets. The DAMs are helping marketers avoid duplication of the content and save valuable time while searching media assets. Digital asset management technology provides a way to give highly relevant content that gives the personalized experience consumer demand.

Experts believe that DAM software is estimated to 30-35 percent growth by 2024.

In addition to providing increased efficiency, this software enables organizations and marketers to track usage and digital assets’ ROI. These valuable insights are empowering CMOs to optimize their marketing strategy to get better ROI from further media creation. 

Final words

MarTech stack becomes essential for brands to achieve rapid progress in this digital consumer landscape. It has become an essential tool for the organization to get valuable insights from the data and to optimize for a better customer experience in real-time. AI and ML enable organizations to improve the efficiency of marketing campaigns and maintain that personalization touch that today’s customer demands. With that personalized touch, MarTech helps bring the brand closer to consumers, improve the ROI on marketing initiatives, drive more sales, and delight their customers.