What CEOs Want From Marketing

SVAMA (Silicon Valley American Marketing Association) sponsored an event tonight in Santa Clara on what CEOs want from marketing. Susan Bratton moderated a panel of CEOs and CMOs, which included Mark Schar now with Intuit (formally with Proctor & Gamble), Jeff Pulver (not the VoIP one), Shutterfly's Jeff Housenbold and client Glenn Reid, CEO of Five Across.

The first question that was thrown out to the panel was " Why is there a perception that marketing execs will not become CEOs or don't have what it takes to go down that path?' The first thing that jumped into my head -- loud and clear -- was lack of financial experience. Ditto. One of the two main answers. The second one was lack of broader business experience, which is often also true.

Other interesting piece of data.....the average time that CMOs stay in a position is only two years. They didn't specify whether that changed depending on the industry.

Mark Schar shares reasons why CMOs fail from an article in Strategy & Business roughly six months ago.

Great recap:
**The mission and responsibility of the CMO is the hardest to define. It's easy to miss and look like you've failed.

**CMO jobs can range from VP of Marketing Services to the CEO confidante. It's easier to have conflict, whether its a corporate culture style clash or personality mismatch. Its also easy for the CMO to overshadow the CEO which won't work long term. What will the CEO allow the CMO to control?

**CMO responsibilities are more indirect rather than direct............

On "what can marketing execs do to get a seat at the board table?" Says Pulver, "Get tight with the head of sales. I see CMOs fail because the communication and relationship between sales and marketing breaks down."

Shutterfly's Housenbold agrees and adds, "What's the ROI? what are the metrics? It's important to drive cross function collaboration, bridging activities across different roles and function, i.e., merchandising vs what's happening with the direct sales campaign and PR.

They all agreed the importance of open communication and defining expectations early on, i.e., what the process is, what the metrics are and making sure sales, marketing and management all agree.

Susan asks Schar, "what about metrics at Proctor & Gamble?" Schar says, "P&G lived in a world of metrics. Intuit thankfully has the same approach. They can track how well their programs are working on a daily basis, i.e., the website, direct mail, etc. Having these metrics earns you credibility. If you can provide these to sales, i.e., that your marketing program helped drive sales -- they'll love you."

Mark continues, "As you drive metrics, you start to measure finer and finer things, i.e., adding baking soda to toothpaste." The audience laughs. Crest created a category around "brush, no cavities." Since that's not so much of an issue today, toothpaste has been re-invented.......now we tout the whitening your teeth aspect and its more about cosmetics than prevention although it clearly does both.

On "Is Marketing the #1 driver in your organization?" At Intuit, Mark says the "customer is the #1 driver. We do customer driven innovation, where the customer helps drive the product. What does the customer want? What do they say?"

But the start-up perspective was a little different. When you're innovating and looking to build things consumers have never thought of, the customer becomes a lousy source of information. They don't know what they want "yet," or what they could have if it were presented to them.

Savvy marketing execs can interpret the needs not yet identified however. (As can great PR)

Other important things they considered included metrics for first time purchase versus repeat purchase and the frequency. "Look at the frequency at which people come back and the volumes they're buying. Are your marketing programs driving additional sales for not just the product they originally purchased, but peripheral products, accessories, add-ons?" Amazon is really great at this.

Housenbold adds a few more important considerations:
--brand favorability over time
--customer satisfaction ratings (and making sure to measure these fairly)

There's always a question on failure and mistakes and people always love the responses....its the juice, the guts, the "lessons learned," and more importantly for most humans, a way to look at a CEO and think to yourself - "if they failed, then its okay when I do." The soap opera saga that all human nature relates to.

At Intuit, when a project fails, apparently Scott Cook invites people over to his house for a party/get together and they discuss what they can learn from it.

What about advice for other marketing execs? Every one of them seemed to agree on the value of open communication and setting expectations. I love this one - solve your bosses' bossess' problems. Work as a team even when things are tough AND when you're not sure about something or see a red flag, speak up early.

Speaking up early also means being a positive catalyst. Be seen as a catalyst for your corporate culture.
Glenn adds, "Be brave enough to throw ideas out there. Show that you're thinking in an innovative way. Drive the front end of what you should do with your business rather than being a cheerleader after the fact."

Schar says, "Know and love your customer better than anyone in the organization. Love your customer and they'll come to you." I've always subscribed to that philosophy although sometimes "love" isn't enough.

Other great CEO advice: "know what you're good at and surround yourself by other experts." Also, "have the voice of the customer to back up your recommendations. Have metrics to back up your decisions." I've learned that both engineering and sales really appreciate this."

In terms of what's working and now. Word and phrase search marketing wasn't really on the list for a great ROI, but viral marketing techniques continued to be.....not surprising. It's what builds trust over time more than any other method in my opinion. Build community for and around your customer - again, look at McDonalds, eBay, Amazon, Avon.

Schar says "Give your product away." HA. Ask the question when you see a train coming - do you fight it or embrace it? Change your business model and embrace it was the suggestion. Turbo Tax gave away a couple of million filings for free but did it in a clever way. Did they lose? It was extremely successful.

Last comments: throw thought leadership events, smaller groups and roundtables -- yeah, I love these too as I recently said in my interview with Shel Israel (Red Couch). People love being able to talk to their peers about what's working and not working. And lastly, give value-add things to your customer that is not a hard sales pitch. Build a relationship.

AH YES, back to the relationship again. Back to the relationship.