A lot of CMOs realize that in order to reach and engage customers, they have to be authentic to themselves, to the people in the company, to who their brand is all about. And so in order to do that, it is often referred to as being customer-centric.
Customer centricity also has a lot to do with the way technology has changed. It is this opportunity to actually reach customers in a one-to-one way. It was talked about 10 years ago, but now the enterprise one-to-one is coming true. And so the opportunity to identify and personalize experiences allows you to create a more relevant experience for that customer, and thus get them more engaged as well.
What are CMOs’ challenges around big data?
The biggest problem with big data is that it’s a lot more data. And that’s, frankly, one of the challenges that even before big data was a word, companies have been struggling with. What do I do with all this data? Or, they get an avalanche of data coming into the organization.
They’re not really taking action on it. And so I think in this world where big data a really means more operational data, it means more access to the data, it means being able to use it, then strategically, you want to think about what are the types of data that I can actually use and put into place in a customer-centric strategy?
And so if you have, and at the end of the day, it comes down to, how are you interacting with the customer? So how can data make an impact on how you interact with that customer on a day-to-day basis? And if you can do that and use that data in a way that it becomes operational, not just a one-time program or one time event, then you’ve actually use big data and it’s made an impact to your business.