Social media spans the whole gamut from marketing, PR, support, product management and sales through the entire organization. Social Media became the new way for higher integration with the market. It offers marketing departments a whole new opportunity to interact with the entire organization.
CIO or CMO?
In many of the larger organizations the CIO (Chief Information Officer) is busy taking care of network infrastructure, computing power, security, ERP systems and much more. And so it is actually the CMO who is weaving the network for the market interaction model that has just expanded like the big bang over the universe of a business. In other words the new CMO will gain significantly more influence and watch the business as a whole – no longer just from a promotional perspective.
What is the new CMO up to?
She or he is re-engineering their respective marketing organization. While in the past it was mainly about advertising, events, collateral material, brand development and PR a new very strategic function is entering the CMO office: Social Media Services for the entire organization.
Social Media Monitoring
Instead of just doing the nice charts from a brand point of view, why not providing all departments with the most up to date voice of customer. Providing insights for support, product management, sales, logistics, finance and whoever else is in touch with customers and prospects. Creating networked escalation procedures to fulfill an immediate response promise.
Community
Online communities are not only good for support issues but all kinds of customers who want to exchange best practices with other customers and build the ideal foundation for advocacy and market integrated social selling or social commerce. A well designed community strategy touches support, product management, sales and possibly other areas in an organization
News exchange and syndication
The old email news letter is on its way out – instant news communication via Twitter, blogs and social network status updates are coming in fast. Also here marketing will be tweeting as well as support team members, product managers and sales in a supportive way. Blog post syndication with customer blogs amplify the strength of the relationship and brand position.
Market Engagement Strategies
Marketing strategy, go to market strategy and social media strategy may fuse into a corporate wide market engagement strategy. [I will report more about it any soon]. In essence the “Market Engagement Strategy” outlines how the business and all market facing business units will interact and engage with its market. At this point it is as close to the overall business plan as it gets. Yet somebody needs to create it and take over this new and expanded responsibility.
These are just a few examples to illustrate the new diversity of a redesigned marketing department. Those new CMOs are much more influential and strategic than ever before. I will share a first case study in the next few weeks.
