CMOs or CDOs: Who’s calling the MarTech shots?
Today the marketing fraternity celebrates MarTech Day 2024 to acknowledge the role of technology in bolstering modern marketing strategies. Several discussions around the complexity of the martech landscape, shiny object syndrome and uncertain ROI have already been brought up a number of times. However, it is about time we addressed the elephant in the room and the point where all these discussions originate. Or to put it simply, who truly holds the reins to MarTech within an organisation? Traditionally, MarTech, short for marketing technology, would seemingly fall under the purview of the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), given its close association with driving marketing strategies and customer engagement. But looking closer, there seems to exist a complex power struggle, with the Chief Digital Officer (CDO) coming out as a significant player in the ownership race. It's not us but Mirum India’s recently released MarTech & CommerceTech report that is saying this.
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The report noted that there is indeed a disparity in preferences and priorities when it comes to MarTech adoption and utilisation. While a significant 72% of CEOs and CMOs express a preference for integrated MarTech suites, the number dwindles to 53% when it comes to CDOs and Chief Technology Officers (CTOs).
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Speaking about the perceived effectiveness of specific MarTech tools between CMOs and CDOs, the latter champion the prowess of dashboards and Digital Asset Management (DAM) platforms, citing effectiveness ratings of 38% and 35% respectively. In contrast, CEOs & CMOs, who often hold the ultimate decision-making power, show markedly lower confidence in these technologies, with corresponding percentages standing at a mere 25% and 14%. The above statistics beg a couple of questions. Some industry experts argue that the divergence in preferences between CMOs and CDOs reflects broader shifts in organisational structures and digital transformation initiatives. Could it be that the rise of the CDO signalled a fundamental change in how companies approached technology, blurring the lines between marketing and IT? Furthermore, are CMOs and CDOs adequately communicating and strategising to maximise the potential of these technologies? Lloyd Mathias, Angel Investor and Business Strategist noted that a lot of the disparity amongst the executives is about the KPIs. “Both for CMOs & CEOs, a key driver of business success is about growing revenues and customer acquisition. While, when it comes to CTO and CDO, I think a lot of their KPIs are very linked to things like digital metrics. So therefore their focus tends to be slightly more in terms of profitability, less in terms of customer acquisition and revenue growth, and hence there's a bit of discordance,” he mentioned. According to a CMO from the auto sector, operations are generally hindered because departments are operating in silos. “Auto as a sector has to run traditional as well as digital marketing at par with each other. Our customers are online, but they also want a physical test drive. But if my CDO is implementing analytics tools that are not aligned with the data I need for carrying out my on-ground tasks, it is never going to work. I think it is not just us, but most marketers fail to understand this, thus wasting a lot of their marketing budgets,” the person said. Who owns the domain? In order to break the silos, experts say that there needs to be ‘martech ownership’. This basically means, either a CDO/CTO needs to be accountable for implementing martech or a CMO. And going by what industry reports and martech agencies have to say, CDOs seem to be coming across as the potential owners. For instance, Ankur Gattani, Chief Growth Officer of WebEngage (dealing majorly in the martech domain) shared that in cases such as traditional legacy companies, WebEngage deals with more CDOs than CMOs. “In my current understanding, the drivers of these kinds of products end up being more CDOs than CMOs at this point. It’s not like there are no CMOs in play, but the number of CDOs dealing in martech is more,” he mentioned. Additionally, according to experts, as compared to CMOs, CDOs seem to be more prepared to assess a martech investment. Gattani explained, “CMOs have a stronger learning curve to pull through to understand the Whys and the Hows of MarTech. CDOs deal with more technology-led cycles of ROI, and are hence slightly more prepared to say what is going to be an upfront investment before one can talk about ROI.” CMOs and MarTech: A Knowledge Gap? A prime question here is also whether CMOs today even understand the concept of MarTech in its entirety. Well, it might be wrong to say that no CMO does, in fact a majority of them might actually do. However, the 32nd edition of The CMO Survey found 24.7% of these top marketing executives saying their teams aren’t using any marketing technology! Scott Brinker addressed this in a recent post and said, “If 24.7% of your CMOs are saying they don't use any marketing technology, there is clearly a massive disconnect between C-suite and reality.” Is that the reason roles like CDOs and CTOs are slowly starting to take charge of the MarTech domain? “CDOs are not just looking at consumer-facing technology, they're looking at organisation by technology evolution. That's where those guys think of budgets as infrastructure necessity,” said Gattani. On the other hand, experts noted that when it comes to technology shopping for CMOs, it's not so intuitive or simple considering the amount of jargon like CRM, CEP, marketing automation being thrown at them constantly. To surmise, the MarTech ownership landscape today necessitates greater collaboration, communication, and alignment of objectives among C-suite executives. Will this enable organisations to harness the full potential of the tech tools? That’s only for time to tell!
Tags : Cdo Technology Martech Martch Day 2024 Cmo Marketing Tools Ankur Gattani