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Perspectives

The CMO's Growth-Driving Marketing Playbook

Deloitte’s five plays for driving long-term market growth

Recent research in collaboration with The CMO Council identified a burgeoning group of marketers who indicated they were “extremely poised to succeed” as growth drivers within their organizations. The CMO’s Growth-Driving Marketing Playbook compiles insights drawn from this group to provide a glimpse into common goals, mandates, and approaches that set them apart from their peers and help them advance the growth agenda.

Shift your frequency from gains to growth

Growth-focused CMOs are evolving from short “pops” of engagement to long-term, sustainable expansion.

Some chief marketing officers (CMOs) focus their efforts on traditional marketing activities such as demand generation and campaign-driven marketing that achieve short-term gains. Growth-focused CMOs take those short-term developments as well as the long view–building on storytelling and branding with strategies aimed at sustainable revenue growth.

Compared to CMOs as a whole, growth-focused CMOs are more likely to see data and intelligence analysis, as well as market insights and knowledge, to gain an understanding of both the customer and the market.

Growth leader play: CMOs need to define growth with stakeholders across the business, share insights about customer preferences and expectations, and implement an end-to-end customer experience that links short-term gains to long-term growth.

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The CMO’s Growth-Driving Marketing Playbook

Develop fluency in the language of the business

Marketers need to embrace business metrics—not just marketing metrics—to engage with senior leadership. Growth drivers also architect a “one-team” business approach with customers.

Growth drivers no longer limit conversations to campaign metrics. growth leaders need broader discussions about revenue, market share, customer lifetime value, and margins—with data about the customer at the center of every business decision.

Both growth CMOs and the business measure growth in terms of revenue and market share at similar rates. CMOs as a whole focus heavily on brand valuation, a growth metric largely not leveraged by the Business.

Growth leader play: The one-team mentality calls for having a common language—in this case, revenue—across all functions. CMOs might not need to be experts in finance, operations, or IT, but they should be able to discuss and act on commonly held goals across the business.

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Build success beyond silos

Growth leaders see a future where connections across functions feed growth strategies.

Growth drivers actively build connections, viewing each group as a center of excellence that can be aligned into an overarching customer strategy.

More than one-third of growth leaders and nearly half of other respondents believe silos threaten to throw growth strategies off track.

Growth leader play: Growth CMOs should partner across silos to resolve big issues, formalize a playbook across functions, and collaborate with the intention of innovation.

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Activate support for the growth agenda

Growth-driving CMOs focus on alignment with champions and allies, forming highly effective partnerships along the way.

More than 70 percent of all marketers surveyed see the president or CEO as their primary ally. Growth drivers also see the board of directors as a key ally, with 35 percent indicating the board is a champion of growth strategy development. Regardless of function, growth leaders seek to develop deep insights into what makes internal stakeholders tick.

One-half of growth drivers report total alignment and support from allies, compared to only one-quarter of all others.

Growth Leader Play: Alignment across all leaders, especially the CEO, board and line of business heads, helps drive the customer experience and growth strategy. Rather than teaching the organization about marketing, it’s critical to educate about marketing’s impact on revenue, operations, and organizational effectiveness.

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Envision your future as a CEO

CMOs have a tremendous opportunity to advance to the top levels of corporate leadership if they maximize their potential to lead.

Today’s CMOs actively play the part of customer champion, experience strategist, and growth leader. Increasingly, the CEO role has emerged as a new and exciting professional path for marketers.

A growing list of companies have brought on CMOs to fill the CEO post, tapping into these former marketers’ brand passion, customer knowledge, and business acumen.

Growth leader play: By focusing on the core drivers of the P&L, merging the traits and philosophies of the brand equity driver and the business driver, and translating the complex into the simple, growth CMOs can embark on the path to CEO—even if that path is not necessarily linear.

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Top five 'plays' to drive market growth for CMOs

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