What’s on the Menu for Indian IT CMOs?

Rajneesh De, Consulting Editor, APAC News Network

The Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) of Indian technology companies are today critical in transforming their organizations, not only in marketing functions but also in overall corporate affairs. Like other sectors, CMOs in IT companies too are considered in the top echelons of the corporate hierarchy. They are often responsible for strategic decision making with even the CEOs taking feedbacks from them about the industry.

In an attempt to better understand the demands and challenges of the role of the CMO in the IT sector, it is important to analyze the responsibilities and tasks that he is expected to perform. From digital challenges, to mar-tech challenges, to non-digital challenges, the role of a CMO, especially in the IT industry, is today multi-faceted and constantly evolving.

IT CMOs are widely considered today as the enablers of business. These marketing head honchos drive successful marketing strategies of the technology OEMs. These include designing partner programs targeting the channel, designing innovative marketing programs, remaining in constant liaison with the IT industry and most importantly constantly setting new goals and targets for the companies. Perhaps, it makes sense today to analyze these IT CMO priorities in more detail.

1. Budget Management

Like all other sectors, the fundamental role of even IT CMOs will be to effectively manage the marketing budget to maximize RoI and thereby drive business growth. These CMOs must have a thorough understanding of financial metrics such as EBIDTA and ROAS (especially for competitors) and subsequently an ability to allocate resources to support business goals. These metrices help the IT companies to plan budgets better especially in such a cutthroat sector making CMOs valuable to the board, MD office as well as the investors.

2. Data-driven Decision-making

In today’s date, CMOs need to understand the nuances of data analytics to harness the power of data for effective decision-making. This will be relevant today for all the companies, more so for the IT companies. Thanks to the efforts of these CMOs, many IT companies have greatly benefitted from the efficient application of data science and technological tools for insight generation. CMOs are taking data enabled decisions today even for traditional media like print and electronics.

3. Performance Marketing

Performance marketing is an essential aspect of value creation and impact assessment for an IT company and is often the acid test for the CMO. The CMO has to manage a tightrope to walk on as any fallout can negatively impact the brand image if not effectively managed. The intricate task of balancing rests with the CMO making it imperative for him to be equipped with the mechanisms involved in performance marketing. Additionally, the cost-per-lead and cost-per-click are increasing multi-fold for IT companies, increasing the management burden on the CMOs.

4. Relationship with CIOs

Just in order to draw a better balance between this brand vision and operational goals, it is becoming imperative that CMOs of the IT companies work closely with CIOs. While the IT companies pioneered this trend, it was soon replicated across tech-savvy sectors like BFSI, pharma and the likes. It is evident that in the coming quarters, an accelerating pace of change will continue to transform the role of CMOs and their relationship with not only the CIOs but the other C-suite executives as well.

5. Omni-channel Consistent Customer Experience

Personalization and engaging customer experience are key drivers of brand growth and development. While earlier the feeling was this to be more relevant for B2C companies and not impacting IT companies so much, the impact of the COVID pandemic changed the equation. Often it were these personal engagements that sustained the businesses during those tough days as conformance to SLAs became more challenging. However to facilitate these personalizations, CMOs must have a deep understanding of customer behavior and preferences to effectively coordinate and optimize the customer experience across multiple channels. CMOs also must ensure that the brand message and visual identity are consistent across all channels, whether digital or non-digital.

6. Balancing Digital and Non-digital Marketing Channels

This perhaps exposes the role of CMOs even more in balancing the digital and non-digital channels. Notwithstanding the tremendous expansion of digital channels, offline marketing remains immensely relevant even today for IT companies in building brand awareness and enhancing customer engagement. CMOs need to judge and accordingly divide the available resources between the two marketing channels. CMOs must be aware of the differences in dynamics between these channels and apply their knowledge effectively to increase brand impact and awareness for current and future business.

7. Influencer Marketing and Managing Media Relations

Influencer marketing has emerged as an effective marketing strategy today even for many IT companies even in B2B. Earlier this was majorly a B2C trend, but today even IT CMOs need to know about the intricacies of the influencer market and harness its potential effectively to remain relevant and gain an edge over competitors. Managing media relations and the efficient use of media channels to communicate brand messaging is today definitely in the CMOs domain. While the communication team is there more for execution, the strategic push has to come from the CMOs and it requires them to have a deep understanding of these platforms and designing relatable messaging.

8. Digital Reputation Management and Crisis management

A corollary of the previous priority is to understand how a CMO is responsible today to handle a reputation crisis for the company. The CMO must shepherd the communication team to undertake the damage control exercise. One of the primary responsibilities of CMOs is managing the brand’s digital reputation by promptly addressing customer concerns and effectively bridging gaps.

9. Cybersecurity Concerns

Growing cyberspaces have necessitated the development of a robust cybersecurity infrastructure to ensure data protection and confidentiality. And even more critically, IT CMOs cannot lag behind in these areas. India is today one of the country with maximum companies being targeted for cyber-attacks. This includes incidents of ransomware and phishing. The IT CMOs must be updated by the development in this field to ensure smooth functioning.

10. Digital Transformation of CMOs Post-Covid

During the COVID challenge, the IT CMOs responded to the challenge of the lockdown by steering their mindset and strategy to a Digital First approach. They proactively leveraged technology to reach out to consumers online, and subsequently engaged them with digital marketing. Post-pandemic too, for many IT CMOs the recovery has also been driven by increased Internet penetration. This opened up new avenues for IT CMOs to cost-effectively increase customer outreach in hitherto uncharted markets.