“Graduates with creative degrees jump into marketing roles, looking to use their problem solving and blue-sky thinking to make campaigns soar and connect with customers,” she writes. While these skills are still important, CMOs must be comfortable and competent living in a world of numbers and stats. “The job of the CMO has shifted from largely a creative one to becoming a driver of company growth, disruptive external developments and internal relationships.”
Bradner notes that often, the KPIs shared with CMOs are designed to dazzle, but often do not provide meaningful insights. Its crucial for CMOs to understand the difference and seek out data that can help them truly refine their marketing efforts. They should also seek out tools that can tell them what is happening, but also provide real insights as to why it is happening.
“Especially in times of huge consumer and marketplace shifts, the need to get to why something is producing a certain result matters more than ever,” she writes, suggesting that CMOs embrace an agile test and learn mindset and adopt machine learning-enabled software.
She says CMOs don’t need to be statisticians, but should have partners who employ them and have sufficient data sciences practices in place.