oday’s economy, CMOs should spend more on training than tech //

Globally, companies face the reality of the triple squeeze: inflation, shortages of talent, and disruptions to supply chains. They are not only increasing in pressure on the marketing department.

These economic headwinds have prompted CFOs and CEOs to prioritize investments that focus on growth. This includes both digital technology (e.g. automation) as well as the workforce (e.g. training opportunities and other ways of retaining talent).

This focus would seem to be good news for marketing technology budgets. However, the C-suite isn’t so positive about more investments in martech solutions.

According to most recent Gartner research, marketing technologies are near the bottom (11th and 10th respectively) in terms of their ability to offset inflationary pressures over two years.

Furthermore, martech usage is extremely low. Marketers report using only 42% of their martech stack capabilities. They are unable to prove its ROI.

The CMO Spend survey also identified martech as one of the top three areas with capability gaps.

This is where the focus of the business on training and the workforce comes in.

CMOs should invest heavily in martech training

Many companies have the opportunity to invest additional funds to improve their martech training and to increase business value.

CMOs need to use the macroeconomic environment in order to align their strategies and close the gap between technology and talent.

CMOs may look at both internal and external talent gaps to fill them in, but we recommend that they think internally first. As consultants and contractors are the most common areas in which CFOs intend to cut, CMOs who look to them for help will likely encounter resistance from their staff.

How martech training can have an impact

CMOs must cultivate complementary skills. While there are certainly gaps in the platform, they often go beyond it. These are the common areas of growth.

Measurement of campaign results and experimentation

Focusing on experimentation is key to finding what works and what should be improved.

This requires commitment to measurement, and cross-functional coordination when performing multistep tests. Scaling A/B testing is one of the best ways to apply this principle to martech.

Get deeper: Keys for successful marketing experimentation

Customer journey orchestration and the next best actions

CMOs invest a lot in martech because they are not likely to use calendar-based outbound campaigns, which while common, are unlikely to be the reason why.

The vision of a CMO for technology is likely to revolve around personalizing customer experiences throughout the entire lifecycle. Personalization requires the ability to quickly respond to customer signals.

Get deeper: What exactly is customer journey orchestration?

Product marketing and product management

Digital marketers often don’t know the extent of martech capabilities and best practices. CMOs have the ability to:

• Designate a product manager to package capabilities into common use cases that are relevant to the business.
• Encourage your manager to be a product marketer and encourage co-creation with end users marketers.

The most skilled teams manage martech capabilities iteratively to keep improving and moving forward. They adjust the mix of custom and commercial software to meet customer and marketing objectives.

Get deeper: Product Adoption: It’s hard to get a return on investment when something isn’t being used

CMOs need to keep these things in mind when upskilling their marketing teams

When upskilling their team, CMOs need to keep these things in mind.

Prioritize skills that are easily learned

In times of economic uncertainty, it is important to prioritize skills that can be learned quickly and have high impact. These skills are characterized by their ability to be replicated or specialized knowledge that can be used quickly on the job.

Hires from outside

CMOs who feel that their teams lack martech thought leadership may need to hire some external talent. However, it is important to continue training current employees.

CMOs must be aware of the competitive talent market when looking for outside talent. Although Gartner’s Talent Neuron data shows some cooling in the last few months, there are still many marketing opportunities that are significantly higher than those of the two years prior to the pandemic.

Focus on achieving efficient growth

CMOs must focus on the automation of growth and not just adding new skills to their team. This will temper CFOs concerns about cost.

CMOs should look at plans that include triggered marketing, nest most action, and customer journey use cases. This will allow them to show how they will increase the utilization of existing marketing platforms while focusing on activities that optimize conversion rates.

The post CMOs should spend more on training in this economy, not tech appeared initially on MarTech.