The top five focus areas for marketing leaders in 2022

In the first The CMO Show episode for 2022, Mark Jones shares his top five focus areas for marketing leaders for the year ahead.

It’s a new year and you’ve come back online. Perhaps you’re even back in an office, though it’s all a bit uncertain right now. Welcome to 2022. It might feel a bit like business as (un)usual. 

For many of us, the annual burst of enthusiasm has failed to materialise. Well, fear not, you're in good company. If there is one thing that marketers do well, it's adapt, and adapt quickly. So, what's on your agenda for 2022? 

Plug in some headphones and join The CMO Show host Mark Jones on your commute (to the kitchen) as he shares five key areas for marketing leaders to focus on for the year ahead.  

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The CMO Show production team 

Producers – Candice Witton & Charlotte Woodford 
Audio Engineers – Ed Cheng & Daniel Marr 

Got an idea for an upcoming episode or want to be a guest on The CMO Show? We’d love to hear from you: cmoshow@filteredmedia.com.au.  

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[Transcript] 

Mark Jones: 

Happy new year. It's the beginning of the year 2022. So that means it's time for crystal ball gazing predictions and bold attempts to understand what's going on in the world. You might have even developed personal goals or dare I say it, a new year's resolution. But of course, for many of us, the annual burst of enthusiasm, gym activity, and healthy eating has already failed to materialise. It is of course, all a bit uncertain out there. Well, fear not, you're in good company. But if there is one thing that we marketers have learned to do really well during the past couple of years, it's adapt quickly. So, what's on your agenda? 

Mark Jones: 

Hello, and welcome back to the CMO show. I'm Mark Jones, your host, and the co-CEO and chief storyteller at Impact Institute. It's so great to be back and into our seventh year of producing the CMO show. Yeah, that's right, seven years. I can't believe it myself. It's amazing. And thank you to you and all of our guests who have made this show so successful over the years. 

Now, in this episode, we don't have a special guest, but you do have me. You see, the team have asked me to do a bit of a solo piece and talk about my predictions and ideas for the year ahead. We have done this in the past. But to be honest, I didn't really want to do a plain old prediction piece. Everyone does that this time of year. I don't want to run over the same old things that dominate the way we think about our marketing, the strategies and the plans and all the technical stuff. 

There's plenty of time for that when we bring on our amazing cohort of CMOs and heads of marketing and comms this year. We're going to talk about strategies at a high level. In particular, I want to focus on marketers as leaders within our organisation. So, we're taking a bit of a leadership spin today. You see, leading marketing and brand functions requires a very clearly articulated vision for your brand and your customers and your team. Myself, and all of us, we're on a professional journey. 

And as part of that, we are stewarding these fantastic brands and products and solutions. And of course, this whole environment is constantly changing and evolving over time. As I saw Seth Godin write recently, the idea of a status quo is a complete misnomer. It doesn't actually exist. Very few things in life and business remain the same between the generations and even the years and months. And so, in this episode, we're going to talk about some of the priority areas that guests on the CMO show have reflected during the past year. 

What’ve been the themes in leadership that came up. And I'm going to combine that with what we're seeing in the early days of 2022. Of course, it's not yet the post-pandemic. We're still in this pandemic era and starting to wonder what's going on? When are we going to see something that looks a little bit normal or at least predictable? So that gives you a quick framing, a quick setup for where we're going today. So, buckle in for what will be my top five focus areas for marketing leaders in 2022. 

So, let's get stuck into it. Number one, the keyword here is focus. And I'll want to ask, what's your one thing, not just at a personal level, but as an organisation in this brand that you are stewarding? 

Never has there been a more important time to clarify your purpose and think about what I just call the one thing. How well have you understood that? Have you taken time to think about how your organisation's been tracking from the perspective of purpose? What's the value that you bring to your customers and society? And how well have you articulated that over time? 

Have you given yourself a bit of a scorecard, a bit of a rating across the various areas as you think about purpose, that is how clear is it, how well have we articulated it, and how well has it been communicated, is it understood? We talk a lot about, of course our brand promise. And I don't want to get too distracted by that. I just want to be thinking about not just what are the things that we deliver, but what's that one thing that holds you together. It's something that we've seen come up many times in the show where we have that core understanding. 

Of course, it's a very much part of the marketing discipline, but it's really come to a head. And I've actually seen this experientially in our organisation. We have a lot of clients coming to us and they're saying, "We have these different products. We have these different solutions sets, or in many cases is we have different departments within the organisation. And we're looking for that one thing that holds us all together." And of course, it does start with your organisational values. 

It's always good to refresh those, have a look at them every year in a formal way. But I want to dig a little bit deeper to say, what's that one thing within the purpose, if you like, the core idea that informs those values, and how well have you understood that? Of course, when it comes to connecting all of these different ideas, I call this the golden thread. It's this idea that, if you imagine a golden line, a story, a narrative, an idea that's holding your organisation together. 

It doesn't matter whether it's different departments, different products and solutions, as I was saying, but what is that one thing that holds them all together? The temptation, of course, that find either with new CMOs, new marketing leaders and new brand managers coming into an organisation this time of year is there's a temptation to change. Or maybe you've just had a break and you think maybe we need to change things again. 

Well, the thing about focus, of course, this one thing is remembering that the future, the strategic horizon should always guide you. We know where we're coming from. We've got the one thing, the purpose, and we want to see that evolve over time. So, think about that strategic horizon and use that as your litmus test as the, should we change, or should we not? So, take time to understand your one thing.  

Number two, keyword here is, listen. I want to encourage you to get even closer to your customers. 

My reflection over this past break was the customer experience narrative. And the reason for that, as thinking about our own organisation and our clients, this idea of a customer experience, how they think and feel, and the way they interact with your organisation across multiple channels has dominated the marketing agenda for many years. And in particular, last year, as we looked at purpose and engaging with customers in creative and different ways, there was this underlying theme of customer experience. And that of course, has been shifting towards another narrative when we think about real time. 

So real time data. And we'll talk about that in just a moment. But I want to ask you how well do you understand your customers and how well are you listening to what they're saying? And of course, the reason that that matters so much is graphically illustrated by the pandemic. Particularly here in Australia, where we're sort of at the moment as we speak in a bit of an unofficial or self-imposed lockdown across many parts of Australia. Behaviour, customer behaviour, particularly to consumer level is changing really rapidly. Sentiments keep changing. 

Well, that's one example in the consumer space. And of course, in the B2B environment, we have sort of this weird seasonal thing that we go through in everybody's away, and we're waiting for new strategies and plans to kick off. But there has been a real tension around short term and long-term strategies. 

And so how are your B2B customers thinking in terms of long-term brand building and short-term growth, and driving the business at a short-term level. And that tension is something we saw play out a lot last year, actually in many of our conversations. And so, this year, what are you doing to get better at that? Of course, traditional research has been difficult for many organisations with budget cuts. So how are you using your data? How are you looking at tracking customer data, sales data and sentiment in real time? 

How can you incorporate that information into your daily, your weekly and your monthly workflows? And how are you incorporating that customer data into your meetings? What will actually be the point at which sentiment gets to a level that requires intervention or a different way of approaching campaigns and adjusting them in real-time? Of course, as always, getting closer to your customers also means understanding what they're saying out there.

And as we get back into the world of events, whether they're virtual or real time, how are you thinking about that real engagement? In other words, one to one in a different way? How are you asking them the right questions and making sure that you get this listening piece nailed and find some insights that perhaps are a bit unexpected and particularly relevant to the current environment that we're in today? 

Number three is learn. And learning, I've got to tell you, is it number one strength. I'm a learner. I love learning. And I don't always have to apply new information, I just love the thrill of discovering something new. Of course, that's not the case for everybody. But learning is such a key component of the marketing agenda. And let me tell you why, this idea of being a marketer, of being a communicator, I think about it in the context of what's the known unspoken issue. 

Well, let me tell you, the thing that we don't talk about, but that we all know is that quite often we're out of our depth or we're at the edge of what we fully understand, or we're in an environment, a place with our organisation perhaps, or a product or a solution or a campaign not done it before. Maybe it's a new technology, you're thinking about social or influencer engagement in a completely different way. 

Maybe it's an integrated programme that you've not really done before, or perhaps you're doing it in a different way. It's one of the great things about marketing, of course. And it's the thing that we very rarely talk about is that we are way, way, way out of our depth more often, that we would be quite happy to admit in a public forum. And so, as a learner, I want to challenge you and ask you what goals have you put in place this year for your professional development and how are you becoming an adaptive learner? 

And I just want to explain that for a second. If you're an adaptive learner, of course, it's saying that there are going to be things that are get thrown up onto your radar. And it is often in the case with leadership, you can delegate that. But if they're particularly important to your future, how can you make sure that you're adjusting your professional development goals and your training goals along the way? 

And if you haven't done a course in a while, make sure you do one. The place that we're in right now of course, is that we need to keep the foot to the floor in terms of our knowledge and our understanding, the transformation agenda, of course, the digital agenda. We could go on and on about all the different technologies that are out there. And of course, the way that our customers are changing. So, what is your professional goal for learning this year and how can you become an adaptive learner? 

All right. Number four, authenticity. This is a cracker. Authenticity, isn't that a buzzword? We heard it over and over and over again in 2021. Being real, being authentic means you need to share your vulnerabilities. One of the things marketing and comms folk are particularly good at, and when we think about particularly PR, we don't want to talk about the bad things, or at least the things that make us uncomfortable. 

I've never really ever worked with a brand that wanted to talk about failures in any kind of way. But if you just want to park that aside, that corporate agenda, think about yourself as a professional, and think about your personal influence and think about the places you speak, the teams that you work with and the partners that are on board. 

How do you engage with them? And how are you thinking about yourself as an authentic communicator, as an authentic leader? And dare I say it, of course, this is the golden goal of becoming a thought leader. But I just want to focus on this idea of authenticity. Because what we're seeing at the moment is an incredible shift, particularly in the influencer marketing space. 

So, this idea of becoming influential at scale is definitely taking off. Now in the B2B space, that means that that consumer trend is influencing the way we think about short, sharp, engaging, interesting content. 

And so, if you're going to be authentic, of course, it means talking about the things that you are good at, and your areas of growth is another way of spinning it. What are your challenge areas? And just tapping into number three on our list, how are you over coming those shortfalls that you know you have in your professional life? So, what are you doing to grow? And of course, you'll find that, It's an incredibly encouraging community that we work in, marketing communications. We love to cheer each other on, we get new roles, or we throw out a new campaign into market. 

So, encourage one another. And what are those areas to grow in? Now, another part of this too, is actually, I was quite inspired by a line I saw from on the socials from Mark Cuban. He said, "Find out what you're good at and become brilliant." The idea here is that you're bringing together that learning piece and you're combining it with an authenticity to say, as a person, I really want to focus on a couple of things where I'm excellent, where I am really in my happy place and I'm in the zone. 

So, when you're telling these stories, when you're telling these journeys, this attempting to be authentic, you're actually being honest about where you're at. What are the things that you really want to be good at as a person, as a professional, and of course, as our brand. What are the focus areas and bring people into that journey. Now, of course, the warning to add here of course, is we have to balance our appetite for risk and growth. We need to make sure that we've aligned our approach with our brand, that we're on message and we're being consistent with what we're seeing in the marketplace. But my encouragement is to just remember that you won't really be a true thought leader and cut through if you're not going to share your failures, your weaknesses, or the things that you've struggled. 

How are you going to build that emotional engagement, how are you going to celebrate your success if you people don't know where you've come from? It's one thing to say, we've won a contract, or we've done this great campaign, but it's even more meaningful, more authentic if people understand the depth and the length of that journey. So go out there and let's make authentic storytelling, let's make authentic thought leadership actually something that's meaningful and inspiring and not just yet another cliche. 

And finally, number five is data. And off the bat, data doesn't sound like a really big thing for leaders to be thinking about. But if we can broaden this out, I think one of the biggest things that marketing leaders are thinking about at the moment is the ethical aspects of working with customer data. Not only are we the champion of our customers and of course, other stakeholders like our partners, but we are thinking about those customers from an ethical framework. The broader landscape continues to evolve when we think about sustainability and ESG and other things. 

But if we really focus in on the data and the way that we're using our data, there's a couple of things to keep in mind in the sort of environment we're at the moment. And firstly, is the good old notion of effectiveness. Look at what are the types of activities, the creative strategies that are effective and use that as a bit of an inspiration for analysing your own performance.

Of course, we've all got access to truckloads of data, but constantly be asking yourself and challenging your team as leaders, what is actually working. We can sometimes be constrained by our budgets. That's what we have to spend, that's what we are spending. I don't want to lose it, but what is working and what is not? How can we be agile in that? How can we move money around, into the most effective areas? Mark Jones: 

And most importantly, how can we bring an ethical layer into all of this? This notion of customers wanting to continually be aware of and in control of their data, or at least having a very visible value exchange. So, in other words, I'll give you my contact details if I can receive something of high value.  

So, what's the ethical framework and the governance structure that you've brought to your customer data, and the way that you are thinking about using that in the future? We are continuing to head into a world where we want to connect this notion of the organization's purpose with outcomes, such as a social impact outcome, such as a community outcome, improved lives for the way our customers perhaps experience the result of using our products and services. 

And then the final point here is what's your long-term vision for change. And I touched on the short termism versus long term and how we can sort of align that before. But what's your framework for measuring change over time? 

And so key to this notion of data is what's your data collection and those data points that you're gathering across key areas of your business over time? What are those consistent measurement points that you'll be gathering? And one of the things that we've developed at ImpactInstitute is an impact framework, which looks just beyond the outputs and the outcomes of our work and thinking about long term sustained positive change. So, what is that vision for long term sustained positive change, our definition of impact? 

And of course, data feeds directly into that. So as a leader, as a marketing leader, what are the data points? What's the ethical framework that you're bringing to all of that? And then how does it feed it into that long term vision?   

So, there you have it. Some food for thought for marketing leaders this year. As I said at the top, the team wanted a bunch of predictions, but what I've offered you is a set of actionable ideas that marketing leaders can take away. And I hope you get inspired. Hopefully, there's something in that that you actually write down and that you want to put into action. And I encourage you to do that. As always, we'd love your feedback. And I'd love to know what you're learning and development goals for this year are. 

Let us know and send us an email. And we'd love to reflect some of that feedback in future episodes. I want to leave you with a parting thought. And at the Impact Institute and the CMO show, we are big fans of the growth mindset. And of course, one of the leading protagonists in that space is Carol Dweck. She has this great quote, "In a growth mindset, challenges are exciting rather than threatening. So rather than thinking, oh, I'm going to reveal my weaknesses. You say, wow, here's a chance to grow." 

It's a great note to end on as we put up with this ongoing pandemic and the disruption to business as normal and reset ourselves for another year of engaging with customers, building brands and growing businesses. So, I encourage you bring that learning mindset, that growth mindset to all of your work and bring your team with you so that we can go out there and make a difference. Thanks for listening. Tell your friends and make sure you subscribe to the CMO show on all the channels. And let us know if there are any other guests that we should have on the show. I'm Mark Jones, until next time.