It’s a fact; technology is a pillar of contemporary marketing. Nowadays, B2B marketing professionals in SMBs1 are expected to play three CxO2 roles in one: Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), Chief Information Officer (CIO) and Chief Technology Officer (CTO). That’s a lot for one person.
In short, those who contributed to the Wikipedia article on the topic point out that the “CIO is likely to solve organizational problems through acquiring and adapting existing technologies (especially those of an IT nature), whereas a CTO principally oversees development of new technologies (of various types). Many large companies have both positions.”3 At an SMB level, though, we often have a geeky marketing person (CMO), who is also a business process-oriented person (CIO) regularly working (CTO) with IT outsourced resources (CRM provider, hosting service provider, WordPress integrator, etc.) to get things done.
With the advent of an ever-growing number of software and cloud services that drive CRM, social media monitoring, web analytics, content management and so on, marketing is now, without really trying, deeply involved in IT. The geek is asked to come to the rescue to develop and integrate solutions, thus playing the role of the CTO.
IT does not mean marketing
Beware of IT people and organizations that call themselves marketing solutions providers. IT people come from the IT side and are not marketing people per se. Technology must serve human needs, not the other way around.
Marketing experts are not technologists, nor are they all artists. But at least one member of the team has to be geeky enough to have the skills to make the connection, interpret, and “talk” marketing and IT. That person must have a real title instead of simply “geek;” it’s a CMTO – Chief Marketing Technology Officer.
So what does a CMTO do, you ask? Here are 10 scenarios:
- – Manage technology
- – Understand the cross channel interaction
- – Deliver coordinated, multi-channel integration
- – Deliver relevant display advertising
- – Measure marketing performance
- – Turn social media data into actionable insight
- – Address the CEO’s strategic concerns
- – Break free from IT-Marketing deadlock
- – Enable agile marketing
- – Foresee and manage even more marketing technology coming your way
Not all SMBs need a CIO, a CTO or have a CMO. But all who engage in B2B marketing with the help of technology do so with a team of technologists. An integrated B2B marketing agency such as Exo has technologists who play the role of the CMTO.
For further reading on the CMTO:
SlideShare presentation. https://www.slideshare.net/Alterian/10-reasons-why-you-need-a-chief-marketing-technology-officercmto.
Blog post on the CMTO’s role
https://www.engagingtimes.com/2011/06/13/do-you-need-a-chief-marketing-technology-officer-cmto/
