Senior leadership One big leap? Scott Allen, CMO (UK) at Microsoft, explains how continuing digital transformation requires cultural change and strong marketing leadership Mixed reality headsets present new opportunities for collaboration W hen it comes to technology, marketing has arrived at a pivotal moment. We need to stop referring to digital marketing and just call it marketing and we need to stop talking about modern marketing transformation and actually get on and do it. If we dont embrace change now and that means cultural as well as technological change and if we dont invest in our people, processes and tools to ensure that the transformation takes place, then we are going to encounter problems further down the line. But by addressing the challenge, marketing can have a great impact on business. Digital transformation doesnt need to be one big leap. At Microsoft, something such as artificial intelligence (AI) isnt the future, its already here for example, using bots to help with the customer experience online, or empowering people with disabilities. But whatever business youre in, and whatever size it is, technological transformations have to become part of your DNA. Many of our customers who are adopting AI arent huge multinational companies, theyre SMEs. Its a question of looking at how you can improve your business and what tools are available to you. Its a cycle that never stops and shouldnt. Even with something such as Microsofts HoloLens mixed reality headset, its really about helping people visualise things in a better way whether thats experiences for customers, or helping colleagues collaborate when theyre not in the same location. Its about thinking what you can use technology for, rather than using it for technologys sake. Of course, bringing in new technology isnt just about spending money, its also about investing time in it and exploring how you can get the most from it. If you buy some, explore it a little, and then as with a smartphone only use 10 per cent of its capabilities, then its not being used effectively. When senior marketers are feeling the pressure to hit their quarterly targets, these time and money considerations are important, but if theres no longer-term technological and skills strategy in place, you might end up getting left behind. For this reason, there needs to be a hierarchy of work, with some about the now and some about the medium and long term. To make this transformation, CMOs and business leaders need to be strong in three areas. First, theres the natural position of being strong in planning and execution. Second, you need to put a strong culture in place building a team that feels it can learn and grow, which has embraced what modern marketing means, with members who want to be part of, and support, that culture. The third area is not always seen as the most exciting, but its about developing a solid strategy around your marketing technology stack and the required processes alongside it. Ask yourself how you define your modern marketing story, and where you want your journey to take you. Using data for insight and foresight Marketers are often good at looking back, describing what they did and how successful or unsuccessful it was. Were not always as good at looking forward. Remember, if you keep on doing the same thing, you get the same results. We can use insights from data to look forward, to encourage experimentation, and to allow people to take risks competently instead of being risk averse. Having and understanding data also means that when you go to your sales team with a plan, youre presenting facts, not just opinion. This is why people talk about insights as being the new muscle of marketing. However, Id like to see more organisations look less at hindsight and more at insight and foresight. AI can serve data and insights up, but we need to interpret what it means if we are to produce meaningful foresight about why we might conduct a marketing activity. For example, if youre planning an events strategy to promote your products or services, you should be using data and insights to find out where to go and what to promote. Analysis will tell you where your customers are, what theyre looking for and their propensity to spend. You can then invite the right potential customers to the most appropriate event. Its important that we use the human alongside AI to increase marketing velocity and convert leads. The place of the human here is as interpreter. All organisations can do this to some degree, and it doesnt always require big budgets. You can start with the basics. Step back and ask what it is youre looking to achieve in your marketing, and how data might help. Dont buy the tools first then wonder what youll do with them do it the other way round. Id like to see organisations look less at HIndsight and more at insight and foresight Digital and social analytics When it comes to analytics, I make a differentiation between digital and social analytics. With digital analytics, its about what data sources you have internally. The question is how to pull all the data you have into one holistic view of the customer. With a new customer you might want to know: how many touchpoints there were before you made the sale; which assets resonated with them most; which parts of the website they dwelled on; or for B2B businesses what event they attended that ultimately made the difference. You can then do a foresight piece, taking that customer and seeing if there are other people in your database who share a similar profile. If there are, then why not see if the same marketing works for them, too? I call these customers lookie-likies. Its not a pure solution, but it is a way of getting more traction than a simple spray and pray approach. Then, with social analytics, its about how you can use all the available social channels to listen, in real time, and capture past data. For example, were doing a lot of work at the moment on how people collaborate in the workplace, and how organisations might work in a more modern way. To find out more, weve undertaken resonance studies, listening to publicly available conversations that are going on now and also to those that have taken place in the past couple of years. Marketers need to understand whats being talked about in the marketplace, and social analytics means its easier to discover what customers are thinking. A social environment can also help you innovate. When we launched Windows 10, we spent a lot of time in a beta environment, where people could come and use the product as we were developing it, and suggest what was working and what wasnt. We were essentially in a sprint scenario, continually coming up with new versions of the software based on customer feedback. It means developing products with your customer and taking them on the journey with you. That way, once the product is launched, itll be more relevant. In a similar way, social listening beats traditional market research hands down. Its now mainstream for people to share their good and bad experiences on social media channels and forums, and its your chance as marketers to listen, respond and engage with them. By that, I mean dont hide that you are who you are. Its good to link with detractors as well as fans. Real-time feedback is a gift and organisations that take this approach will win out in the end. Listening to more general themes and topics that are being discussed on social channels can also help you develop a content strategy. If youve only created your content strategy with input from internal insights, its likely that youll create collateral that misses the mark and wastes money. Instead, use content resonance studies to deliver insight on your product area, and about what your competitors are doing, to produce a stronger plan. Information coming in from the outside is always really powerful. Creating a positive internal culture Of course, whatever data and insight you have, you need to take time and perhaps spend a little money to test it with some marketing activity. Dont spend all your budget on one thing that might fail totally. Go little at first. And if it fails, dont worry. A test and learn approach can start with the simple things. For example, try different headlines on your emails and do some A/B testing. Everyone knows about this, but not everyone does it. Or what about going to an event and trying something different with your stand, making it more experiential and giving potential customers a different experience? Test and learn also needs to become part of the culture. People need to understand that they might fail, and a good test and learn environment encourages people to know that failure isnt the end of the world. Its also vital that marketing has a strong connection with sales. That means going to their meetings, sitting with them in the office, and embedding marketing in their minds so its seen as something that understands and works with them, rather than something that is being pushed on them. Making an impact across the business Beyond sales, you also need to think about how the culture of the marketing department fits into the culture of the company as a whole. At Microsoft, weve taken five key themes identified by our CEO, Satya Nadella, as being vital for the business and looked at how marketing can make a difference to those areas. They are: having a growth mindset; customer obsessed; diverse and inclusive; making a difference; and being one Microsoft. For example, I got the team together and asked: What does a growth mindset mean to you? Weve then looked at all the different opinions to discover what really matters to the team. We found that with growth mindset it was about creating more time to make a difference. From there, we looked at a number of ways we might be able to help such as better technology, collaboration, or setting aside time every week for freethinking. Finally, the CEO and senior team also need to believe that marketing has a role to play at the top table, and that means marketing must be directly relevant to the business. The only way marketing is going to take a seat at that table is if the starting point isnt about marketing, but about the business itself. In that way, the role of the senior marketer is to go beyond being a pure marketer and become a business leader. This is when transformation really starts to happen, and the technology acts as a catalyst to build the case and stimulate change. cim.co.uk/exchange Scott Allen, CMO (UK), Microsoft