MARKETING
Does a Rise in Chief Strategy Officers’ Role Give Hope for Chief Content Officers?
Deloitte discovered fascinating new insights into businesses’ approaches to continuous innovation and change in its recently released 2023 Chief Strategy Officer Survey.
If your immediate reaction is, “Hmmmm … Do we even have a chief strategy officer?” or “Where do we get one of those,” you’re not alone. Despite the title’s familiar sound, the function is relatively new – though growing in popularity – at even the biggest companies.
Of the 117 respondents to the CSO survey, 74% say strategy has a formal function with a dedicated team and leader in 2023.
CMI’s chief strategy advisor Robert Rose shares his thoughts in this week’s CMI News video. Watch it below, or keep reading for the highlights:
Strategy becomes core to business operations
“What’s interesting is the function of strategy as a core operational element in the business and how that’s quickly evolving,” Robert says.
He points to several key findings in the Deloitte survey that relate to content marketing practitioners. First, as noted earlier, 74% of surveyed businesses now call strategy a formalized function. That’s almost 20% more than the 2021 survey takers.
Strategy now sits as a formalized function in 74% of businesses surveyed by @Deloitte via @Robert_Rose @CMIContent. Click To Tweet
Plus, strategy as a centralized function serving the enterprise dropped astronomically (61% in 2021 vs. 50% in 2023). But strategy grew exponentially as a federated function serving both the enterprise and business units within it (27% in 2021 vs. 42% in 2023).
Also worth noting is Deloitte’s choice to use “intersection” as the word for CSOs in 2023. Instead of strategy working as the esoteric think tank issuing directions to other functions in the business ecosystem, strategy is part of the ecosystem.
“It’s not the chief strategy officer’s job to be good at developing and implementing strategy. It’s the CSO’s job to make the business good at developing and implementing strategy,” Robert explains.
CSO shares similar goal with CCO
That thinking should sound familiar to CMI readers, as Robert’s been evangelizing that operationalization of content strategy for a while. “Businesses have more success by creating federated models where an enterprise team provides and enables a standardized way of operating so each functional business unit’s content can be made better, innovated, and optimized,” he says.
Think of the oversight role in this federated model as a chief content officer or chief content strategist. The little-used title has goals similar to a CSO. Robert explains, “The content team’s job is not just to be good at creating content. The content team’s job is to enable the entire business to be good at content.”
The #content team’s job is to enable the entire business to be good at content, says @Robert_Rose via @CMIContent. Click To Tweet
Having a bigger impact
The Deloitte research also finds that top-quartile organizations adopt an ecosystem mindset more than their lower-performing counterparts – 81% of this group note an active role in the business ecosystem, not just their company’s ecosystem.
In addition, all respondents (top, average, and below average) rate changing/improving their company’s growth trajectory as an important topic – more than any other topic.
That, of course, aligns well with what Robert sees in content and marketing strategy.
As Deloitte concludes in the study: “CSOs have an influential seat at the table today, but to hold onto that position, they must continuously evolve their role – adapting at the same pace as, or a step ahead of, the rapidly changing world in which they operate.”
Robert’s advice for content marketers? Replace CSOs with content and marketing leaders, and the same holds true. “Today’s content is truly not only a rapidly changing strategy but one where practitioners need to stay a step ahead of the business,” he says. “Businesses that don’t treat their content with that level of strategic function miss out.”
Businesses that don’t treat #content as a strategic function miss out, says @Robert_Rose via @CMIContent. Click To Tweet
What do you think? Can content elevate to a chief strategy officer? Do companies need a chief content officer? We love the term, but it has yet to catch on in most businesses. What do you think? Let us know in the comments.
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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute
MARKETING
Trends in Content Localization – Moz
Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.
Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.
Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.
MARKETING
How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy
MARKETING
More promotions and more layoffs
For martech professionals salaries are good and promotions are coming faster, unfortunately, layoffs are coming faster, too. That’s according to the just-released 2024 Martech Salary and Career Survey. Another very unfortunate finding: The median salary of women below the C-suite level is 35% less than what men earn.
The last year saw many different economic trends, some at odds with each other. Although unemployment remained very low overall and the economy grew, some businesses — especially those in technology and media — cut both jobs and spending. Reasons cited for the cuts include during the early years of the pandemic, higher interest rates and corporate greed.
Dig deeper: How to overcome marketing budget cuts and hiring freezes
Be that as it may, for the employed it remains a good time to be a martech professional. Salaries remain lucrative compared to many other professions, with an overall median salary of $128,643.
Here are the median salaries by role:
- Senior management $199,653
- Director $157,776
- Manager $99,510
- Staff $89,126
Senior managers make more than twice what staff make. Directors and up had a $163,395 median salary compared to manager/staff roles, where the median was $94,818.
One-third of those surveyed said they were promoted in the last 12 months, a finding that was nearly equal among director+ (32%) and managers and staff (30%).
Extend the time frame to two years, and nearly three-quarters of director+ respondents say they received a promotion, while the same can be said for two-thirds of manager and staff respondents.
Dig deeper: Skills-based hiring for modern marketing teams
Employee turnover
In 2023, we asked survey respondents if they noticed an increase in employee churn and whether they would classify that churn as a “moderate” or “significant” increase. For 2024, given the attention on cost reductions and layoffs, we asked if the churn they witnessed was “voluntary” (e.g., people leaving for another role) or “involuntary” (e.g., a layoff or dismissal). More than half of the marketing technology professionals said churn increased in the last year. Nearly one-third classified most of the churn as “involuntary.”
Men and Women
This year, instead of using average salary figures, we used the median figures to lessen the impact of outliers in the salary data. As a result, the gap between salaries for men and women is even more glaring than it was previously.
In last year’s report, men earned an average of 24% more than women. This year the median salary of men is 35% more than the median salary of women. That is until you get to the upper echelons. Women at director and up earned 5% more than men.
Methodology
The 2024 MarTech Salary and Career Survey is a joint project of MarTech.org and chiefmartec.com. We surveyed 305 marketers between December 2023 and February 2024; 297 of those provided salary information. Nearly 63% (191) of respondents live in North America; 16% (50) live in Western Europe. The conclusions in this report are limited to responses from those individuals only. Other regions were excluded due to the limited number of respondents.
Download your copy of the 2024 MarTech Salary and Career Survey here. No registration is required.
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