The New Age of Influence

We live in a gig economy, and we are at an inflection point in terms of business and technology boundaries.  We are all working on this new cyber lane, which is a great adventure because we experience boundaries merging. We are experiencing a significant paradigm shift. In this episode, our host talks about the 11 steps your CMO needs to know to do a successful digital marketing strategy.

11 Things your CMO Needs to Know

1. [2:21] Define your goals and objectives. It is essential to have a clear vision of what you want to accomplish in terms of handling your social media brand properly and how to advance it. What is your brand story look like? How do you want it to look like in the long-term?
   
2. [3:11] Construct capabilities report. Try to create the business capabilities report to describe where you are currently in terms of existing capabilities. What new capabilities are needed to be made based on your goals and vision objectives? What are the gaps? Come up with a gap analysis and then develop a short term versus long term roadmap.
   
3. [3:54] Create a SWOT analysis and bury deeper into understanding your core competencies, core capabilities, and weaknesses. What sort of opportunities lies out there that you have not grabbed yet? What kinds of threats are lurking around based on your competition in terms of geography and geopolitical scenarios?
   [4:30] Try to do a competitor analysis and study how they post their social media updates, which media platforms they are utilizing, how they engage with their target audience, how often they're engaging, and what their customer acquisition looks like?
   
4. [4:52] Describe customer avatars. If you want to tell your brand story, figure out your target marketplace based on the type of customers you would like to ideally attract and the type of customers you would like to depend on. Describe this customer in terms of their demographics, salary, geography, ethnicity, psychographics, likes and dislikes, pain points, frustrations, and challenges.
   
5. [5:42] Develop a branding message. Try to identify your key value propositions and create a brand message that features the benefits your product offers to your target marketplace.
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7. [6:28] Define the customer journey map or customer experience map. We find that the overall customer experience is fragmented in nature. Each channel they're using puts several different interactions. Understand which channels the customer prefers, which channels are important to them, where they are making their first buying decision, what makes them come to your website or your landing page, your social media channel, and what makes them lead.
   
8. [7:55] Develop your content strategy. Remember that the content should not be about your company but more about knowing your customers, what they're interested in, and you address their pain points, problems, and challenges. You should know their hot buttons. Make sure that you have a robust content marketing strategy.
   [8:48] Content marketing has transformed the entire world of digital marketing, so you need to make sure that you have a disciplined content marketing strategy.
   [9:26] As you create various kinds of content, make sure that you also keep track of which content types work best for your customers. Try to develop some content scheduling guidelines in terms of defining and designing your content calendar.
   
9. [10:00] What does your budget and investment appetite look like? How much are you willing to spend, and your daily budget constraints.