Breaking Down Silos — Oh Marketing!

About time we had a little word on siloed organizations—many departments and sometimes even frontiers! Does this look familiar?

Nodding head? Ok!

What does this look like to your customers?

They don’t see silos—they see content!

How can we tear down these silos?

It starts with perspective — different teams have a different idea on the role of content. Let’s look at a typical marketing team — lots of people with a tendency to wear black. And then there is the guy who runs the show and is responsible for content marketing.

This role did not exist 5 years ago because something has radically changed. As Lori from Forrester said: “74% of business buyers told Forrester they conduct more than half of their research online before making an offline purchase. This buyer dynamic changes the role of B2B marketing in a fundamental way.”

And because 70% of that buyer journey is driven by content, the marketing guy is on the hook for driving the business… in fact, almost everything he does relates back to this radical shift in the market — bluntly speaking — his job is on the line and he feels that pressure more than ever before — this nice stat published just a few weeks ago illustrates that ever magnifying challenge.

What is today’s CMO obsessed with?

So what does this all boil down to?

The CMO is obsessed with two things — growing the business and building the brand — this is the clear focus in almost every marketing survey.

Content is not an art, it’s not a passion, it’s a means to an end. Expanding the business and keeping his job.

Now, this shift toward content-driven buyer journeys has created three massive changes for the marketing guy.

The Shift To A More Connected, Consistent Customer Journey

There is the focus on the Connected, Consistent Customer Journey.

As Salesforce.com said in their report 2016 — State of Marketing: “73% of top marketers say a customer journey strategy has positively impacted overall customer engagement.”

73% of top marketers say a customer journey strategy has positively impacted overall customer engagement.

Some of you may be thinking that this “Consistent Buyer Journey” story is just some fancy fad from elite companies — maybe unique to companies in California or similar technological orientated areas of the globe.

But your company is different — you work in cubes and you don’t think about these issues.

Well you should!

Here’s just one more data point — a brand new report published about what marketing leaders in Europe care about — You want to break down silos? You need to understand this!

In the The View from Europe: Marketing Leaders Emphasize Five Priorities for 2016 Gerry said:

“Improving brand positioning and often re-positioning to support the shift to business outcomes and solutions, which often requires as much effort internally across the organization as external in the market”

Because if you start with XML, structured content, and serial commas, you’ll never break the silo.