CEOs & CMOs: 2017 Strategic Planning Questions for Your Digital Team

While the rest of us are enjoying the fall weather, football and the changing seasons, most CMOs, CEOs, and their leadership teams are elbow deep in 2017 planning and budgeting. In addition to all the normal business challenges, most leadership teams are probably spending a significant amount of time talking — one way or another — about digital and/or digital transformation. Maybe it’s a question of how to allocate the capital budget for digital capabilities, or it could be a culture question (“How do we get more digital talent?”). Or, more urgently, it could be an existential question (“How do we compete against X and the disruption they are causing?”).

Eventually, those boardroom conversations will make their way down to strategic planning discussions with the VPs of Digital Marketing, the Chief Digital Officer, Head of Digital, or Directors of Digital. Here’s what we hope those lucky leaders are getting asked during those strategic conversations:

• What’s our strategy to use data to develop a competitive advantage?
  We see a lot of C-level leaders who are missing the strategic opportunity to plan for, collect and analyze data in unique ways (not just the obvious stuff) to give themselves a competitive advantage. We know of one company that bought a couple large Instagram handles from their owners, just so they could get the day to day data on likes and use the comments section to gain unique consumer insights that their competitors wouldn’t have.
• How are we using digital to create a unified experience over the whole customer journey?
  Smart companies are moving on from digitizing their functions (Sales, Service, PR, Brand Management) to looking for ways to integrate and unify the whole consumer experience. They are going from good/great execution at the functional level to managing the whole customer journey in a holistic, integrated way even though there’s not an immediate ROI and dramatic changes in short term results are rare. Not only is it better for consumers, it positions companies to collect unique, potentially proprietary data along the way. It’s an easy concept to grasp, but it’s incredibly hard to execute internally unless there is a multi-year commitment from the top to keep investing ahead of results.
• What capital investments and resource allocations do we need to make to get better data across the customer journey?
  See above. A dramatically improved customer experience will generate incredibly valuable data.
• What must we do to invest enough in both incremental and transformational innovation?
  A good leader says “yes” to opportunities to invest in innovation, but few leadership teams are disciplined enough to balance short-term, functional innovation (i.e. incremental) with the willingness to pursue transformational opportunities. For instance, we know of one company that is generating a surprising amount of revenue from advertising on their digital platform; enough revenue to pay for a larger, more advanced digital team. It’s almost guaranteed that the directors and managers and coordinators on the digital team have ideas for both, but they may not be getting the support to pursue both due to a heavy prioritization of short-term results.
• How do we need to evolve our brand positioning and actions to be even more relevant to our customers?
  All leaders should by now understand how digital is transforming consumer expectations of brands. But even after years of watching brands like Dove drive great results by moving the brand to a higher, more aspirational space (and creating amazing digital content that’s getting shared all over the place), too many leaders are still(!) focused on the result (“get me something that goes viral”) instead of the characteristics of a soap brand with which millions and millions want to connect. In other words, you have to do the work to elevate your brand and your company in order to be relatable, digitally.
• What do we need to do culturally to create the conditions for more agility and innovation in our marketing?
  Most good business leaders have read up on Agile, Lean Startup, and “working like a startup”. It’s thrilling to see courageous leaders try to change their companies actions. But, smart C-level folks will listen to the digital teams about what needs to change culturally to create the conditions for more flexibility, agility and innovation in their marketing model (or their business, overall). The behaviors are one thing, but the attitudes, beliefs, values and incentives are another. Most importantly, CMOs and CEOs should be asking: Have I created the right incentives to unlock true innovation (or will my team still get penalized for taking risks)?
• Are we aggressively looking into business model or product innovation opportunities?
  This is something that any sufficiently paranoid organization should be asking itself every six months. “What would a potential disruptor do to come take our business away?” Or, put another way, “How do we avoid getting Blockbustered?” And, as part of the same exercise, CEOs should be asking their digital team, “What opportunities are we missing to use digital for new revenue, new products, or serving our customers more effectively?” It’s easy to get a false sense of security that “we’re on it!”.
• How can we help our employees work at the pace and speed of our customers?
  As the proliferation of tools and technology accelerates, it’s imperative for customer-focused companies to enable their front line people — the sales folks, the community managers, customer service reps — to work with the same tools and platforms that their customers are using. So, whether it’s instagram or Snapchat messaging, chatbots or Kik, the best CMOs/CEOs will make the hard policy changes to stay connected with their consumers.

If you’re the VP or Sr Director of Digital, the Head of Digital or the Digital Transformation leader and these questions aren’t coming up in the annual operating plan discussions, you should set up time with your CMO and CEO to push these issues forward. It’s your chance to lead “up”, push the thinking of your organization and position your team to drive even greater impact in the organization. And, ultimately, make life a little better for your customers in 2017.