As companies are starting to really appreciate and realize that branding is everything, the role of the marketing department is becoming increasingly more important to businesses. When essential technology began to be first implemented, the Chief Information Officer would often be left with important decisions involving this, as it was their responsibility and job function. However, the rising role of Chief Digital Officer is beginning to merge the positions of Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Information Officer, which were previously very separate. As a result, the role of CDO has been created – but what exactly does this entail?
The position is obviously still very much evolving, but the likelihood is, this will probably always be true. As technology constantly changes and grows, so too will the role, meaning someone in this position must remain focused and on top of the industry at all times. The CDO has a primary function of helping a business to drive growth through conversion from traditional to digital. That said, there’s a whole lot to the role, and the tasks vary immensely from day to day. For example, the CDO will have to take responsibility for adopting a range of digital technologies across the business as a whole, and as it’s a position of seniority, management skills are very often also called into play. The CDO is moreover accountable for digital consumer experiences, and of course, a big part of this is that they must be full digital experts – overseeing not only the Social Media networks, but also all Digital operations from the online marketing strategies, web content and more.
The aim when hiring a CDO is of course to grow brand loyalty. As consumers turn all the more to digital avenues, so must companies, and this requires an expert. As a result, a CDO has to take into account who and where influencers may be, drive the brand image across the community and engage with them in order to encourage unity and content that works cohesively with consumers.
As the following infographic from Camford MC shows, 7% of companies currently have a CDO working for them, but this is a figure which grows quite considerably to 17% when looking at larger companies. At the moment, CIOs still seemingly have a lot of control. However, moving forward, estimates suggest that as much as 90% of the control of budgets will be out of their hands by 2020.
Overall, as marketing moves more and more towards the Internet, with the rise of social media and the online world in general, it is not difficult to see why both the CMO and CDO are increasingly influencing marketing budgets in favour of the CIO, as they’re far more all-encompassing.