B2B CMOs: From “The Lead” to the Buyer’s Journey

Marketing needs to stop focusing on “The Lead” and start acting as a trusted resource not just for prospects and customers but also internally. Social media, transparency and buyer control have fundamentally changed marketing. Branding has been replaced by buyer enablement and delivering on expectations of outcomes, proof proofs, value and experience.

The buyer expects that suppliers intimately understand their business, how they define value and deliver on those expectations throughout the lifetime of the relationship. Any change in that experience impacts trust, credibility and, ultimately, the buyer’s confidence. Only by being relevant, responsive and reliable can B2B CMOs turn hard earned credibility into trust, internally as well as with buyers.

Ironically, the starting point for becoming a trusted partner is the same as beginning the transformation into a customer-obsessed organization. It begins with an intimate understanding of the buyers’ journey and operationalizing it externally as well as internally.

via What Successful B2B CMOs Will Do in 2014.

Take the statement in bold: I am not sure if the majority of our CMOs have got this. Seems, we are still living in the world of old metrics, lead and pipeline counting. Measurement is important, but we should adapt  the means to the  end and not do measurement for measurement purpose only.