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Archives for December 2012

State of Marketing 2012 – CMOs Weigh In

CMO Council logoCMO Council has released a new report, State of Marketing 2012, that analyzes marketing spending, chief marketers’ salaries, and more. To create the report, CMO Council collected data from more that 550 heads of marketing, communications, and customer engagement in North America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Overall, marketing and chief marketing officers (CMOs) performed well in 2012 and the outlook for 2013 is bright.

More than half of marketers reported increasing their 2012 budgets while another 25% saw no change in their 2012 marketing budgets compared to 2011. That means just one out of three marketers had to reduce their budgets in 2012. Similarly, half of marketers expect to hire new talent while only one in five anticipate reducing marketing staff. Unfortunately, 60% of marketers plan to make an agency change, and the firms most likely to get the axe are social media marketing, web design, and public relations firms. The reason cited by CMOs is that these types of companies, “lack innovation and value-added thinking.”

Despite the fact that agencies aren’t delivering the results CMOs want, CMOs, themselves, seem to be doing quite well based on the key findings of the CMO Council study:

  • Job Security: 89% of CMOs believe their jobs are secure.
  • Compensation Satisfaction: 39% are satisfied with their compensation, but 38% are not.
  • Salaries: 77% of CMOs globally earn a base salary of $100,000-$349,000.
  • Bonuses: 42% of CMOs expect to get a bonus and 31% believe it’s possible that they’ll get a bonus.
  • Perks: Many CMOs receive stock options, expense accounts, equity, privileges, and other perks as part of their compensation packages.
  • Career Advancement: Most CMOs believe that increasing their personal leadership and motivational skills are the best ways to advance their careers.
  • Professional Priorities: Most CMOs rank increasing collaboration with sales and/or channel organizations as a top priority.
  • Obstacles: Insufficient budget is the biggest frustration of CMOs followed by organization cultures that undermine marketing success.
  • Annual Goals: 82% of CMOs believe they can achieve the top mandate of senior management for marketing — top-line revenue growth and market share gains.

While the global economy continues to struggle, most CMOs seem to be doing just fine and appear to be quite positive about the coming year. What do you think? Do you agree? Leave a comment and share your opinion.

You can follow the link to download the complete 2012 State of Marketing report from CMO Council. An executive summary is available for free but the full report costs $199.

Image: CMO Council

How to create the perfect corporate Google+ page

google+

Google+ is one of the newest social networks, only having been launched in 2011, and is therefore not usually the first network people think of when social media is mentioned. And with social media still being very new to many, a lot of companies want to stick to the ‘traditional’ Facebook and Twitter networks as they have only just grasped these, rather than venture into territories unknown.

But since Google made some important changes to the way its search algorithms recognise pages, having a Google+ page has become a number one priority for companies. This is due to Google now bringing up Google+ pages mixed in with normal search results on the search engine: the new way to get your brand name out there is to get your Google+ page brought up. So here is a helpful guide on how you can create the perfect, search friendly, corporate Google+ page for your company.

Make Your About Section Solid

Ensure your about section gives all the right information in a straightforward way, so people instantly know everything they need to about who your company is and what you do/stand for. It is also a good place to include links to your other social media pages, blogs, and other important external links using the ‘Recommended Links’ function.

A great example of a strong about section comes from General Electric, who have highlighted the main mission of their company, and made use of the recommended links so that we can find all the information we need about the brand in one place.

Gain SEO results using Scrapbook

As well as uploading the business logo, it is good to have other images on your profile that show your brand’s personality, and Google are big believers in this. That is why every image you upload to the ‘Scrapbook’ section of your Google+ page (which runs along the top of your page) will get you much closer to the top of a Google Search page than any amount of SEO optimised text will, as Google’s search algorithms now prioritise image content.

The same is applied to video content, so connect your company’s YouTube page to your Google+ page, and be sure to share your brand’s multimedia content to gain better rankings on Google and give your visitors something visual to enjoy.

Richard Branson’s multifunctional corporation Virgin make great use of the Scrapbook function with a constantly changing display which uses all five image spaces to create one larger image of each different industry the corporation operates within, giving you an instant and eye catching view of the brand as a whole.

Keep It Fresh

Google is a big lover of fresh content, as are your visitors, so keep updating your About section and sharing status updates, new photos and videos, etc. to ensure Google keeps finding your page and bringing it higher in searches, and also to ensure visitors will keep coming back.

A great example of fresh and interesting page content can be found on BASF The Chemical Company’s page, where they make use of video and imagery to provide engaging content and give an insight into the brand and their industry.

And as with all social networks and blogs, make it easy for people to find them. Put links on your website and on each of your social networks to your other online domains and pages, or even better place direct Like, Follow and G+ buttons for people to instantly connect without leaving the page they are on.