Digital Transformation, Change and Customer Experience are just some of the hottest topics these days. Who is the driver of it and how can we get these things done successfully to build the right Customer and Brand Experience?

Is there someone who should lead this? For sure many will claim that they should lead the topic. Here’s the first part of the master plan to get this topics on the road.

• Identify the person (not department) with the best mindset
• Look who has the best out-of-the-box thinking
• Customer focus is key, who has the best customer insight and understanding?

You found one? Think about if this one is the right one. If it’s a sales person for example… can this person drive corporate change or is he / she to much focused on his goals and daily business?

Personally I think it will end in someone within marketing. If there is someone else with the right mindset, think if he / she should think about switching to marketing.

Now, having the right person, we can start the transformation and the real marketing master plan.

• Build a task force with all departments and identify an owner within each department. Make sure they have free time and their personal goals will be adopted.
• Develop a common corporate vision. This is a key element. Often there are just strategies which can change from time to time and are different in each department. Look for a real vision and differentiate between mission and value. (see https://esser.me/about-vision-mission-values-strategy/)
• After the vision (“what to achieve”) define the mission (“how to achieve”)
• What can each department ad to this vision and mission? This will be their department strategy!

Is this marketing? No and yes… we define the play field for marketing to be successful. If this is set-up, we are approaching more and more the marketing area. Marketing is in the lead but they are lost without all the other departments.

• Customer focus must be the most important point, but don’t loose corporate results out of your view. Assign owner for the 3 points and build projects teams: Listen, Understand and Predict
• Every department delivers different information to this 3 points
• IT helps to bring this information together, make them usable and tear down data silos. They implement the marketing software solutions we need for our communication
• Now it’s about the different marketing topics like content, advertising and much more. Rethink the way you are doing this. Content for example must deliver an added value for the customer. He must be flexible (broken down in individual blocks) to customize on each single customer
• Marketing automation is mainly done within online marketing, but can also used in some other areas. Make sure everyone who communicates with the customer has the same information every time and the communication is stringent through all departments. The goal is to deliver the right information at the right time and place to the right customer

As we see, marketing is just at the end of the plan. The transformation / customer centricity is a teamwork with marketing in the lead. Marketing is playing in all the fields of online and offline marketing…. but this is the base at the end and not the most important point of the marketing master plan.

Marketing needs to transform them self to a corporate consultant, an influencer, someone who is driving change with the right mindset and out-of-the-box thinking.

To sum it up, here is the short marketing masterplan

• Build up the extended marketing team through the company
• Align this team on the same vision
• Place the customer benefit on top of everything
• Break up marketing channel thinking and place the right information at the right time and place for the right person

Now we have the right setup to build Customer and Brand Experience

Building up a brand is first of all focussing on the customer. Therefore marketing needs to change to a strategic advisor within the company.

The entire transformation is about people. Marketing is all the while interacting with the customer. From now on they also need to bridge in the entire company with all employees.