Digital "speak with data"

Within Emerson, a "digital transformation" (digital transformation) is underway, and it is the company's vice president and chief marketing officer, Catherine Bell.

The CMO, who advocates for business-to-business thinking, has since joined Emerson in 1999, and has set off two "changes" within this relatively conservative and heavy enterprise: one is to promote Emerson's global brand strategy and inject vigor into Emerson's industrial company; the second is to promote Emerson's " Digital transformation, which will lead Emerson into a new era.

In Bell's view, while business-to-business firms are relatively lagging behind consumer-goods companies in marketing, business-to-business companies are now ripe to start using the marketing platform used by the company as a business enterprise to communicate and interact with customers in a more relaxed and concise way. Of course, it also means that the role of CMO will change a lot in the past.

Digital "speak with data"

Research has shown that today's consumers have more than 70% of the product information they get from the internet before they talk to salespeople or shop.

"We also see this trend in the business-to-business sector, where more and more consumers are doing product research over the web, and they want the company to provide more information," he said. "Bell's observation of changes in the new environment has put forward new requirements for business-to-business companies," it is important to provide information that is readily available 7 days and 24 hours, whether it is business-to-business or Business-to-consumer. ”

It is in this context that Bell pushed Emerson's internal "digital transformation", the goal is simple-to simplify everything, thereby improving the user experience, so that customers feel that business with Emerson is simple, so that those interested in Emerson can easily touch Da Almerson, attract talent to join.

This goal, designed to simplify everything, is not easy to implement. Although many companies have already completed digital transformation, this is still a daunting process for business-to-business businesses. For Emerson, a diversified multinational company with 5 business platforms around the world, digital transformation is a daunting task, both in verifying the effects of digital experience and in deciding what to do next.

"We've turned our web pages from simply listing URLs into digital ' ecosystems ' at the enterprise level, where users can communicate directly with us and get information about any of our products and technologies. Our content is also more customized. "Bell said.

Emerson Marketing has been working closely with IT departments. More recently, Emerson has made some decisions about the choice of technology platforms, reassessed their content, and developed a migration methodology (migration approach) that integrates marketing and it to coordinate corporate platforms and business platforms.

Social media is also an important area of Emerson's digital transformation. Emerson focuses on using social media such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to tell consumers about their stories. Emerson works with LinkedIn and other highly respected publishers, such as Forbes and Atlantic, to create and publish content including images and thought-leader blogs.

In social media, Emerson's target audience was the "Millennium generation" (Millennial generation), a generation born in the early 1980 's. This generation is already a corporate decision-maker, or a decision consultant, whose media-spending habits are different from those of their parents, and Emerson's goal is to use video and mobile devices to reach them. In the next few years, Emerson will train about 1000 social media and content development staff, exerting social media.

When asked whether such a transformation within such a large enterprise would challenge the organization's current organizational structure, he said: "Digitization translates into a team-centric approach that is more demanding than outright organizational reform." ”

Emerson set up a steering committee, representing all core internal stakeholders, to develop and guide all strategies and to set up a project-centric committee to facilitate information centralization and collective decision-making. These help to promote internal communication and collaboration as well as internal integration within the enterprise.

At the same time, the company's IT department has made some structural adjustments to enhance its ability to organize and support this large transformation within the company.

As for how to measure the effect of digital transformation, Bell believes that one of the advantages of digitalization is that it can be used to talk with data.

To Emerson a senior executive vice President Charlie · Peters Peters, for example, through his blog "The Extra Mile with Charlie Peters", can collect how many people subscribe to his blog, how much time people spend on average to read his blog, And how people can forward his content through other social media. Through Peters ' blog, you can see the interaction of clients, employees, and new media and academia brought by his blog.

Data from other websites and social media have affirmed the effect of digital transformation. For example, after optimizing keywords, Emerson's Emerson Process management business improved its website content in search leads

The rank of the engine. On LinkedIn, after Emerson reduced the company and brand introduction from 62 pages to just 6 pages, its fans increased from 131000 in July 2013 to 234000 in June 2014.

"This can save a lot of money for our recruiting, and it can also effectively reach those who are interested in our company," he said. "Bell said.

The change of CMO role

From 2000 to promote Emerson Global brand strategy, to promote the company's digital transformation, behind each change, reflects the changes in the marketing environment, and this also CMO put forward new requirements. In the business-to-business sector, Bell has been advocating that marketers should break the rules of thinking, change the traditional and relatively conservative style of business-to-business business, she also with the vitality injected into the business-to-business field, several times by the United States "BtoB" magazine as "annual Marketing figures", and in 2013 elected the American Marketing Association (Business Marketing Association, BMA, President, is responsible for helping business-to-business companies build connections and achieve information and resource sharing.

On different occasions, Beldu said, marketing People's work is unprecedented difficult, because the new marketing environment to the marketing people put forward new challenges. As CMO, Bell uses "designers", "protectors" and "Advocates of Brand architecture" to describe their responsibilities, "you will find that today's CMO will use their communication skills to work with the human resources and information technology departments, and our marketing research is closely linked to the company's research and development capabilities." "she said.

What new skills need to be mastered specifically to CMO the most important technology CMO needs to master, she argues, is to understand digital-oriented technologies and tools, to take time to understand new technologies, to remain open and receptive to new technologies and things, and to try new technologies, such as social media tools.

"Advertising advocate Q&a"

Marketing is not democracy

"Successful marketing": How do you understand that "marketing is not democracy"?

Catherine: When I say "marketing is not democracy", I mean, you can't bring new advertising ideas to the executive team or employees, so they can vote, because you can't get everyone's consent, after all, everyone has their own ideas. For an advertising idea, you need a small team of ideas that you can understand and agree with. You don't expect executives or employees to vote on your branding or advertising or website construction, after all these people are not involved in the development of the strategy.

"Successful marketing": As President of the American Marketing Association, how to help the relatively conservative business-to-business enterprises adapt to the digital age?

Catherine: Indeed, some business-to-business firms are relatively conservative in their changes. For those who do not want to spend money on the digital field, I usually sit down with them and then search Google for their company name or someone's name, show him the search results, and ask him, "Is this what you want people to see when they search for you or your company?" This will impress the person who is searching for you, and then talk to him about how to change that impression. You can give the performer a look at his competitor's web page, and if his competitor's Web page happens to provide a better digital experience, the difference is clear.