Make Friends With Everyone

“You can’t sell the solution to the CMO alone,” said Perficient’s Porter. “Marketing is so integrated into everything. We start with the CMO, but it’s imperative you bring in the IT department, CTO and even the market researchers. The CMO might be able to sign off on a project, but it’s the CTO, IT and market research teams that are going to implement your solution.”

Porter says the IT power structure inside companies is changing fast, necessitating a broader approach when it comes to who to deal with inside an organization. “If you asked me in 2014 if I could talk directly to the CMO, I would have said “Absolutely not.’ In 2015, things have changed. CMOs have more autonomy. What you’ll see in 2016 is CMOs as decision makers, signing off on cloud or analytics projects, and IT clearing the decks of legacy technology and helping build out projects.”