When Michael Porter first proposed his philosophy on competitive edge, it was glorified the world over and he was hailed as a master strategist. Companies like P&G lapped up the concept and started dominating over its stakeholders. Yet the market changed over the next few decades the same P&G now has an open business innovation philosophy as open to its earlier closed maxim. The Coonect & Develop strategy as conceptualized by Nabil Sakkab was a resounding success with growth up by a staggering fifty percent and cost of business research going down by a fourth. Organizations can no longer control resources but they are instead a part of connected platforms. The open source software Linux was fought tooth-and-nail by Microsoft in its initial days, but now the latter is building its Cloud based capabilities around the same concept. Collaboration is the new competitive edge.

Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/gregsatell/2016/10/07/platforms-are-transforming-how-we-need-to-compete/#c0bbdc350167

In order to beat the competition it is essential to know the competitors. It is part of the business environment analysis. This is especially true of digital marketing which is growing at such a rapid pace that by 2020, companies that do not embrace such technologies will be left far behind as laggards. The competition may vary by business unit, vertical or product line. Customer choices also change frequently. A benchmarking is required as to where the organization stands up against competition. Reports must be inbuilt so that anomalies may get detected automatically. Thorough business analysis must be conducted to compare campaigns, themes and topics. For social media and content marketing, a marketing maturity curve exists. This starts at the base Emerging level followed by Foundational and then Scaling further higher up. High Performing comes next before Innovative is the top point.

Source: http://marketingland.com/digital-marketing-strategies-competitive-share-voice-share-market-171212

About a decade back when social media was at its infancy, few realized its business value. Yet within few years, social media became such a integral part of digital marketing, that brands started pouring in billions of dollars to make it work for the company. Phrases such as viral, buzz and stickiness came to be commonly associated with modern marketing means. Facebook and YouTube have been the giants in this field, yet social media’s grasp to help brands leverage the medium is reducing. In fact brands are becoming way too common to the proliferation of social media marketing. In practice, individual entertainers or sportspersons are connecting well by building their brand on social media but brands are not gaining any leverage. As an example on sports pages, it is Real Madrid and Barcelona that continue to dominate but not a single penny is earned through this exercise to these brands or the master ones like Nike or Adidas. In order to rectify this gap, cultural branding may be recommended. For this the cultural orthodoxy needs to be well understood while locating the opportunity in it. Jack Daniel’s is an example of a brand that has perfected this cultural branding by associating itself with the tough rural region of Tennessee. The power of the crowd-culture also must be exploited. This is how the new ideology will work in the brand’s favour.

Source: https://hbr.org/2016/03/branding-in-the-age-of-social-media

Marketing is the one field that has seen maximum change. This has created new roles that every organization must cater to. The first of these is digital marketing. Analysis has revealed that organic searches using this field are far more successful than paid ones. Then there is content marketing. The market has evolved to an extent that content now needs to be customized for separate segments. Also ‘channel appropriate’ content has to be selected. Business analytics can be used to provide pinpointed analysis on the reach of different content pieces. This analytics can best be understood and used for business decision making by marketing science. Stories are created and then visualized to provide customer with attractive content to associate with respective brands. This kind of a scientist can even be called a segmentation analyst. Marketing is not just an outbound activity of reaching but also has inbound credentials. That is why customer engagement specialist is another role essential at present. Lot of effort is made to attract new customers, but retaining or engaging existing ones can solve a major portion of revenue targets.

Source: https://hbr.org/2016/10/4-roles-every-marketing-organization-needs-now

Successful CMOs have certain unique traits and they can broadly be divided into four categories. First of all is the expertise level. The modern CMO needs to have a basic grasp over technical terms such as hacking, coding or digital marketing. One needs to be design –focused and data driven. One also needs to be a lifecycle marketer so that as they understand the criticality behind acquiring customers and then engaging them to retain. Such CMOs also understand that marketing needs to be a multi-channel activity and not dependent on single point. The next category is leadership. Such CMOs are visionaries which helps them frame holistic a corporate strategy. They are top communicators and are intuitive about qualities of people. Instead of hogging the limelight, they believe in empowering team members. This allows them to act as facilitators for team members to excel at within a certain budget on specified resources. Next up, CMOs need to be business focused. They know the centrality of customers so develop plans accordingly that are revenue focused. They understand the complexities of cross-department communication so manage it accordingly. Such CMOs constantly believe in growth so keep innovating. Their decision making involves constant amplification around aspects such as company culture, brand stories, funding streams or technology scaling. The final category involves personality traits which start off with a basic curiosity that the CMO needs to display. The person must be humble, willing to take risks, possess an eye for detail and accountable for the overall results of the team.

Source:  http://marketingland.com/20-traits-successful-cmos-2-73629

Virtual Reality (VR) is one of those aspects taking gigantic leaps. Many consider it to be the next big thing, especially in the platform business. Google uses VR to give specific pleasures to users. Facebook is using this business innovation to entice customers to purchase products post seeing VR aided advertisements. The New York Times has also developed a VR channel which sees some giants of respective industries as paying advertisers. This includes TAG Heuer, Mini and General Electric (GE). These ads are short VR based films with the TAG Heuer one giving particularly pleasing an experience. Other leading companies such as Mattel, Apple, The North Face, Microsoft, Disney, Nestle Lufthansa, NBC, HBO, Cola-Cola and Nissan are also investing substantially in VR based marketing.

Source: http://www.strategy-business.com/blog/Virtual-Reality-Is-the-Real-Thing-for-Marketers

User Experience (UX) must be the way forward for marketers before decoding strategies. UX must not instead translate to user exploitation. Today’s customers are smart and they will then put the brand on top of the list to be excluded once competitors launch similar products or services. That is why Google has blocked its mobile interstitial adverts as they spread like fungus and create difficulties for customers. Pop-ups add to users’ Irritation Quotient (IQ). The mobile phone is a very good source to evaluate customer engagement as proper business analytics can be derived out of it. This is how we know that two-fifths of Facebook users abandon links which take more than three seconds to load. The company has now taken adequate steps to eliminate such difficulties. Even Amazon does not encourage clients that irritate customers. Similarly, KPI dashboards are being built after evaluating their customer interface. Source: https://hbr.org/2016/09/why-user-experience-always-has-to-come-first