Social is for everyone—not just marketing

[shaownhasan]

These structural divisions don’t just stifle cross-functional collaboration, they also restrict who can access social data. Relying on the team who owns social to disseminate insights that can inform everything from product development to market research is neither scalable nor sustainable. Brands that continue to silo social in one department will find advertising data themselves struggling to capitalize on social’s ability to transform the entire business.

As CMOs, we have a growing responsibility to understand and empower the end-to-end customer experience. Our customer’s experience, however, is executed by multiple teams within several departments—customer support, success, community, sales, account management, product, etc.

But, we are the clear mirror for whether we are meeting our customers’ expectations and should own the strategy for how that experience is delivered. It’s on us to advocate for solutions that encourage department-wide collaboration and lead by example when it comes to incorporating social data in our decision making. Short of brands restructuring their entire organization, marketing leaders have two avenues they can take to begin dismantling silos.

1. Look beyond single-point solutions
One of the biggest pitfalls marketing executives fall into when choosing a social management platform is failing to think big. Depending on your existing tech stack, your vendor search might be focused on filling a specific need for social listening, employee advocacy or social customer care. But the more important question to consider is what you and your team can gain with a platform that centralizes all of this.

With martech utilization down 33% and CFOs pushing tech consolidation in the name of cost savings, tools that only benefit a single department are prime candidates for the chopping block.