ServiceNow CMO Dan Rogers: Marketing to Customer Outcomes - Wikibon Research

Last year, cloud SaaS provider ServiceNow brought in a new CMO, Dan Rogers. He recently sat down with Peter Burris as part of our CMO Series of CUBE Conversations. Everybody talks about how marketing has become “data-driven.” But what does that really mean? How are CMOs using data and insights to drive customer outcomes? More importantly – what’s in it for the customer? In other words, can marketing be a source of value for customers?

This was a fascinating discussion for me. I’ve watched ServiceNow grow from a groping startup to become the fastest growing enterprise software company with over $1B in revenue. The company is on track to hit $4B by the end of the decade. The role marketing played in this growth was important. Frank Slootman, the second CEO of ServiceNow came in from Data Domain (acquired by EMC) and led ServiceNow’s growth from roughly $100M to more than $1B in revenue. The success of ServiceNow has had many fathers– great product and development teams, strong sales and operations, customer service, a really strong CFO, etc…and of course, marketing. Beth White, Rogers’ predecessor was instrumental in building ServiceNow’s demand generation engine. Slootman, who brought White with him from EMC, once told me that “demand gen is the lifeblood of every startup…without it you’re dead.”

Because in the seven years since Slootman and White joined ServiceNow, so much in marketing has changed. Much if not most of the delta is data-driven. So-called Big Data analytics, social data, machine data, public data sources, etc. are altering the way CMOs operate. The traditional marketing and demand gen funnel has become non-linear. The way customers discover, share and consume information is completely different. The ascendency of digital business imperatives as an executive priority is shifting sources of value.

CMOs must respond. For a multi-billion dollar firm, it’s not just about optimizing the funnel or generating leads. CMOs in this position must fundamentally rethink marketing.

It’s why we asked Rogers to sit down with us on theCUBE and discuss these and other issues. Here’s a summary scan of the major themes in the conversation – you can watch a curated version of the interview on the playlist below:

Here’s the playlist. Question for you…How is data changing the way your firm serves customers?