CMOs face a variety of challenges they must overcome in order to help their organizations succeed in an increasingly competitive market environment. They must combine an analytical approach that takes note of mathematically-driven industry and business trends along with a creative approach tailored toward designing and executing successful marketing promotions; not an easy task for even the most talented among us.

Social media is helping many CMOs to address these concerns, but the tools and functionality associated with these platforms can vary wildly.

Here are five things CMOs should think about before committing to any social media tools:

  1. Sales Management Tools – Any social media management tool a company chooses to implement should have sales management tools, which deal with the distribution and tracking of leads. Understanding where your traffic comes from and where it is routed in your organization is paramount to understanding where your profits are generated.
  2. Information to Aid Product Development – A social media management tool under consideration should contain at least one mechanism that can directly aid product development. Whether this is a feedback feature or something more sophisticated is up to the individual organization.
  3. Distribution Channel Management – Social media platforms should provide common ground from which to manage distribution channels. The manufacturer, customer, shipper, and anyone else involved in the supply chain as well as data on their performance should be available.
  4. Customer Service Functionality – No social media tool would be complete without robust customer service functionality. Indeed, one of the initial reasons social media gained popularity as a corporate tool is the flexibility it provides to companies in terms of providing good customer service to their clients.
  5. Promotions – Finally, a social media management tool has to be able to handle the creation and tracking of promotions. An example of a tool that does this is GroSocial; according to their CEO and co-founder Zach Mangum, the GroSocial tool has a feature dubbed the ‘Promo Plus’ widget, which “…[lets] small business create a promotion on their Facebook page that incentivizes their page visitors to take certain actions for them such as liking their Facebook page, following them on Instagram, Twitter…along with ten other actions.”

Paying attention to these five specific concerns should help a CMO select the best software and tools for their particular organization. Social media has an immense power to assist marketing at nearly every level, and selecting the right platform for your needs will help you unlock that power and turn it into revenue for your business.

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