Insights from big data have been fundamentally changing the role of marketing organizations and how they are operated. At a high level, marketing is becoming a cross-functional role within company organizations as marketers increasingly look to big data insights and automated technology, according to Karen Steele (pictured), vice president of corporate marketing at Marketo Inc.

“There’s been a lot of talk about the hybrid CMO [chief marketing officer] and what does that look like today, because the CIO [chief information officer] and CMO now have to be in lockstep. And, in many cases now, the CMO’s technology budget is looking as large as the CIO’s technology budget,” Steele said. “And then there’s this other notion of, if marketing owns the customer experience with all things on customer engagement, are they not, in fact, the chief customer officer?”

Steele spoke with Jeff Frick (@jefffrick), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, at theCUBE’s studios in Palo Alto, California. They discussed the shift toward marketing automation and its affects on the marketer’s primary role. (* Disclosure below.)

The latest trends in marketing

Even though a lot of the delivery process has been automated, the role of the marketer to create a story that resonates with the target audience is more important than ever, according to Steele. Technology simply helps by providing more insights into the target audience and optimizing content distribution.

“It’s called marketing automation, and it does feel kind of process-oriented and machine-like. But at the end of the day, marketing has always been about the human being and building that relationship. Technology has simply helped facilitate that and do it through multiple channels like never before,” Steele said. “It still comes down to the marketer’s primary role is to connect with — in a personalized way, in an authentic way — and create a relationship that will generate advocacy for the brand, that’s going to ultimately generate revenue for their business.”

This automated way of engaging with customers combined with the increased amount of internally generated data across organizations has also changed the metrics marketing organizations use to measure success, Steele added.

“The true measurement has always been about pipeline, because you’re doing campaigns to generate revenue. I don’t think that goes away, but it gets extended across the entire life cycle. So it’s not just new customer acquisition. It’s up-sell; it’s cross-sell; it’s renewals if you’re in a SaaS business. So it’s lifetime value, not just revenue. It’s advocacy not just references,” Steele concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below. (* Disclosure: Marketo Inc. sponsored this segment on SiliconANGLE Media’s theCUBE. Neither Marketo nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: Karen Steele