A Lightning Round on Broadridge: Four Questions in Three Minutes

Dipti Kachru is the global chief marketing officer at the tech provider Broadridge Financial Solutions, which was formed in 2007 when Automatic Data Processing (ADP) spun off its brokerage services business into a new corporation.

Below are highlights from Insider Intelligence’s conversation with Kachru about her insights into the rapidly evolving role of the CMO, the trends and challenges affecting her, and how she measures the success of marketing initiatives.

The following has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Insider Intelligence (II): What's changed about the CMO role over the last few years?

Dipti Kachru (DK): Marketing is seen as a proven growth driver—the maturity of marketing technology and data science has helped the CMO in this, making the marketing playbook more surgical and efficient.

The CMO of today needs to be a storyteller, technologist, data scientist, and business strategist all in one!

II: Before you joined Broadridge, you spent several years as a CMO in the wealth management division at Chase. How does the CMO role differ within a technology provider compared with a wealth management firm?

DK: What truly differs is how you apply the marketing tools to the B2B purchase journey. Especially when I compare my role today to being a retail CMO, the scale is often very different—how you use various media channels is different for higher-consideration purchases with a much smaller pool of buyers and how you measure efficacy varies.

I would also say that building an ownable brand supported by strong, relevant messaging and storytelling is often more critical in B2B marketing. Traditionally, there has been a lot of focus on the sales narrative. As purchase behaviors change, I’m seeing a need for more focus on improving our storytelling in marketing to break through the competitive clutter and drive recall.

II: What are the main trends and challenges affecting you today?

DK: Customers expect brands to be more relevant. Personalized communications are the norm and organizations that don’t invest in the right data and tech tools will deliver a subpar experience.

Second, data privacy is both a significant trend and a challenge facing today’s marketers. Data is the primary part of popular AI-driven marcom platforms, but customer concerns around privacy are growing. Though I would argue this could be beneficial: By giving the customer the ability to share information or opt into a communication, you can develop a more engaged relationship. Of course, this also raises the bar and expectations on personalization and relevancy.

II: How do you measure the success of marketing initiatives?

DK: Having a strong measurement framework and the discipline of upfront planning is critical to a performance-marketing culture. More recently, I have observed that for many, access to significant amounts of data has actually made marketing measurement less effective. I often ask my team for the “so what?” of a marketing data point. Given my retail marketing background, the holy grail is to prove ROI, but in B2B that is harder, especially when purchase cycles are longer. In addition to the expected measurement around leads and funnel conversion metrics, we are also working with our analytics teams to define and validate what we call “beacons of success”—milestones and customer behaviors that are predictive of future success. For example, actions that nurture the sales process or help accelerate the customer’s decision to purchase.