Louanne M Buckley GCB.D - CMO ⁞ Growth ⁞ Digital’s Post

Hiring the RIGHT CMO for what a company needs at each stage is crucial. There are three main pillars in Marketing: 1. **Revenue Marketing**: Demand generation, pipeline, operations, metrics, data. 2. **Corporate Marketing**: Brand, awareness, communications, design, buzz, emotion. 3. **Product Marketing**: Strategy, positioning, messaging, enablement, competitive analysis, customer needs, analysts. CEOs often seek a unicorn CMO who excels in all three areas, but such a unicorn doesn't exist. In my experience, marketers usually have a major in one pillar, a minor in another, and a gap in the third. Companies need to identify their primary needs and hire a CMO with strengths in those areas. The “right” CMO will evolve as a company grows. Early-stage businesses often prioritize Revenue Marketing. As the company expands, Product Marketing becomes crucial to drive new growth avenues. At scale, Corporate Marketing, especially brand management, becomes critical. This dynamic is why CMO turnover is common; as companies grow, their priorities change. Instead of searching for a mythical all-rounder, look for a CMO who can: 1. **Hire Effectively**: Great CMOs attract, hire, and manage talent to fill their gaps. 2. **Lead with a Clear Vision**: They should understand the broader market landscape and align marketing efforts with overall business goals. 3. **Adapt to Changing Priorities**: They should be agile and able to pivot focus as your company's needs evolve. The goal isn't to find someone perfect in every way, but someone who can strategically lead and build a robust marketing team. This approach ensures all aspects of marketing are covered without relying on one person to be the master of all trades. #MarketingLeadership #CMO #MarketingStrategy

Hear! Hear! And as I teach in my Startup Marketing workshop at UC Berkeley Skydeck, if you think of "marketing" more broadly to include defining solutions *after* identifying your target segments' problems (vs an after-thought cost-center), what could be more important and strategic to a company? And for businesses with limited resources, sequencing those target segments is key: https://lnkd.in/gPnvSbXk

💯 back this post. And it’s a topic I’m super passionate about! We (marketers) have all heard lots of opinions from around the table on what to do, how to measure, comments like “let’s do ABM”… without really knowing what all this means or the steps and details behind it. Marketing IS hard! It’s science and it’s gut. It’s creativity and resilience. It’s also so hard to put simply in words because it is also cross functional, and reliant on so many factors and influences. Not to mention budget, resources, and so much more! It’s time for leaders to understand Marketing is a partnership not just a tactic. It requires real understanding behind all the levers and how it interconnects across and within a company. Measurement is not simply marketing attributed pipeline. When done right, marketing supports real business growth and a variety of additional measures. Let’s put our collective marketing hands together to make this a movement.

Being a marketer, esp. a CMO is hard .

Do you know of many jobs where you can get fired for over-delivering? Hold my beer while we look in to the growth strategist's reality. The growth strategist is tasked with asking "are all the company departments ready to handle growth?" The company may win many new customers but if the business just isn't ready for all that volume, it's diluted effort.  I wouldn't call that a growth strategy. The growth strategist asks: 🤔 If marketing runs that game-changer campaign, is HR ready to get more call center agents incase of a dramatic increase in call volumes?  🤔 If we're expanding into a new market segment, have we amped up the tech to support the sales team?" So that's why when the CEO has the counter-intuitive realization that the company is "growing too fast", the CGO's head is on the chopping block. And what's with most growth strategists having a marketing background? 🤔 Well, it's because the marketing function by design is about coordinating the revenue engine: sales, product, customer experience etc   So as a marketing specialist grows in their career, they tend to develop high-strategy skills to drive complex cross-functional projects to increase the company's market competitiveness (not solely revenue). Thus a growth strategist is born. To be sure, a growth strategist can come from any background, but when a CMO sharpens their finance acumen, they're the top contender to be accountable for the company's growth strategy. Can you see yourself as a growth strategist? I'd be curious if your path is from a marketing background or something unexpected like ICT💡💡 Save this so you can easily find it later📥   ♻ for the budding CGO in your feed #GrowthStrategy #CMO #CGO

Ever wondered why hiring a VP Marketing or CMO is so challenging? Recent studies show that over 50% of these hires fail within the first 18 months… Surprisingly, many of these challenges stem from the CEO’s perspective and approach to marketing… 👨💼 The CEO’s Role:  Many CEOs, especially those from engineering, product, operations, or sales backgrounds, might see marketing as straightforward. But marketing is dynamic and intricate, requiring a deep understanding of market dynamics, consumer behavior, and the ability to pivot strategies quickly. Misunderstanding this can lead to unrealistic expectations and failed hires. 💡 Building Strong Communication:  Candidates for CMO or VP Marketing roles should engage in thorough discussions with hiring executives, asking questions like why the role is being hired, whether there's a clear target market, and how long are we willing to wait for observable results.  Open, ongoing dialogue with leadership is crucial. Discussing goals, expectations, and progress transparently helps align strategies and ensures everyone is on the same page. Prepare for success in your next marketing leadership role with 6 simple questions. Click here 👉  https://lnkd.in/d_3nvya9 #B2BMarketing #AccountBasedMarketing #ABM #Leadership #CMO #MarketingStrategy #BusinessGrowth #MarketingLeadership

Over past 2-3 years I’ve literally met 100s of recruiters, VCs, CEOs, Talent Partners and all of them say being a CMO is incredibly hard and tenure is historically low. Yet, when I look around at all my CMO friends, they are some of the brightest people I’ve ever met in my life. This was re-affirmed over the last week as I saw many of them from the hottest tech companies in the world. So why this sentiment? Are my friends all really morons and I just can’t see it? Definitely not. It comes down to one word that gets mentioned in nearly every conversation: expectations. The expectations for what these superhuman CMOs need to deliver is completely out of whack with how marketing actually works. Marketing is incredibly hard, especially with the amount of things you are expected to know from being a visionary brand builder to knowing all your metrics cold, while delivering fast results on a constrained budget. So when CMOs talk about working for a CEO who “gets’ marketing, it’s not because we (us) want someone who is great at marketing, but it’s because we need people who understand and support that: ✅ There’s no one playbook that will fix it all ✅ You can’t do it without incredible executive support ✅ You can’t do it alone, you need a team (when you are growing) ✅ It takes time ✅Lots of things will go right (because you are smart)… ✅ … and lots of things will go wrong (because so many conditions change in real-time) Marketing is about having more successes than failures Great marketing takes time, it’s not instant or easy The most important is the way a marketing leader shows up every day and continues to try, grind, improve, hustle, lead, all with a smile on her face Marketing can be the most incredible growth driver for a business. But needs the right environment to succeed. #marketing #leadership

🚀 𝑼𝒏𝒍𝒐𝒄𝒌𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑪𝒐𝒅𝒆 𝒕𝒐 𝑯𝒊𝒓𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝑬𝒙𝒄𝒆𝒑𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏𝒂𝒍 𝑴𝒂𝒓𝒌𝒆𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝑳𝒆𝒂𝒅𝒆𝒓𝒔 🚀 In the ever-evolving landscape of marketing, finding the right leader isn't just a matter of chance—it's a science. At Insight Partners, my colleagues Charlene Chen Dustin Zaloom Pax Kaplan-Sherman and Ally Baker have gone beyond the surface to understand what truly makes a marketing leader exceptional. 𝘚𝘱𝘰𝘪𝘭𝘦𝘳 𝘢𝘭𝘦𝘳𝘵: 𝘪𝘵'𝘴 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘢𝘴 𝘮𝘺𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘰𝘶𝘴 𝘢𝘴 𝘪𝘵 𝘴𝘦𝘦𝘮𝘴. We've crunched the numbers, analyzed the trends, and decoded the equation for you. Here are 3 𝐤𝐞𝐲 𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐬 that will change how you approach hiring marketing leadership: 𝐇𝐢𝐫𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐠𝐞-𝐬𝐩𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐟𝐢𝐜 𝐞𝐱𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞: Look for candidates who have experience navigating the challenges of your specific stage of growth. 𝐇𝐢𝐫𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐦𝐮𝐬𝐭-𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐞𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐢𝐞𝐬: Be clear on the prioritized, must-have competencies and skills, and document this in a scorecard to drive alignment in the hiring process. 𝐃𝐨𝐧’𝐭 𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐲 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐚𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐩𝐢𝐩𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞: There’s a need to see enough candidates. Don’t overly limit the talent pool with criteria that are more nice-to-have than must-have. 🔍 Dive deeper into our findings and take the first step towards transforming your marketing leadership hiring strategy. Our detailed analysis and our recommended plan await. ✨Get all of our insights here: https://lnkd.in/eJbm54Qu ✨ Your next marketing leader is out there, and with our insights, you're closer than ever to finding them. Let's decode the future of marketing leadership together! #MarketingLeadership #HiringExcellence #DataDriven #InsightPartners

What made you a good marketer is not what makes you a good CMO. I learned that the hard way. I used to run paid campaigns, build complex automation flows and write lots of copy. Even won some awards. 🏆 I thought that as my company grew, I could smoothly transition into being a leader. How hard could it be? Really damn hard, it turns out. Becoming a function owner and people manager was a huge mindset shift. I had to learn to: ▪️ Hire & fire ▪️ Build brands ▪️ Manage teams ▪️ Let go of control ▪️ Market internally ▪️ Deal with lots of pressure ▪️ Work with C-level (CROs ❤️) ▪️ Stop assuming I always know better ▪️ Let go of the day to day things, even if it breaks them ▪️ Separate "nice to know" metrics from what really matters ▪️ Focus on a few growth drivers, and eliminate everything else I grew into loving it, even if I occasionally miss the thrill of launching my own campaign. But not everyone is so lucky. Companies often promote the most capable marketers to CMOs without realising how different the roles are. I've met marketing leaders who are either misfit, or downright burnt out. Some even told me that they miss the specialist work. CEO should promote people for the right reasons. Specialists should research what the CMO role is really like before setting a career path. A great hands-on specialist is not always a great CMO. #cmo #b2bmarketing

At mid to senior career levels in performance marketing, the tools and optimisations you know start to matter less and less. The approach you take to solving business and performance problems starts to matter more and more. It’s largely because at senior levels, companies are looking for brains on hire who can solve business problems, not expert campaign managers. Invest time in building the strategic and problem solving muscle because it’s never going to get redundant. Do you agree? #Marketing #PerformanceMarketing #Digital #DigitalMarketing #Growth #Careers