Trent Warner’s Post

Hiring a CMO is one of the few extremely high revenue-impacting decisions a company can make. Yet many companies make a mistake when hiring a CMO. Getting this hire wrong is costly and impacts all areas of the business. The challenge is that every business is different, and so is the expertise required from the CMO. Your unique business context needs to play a significant role in determining what to look for in a CMO. Too many businesses hire a CMO who would be a perfect fit for someone else’s business, not theirs. For example, if your product has a low ACV, you need a more inbound-focused (paid ads, SEO etc.) CMO. If you sell a more enterprise B2B product, you need a CMO who understands ABM and partnering with sales teams. Understanding this distinction is the difference between a successful CMO hire and one you have to replace in less than 18 months.

It seems many people have trouble when you get to the top tier/s of marketing. Understanding the roles, the transactions and the requirements in todays complex, digital environment requires vast knowledge of disciplines, and it is a space even mid and transactional marketers are confused by. Shiv breaks down what I consider the evolution here, to a decent degree. IMHO, in most companies the enterprise marketer evolves out of the other spaces, which is one of the reasons for confusion. Often transactional and ABM marketing managers are top of their internal food chain and haven’t reached into the other spaces yet.

We’re #hiring a VP Marketing for a £100M B2C business We’re supporting a fast-growing and very sophisticated B2C business who are doing more than £100M in sales (profitably) to level up their marketing team. Working alongside a brilliant CMO, you’ll support the running of the team including OKR, development plans, internal processes, reporting and key strategic projects… helping the business get ready for an exit. You could call it a VP Marketing, partner in crime to the CMO or COO to the CMO. It’s a wide-ranging role that would suit a strong leader who’s been a CMO in a smaller business or a VP Growth in a bigger one. To be successful you’ll need to: - Be a people-focused leader. Experience managing complex teams/situations - Be able to be hands on. Have the expertise in digital performance to support the teams practically when needed  - Have experience in fast-growing high-performing digital businesses. The company is best-in-class in most areas so standards are high - Be a growth leader not just a marketing leader If that’s you then drop me a DM #hiring #growthmarketing #vpmarketing

Biggest red flag in marketing…? 👉 "Reports to the Sales & Marketing Director" Truth is, no one has the time (or energy) to do BOTH marketing and sales. Certainly not at any high-level of execution. This (inevitably) results in sacrifice because that head can't prioritise both. And, when the sales part is prioritised, you end up with a *seller-centric* company, that has completely lost touch with its buyers, and how they buy today. (Pitch slapping at scale is a small piece of the evidence!). The smart founders REFUSE to take shortcuts with marketing. – They're buyer-centric. – They invest in marketing. – They treat marketing as a leadership function. And, most importantly... – They hire a marketing head to LEAD marketing + give them the authority to execute on the work that matters. No order takers. #marketing #saas PS. Talented CMO + Sales Leader is the best partnership for results, but the company needs the right mindset for it to work.

Most of the literature I have read on marketing tells you that you first need to hire a VP of marketing and then build a common marketing structure with Demand Gen, Product Marketing, etc. They're all wrong. My take on this: * You should never hire a VP of Marketing as your first hire. Most of them need a team to get shit done. That means it'll take you 3-4 months to hire the VPM, and then it'll take them 3-4 months to hire people to get shit done. You're losing time. Always start by hiring doers :) * You shouldn't follow the typical marketing structure. You start experimenting to see what works. Once you see that something works, you hire somebody to take on that thing and then you continue to experiment. For example, if after experimenting you learn that YouToube partnerships are what works the best, your first hire should be a person to manage YouToube partnerships. You can worry about having a more "common" org structure once you grow. First, you need to win :).

The challenge is that every business is different, and so is the expertise required from the CMO. Your unique business context needs to play a significant role in determining what to look for in a CMO. Too many businesses hire a CMO who would be a perfect fit for someone else’s business, not theirs. For example, if your product has a low ACV, you need a more inbound-focused (paid ads, SEO etc.) CMO. If you sell a more enterprise B2B product, you need a CMO who understands ABM and partnering with sales teams.

CEOs - Here is your manual to hire a CMO or Head of Marketing

Really good insight into finding the “right” marketing person.

You don't want to hire a PR or positioning firm when you have 0-10 customers. Networking and referrals usually get the ball rolling for adtech companies. When you have 7 figures in revenue or equivalent funding + steady customer acquisition, consider hiring a firm or employee to help with inbound marketing. Critically, they will talk to happy customers to develop the message. If you don’t have customers, you don’t yet know what message is resonating. So you can’t spend big bucks on a firm or employee to amplify it. Of course, create content yourself to market the business in the early days. But hiring for marketing as a dedicated function or outsourced partner comes later.