1CMO

Growth strategy | Advisory | Force multiplier

Kimball Norup

Why Do Chief Marketing Officers (CMO) Fail?

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“The world’s greatest brands have made mistakes, only to bounce back stronger than ever. Shame lies not in failing, but in failing to learn from failure.” – Rob Gray

With average tenures of less than three years, Chief Marketing Officers (CMO) suffer one of the highest turnover rates in the executive suite. Considering the fact that the CMO role is critical in driving sustained company growth, how can this be?

Here is my hypothesis:

Of all the management functions (including sales, human resources, finance, accounting, IT, etc.) marketing is an enigma. The problem exists by virtue of the fact that we are all consumers, exposed to “marketing” (at least the part visible to buyers) countless times every day. This proximity tends to translate into a familiarity, which then leads to the dangerous assumption that we know what it is and it is easy to do.

The reality is that marketing, especially now in the digital age, is a vast and complicated field. It is definitely not easy!

Complicating this reality even more: Of all the executive roles in the C-suite, the CMO has the largest variance of responsibility depending on the organization structure, growth objectives, industry, customer targets, and life stage of the company.

There are many specialized disciplines within marketing, many of which rely on rapidly evolving technologies and countless tactics to help an organization grow. As a result, it is vital to know the required skillset for each aspect of the job.

For these reasons, the marketing function, often led by a Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) is one of the most challenging roles in the executive suite.

The Most Common CMO Challenges

In thinking about some of the challenges I have had to tackle in my career, conversations with marketing leaders from other companies, and what I’ve read in the business media, here is my list of the most common reasons why CMOs fail:

  • No need for a CMO – In this example the organization did not need a CMO at all. They just needed someone in charge of marketing to execute their historical marketing plan and tactics. This is a “caretaker” marketing role, one that does not justify the skillset or expense of having an experienced CMO. Ultimately this boils down to two failures: (1) a recruiting fail on the part of the company in mistakenly looking for a CMO when they really just needed a marketing manager, and (2) a due diligence fail for the CMO in accepting a role that was no justified.
  • Poor marketing vision – This happens when there is a misconception around the purpose and value of marketing. You often see this in organizations where the marketing leader was historically responsible for marketing communications and not much else, except for maybe organizing the company holiday party! The relatively low value-add makes the marketing function an easy target to pick on during re-organizations and budget discussions. This often has its origins in the history of the company, but to change the perception, the CEO and CMO must join forces and articulate a new vision for marketing.
  • Wrong CMO archetype – It is often the case that an organization truly does need the skills, experience, and leadership of a CMO. Then they recruit the wrong CMO archetype. What does this mean? Much like companies and industries are unique, CMOs are too. The marketing skills and experience of the CMO need to match what the organization needs. For example, a B2B SaaS startup does not need the consumer branding expertise of B2C CMO who comes from a Fortune 500 CPG company. CEOs need to think very carefully about the go-to-market challenges they are facing, and then hire the CMO who has the right DNA to do the job and be successful.
  • Bad CMO – Hey, let’s be honest, it happens. There are CMO candidates out there (much like all the other leadership functions) who are just not very good. They may be bad at strategy development, marketing execution, leading a team, or even being part of an executive team. For whatever reason, they are not good CMOs. In most cases, the recruiting process and professional references filter them out, but now and then, a charlatan sneaks in. The answer here is easy: Hire slowly, fire quickly.
  • Ivory Tower thinking – This situation is closely related to the bad CMO above. In this case, the CMO falls victim to thinking they know all the answers and the best approach without any market-facing contact or proof. The solution to this common problem is easy – the CMO needs to collaborate with sales, and get out of the building and into the market often.
  • Marketing/Sales chasm – This is a serious challenge that unfortunately is all too common. Many companies forget the fundamental premise that marketing enables sales. An effective and highly functioning go-to-market team has a strong partnership between marketing and sales as the foundation. If there is any misalignment or even all-out war between marketing and sales, the CMO is usually the one to experience collateral damage. The solution is two-fold: (1) make sure you hire a CMO who passionately believes in marketing and sales alignment, and (2) ensure the sales leader and organization are on board.
  • No CEO air cover – The relationship between the CEO and the CMO is a true business partnership. CEOs need to collaborate with the CMO to create and promote the vision. In addition to making sure the CMO has an equal seat at the leadership table, the CEO must ensure they have adequate resources and focus on removing roadblocks. To be effective a CMO needs an intimate knowledge of the business drivers along with strong technical knowledge of all the levers available to influence those drivers. If CMOs feel empowered to make decisions that are the best for the company and brand, they will do whatever it takes. If the CMO feels and knows the CEO has their back, they will devote all their time and energy to growing the business, not plotting their next career move or fighting political battles with sales.
  • Politics – Some organizations, through either historical precedence or simply bad leadership, have fostered toxic political environments. This type of organization can spell trouble for a CMO on many fronts. Bad executive behavior such as turf wars, nepotism, power grabs, backstabbing, etc can often find the CMO caught in the crossfire. Effective CEOs strive to banish all political nonsense from the executive suite, ensuring that all leaders stay in their own swim lanes and play nicely together! The best CMOs naturally build bridges between all the functional areas of the organization.
  • No analytics – There is no position within the company that is better suited to develop a deep understanding of customer behavior than the CMO. Great CMOs develop analytics that help measure and drive greater customer insight and intimacy. They understand the entire buyer’s journey, and can measure activities across all the touch points. With this data, the CMO should be the proponent and voice of the customer for all the company functions. This does require the CMO to recognize that their influence comes from sharing information broadly, not by hoarding it!
  • No accountability – Related to analytics and driving sales, is the idea of accountability. The most successful CMOs develop clear metrics for the marketing function to demonstrate the linkage between marketing activity and sales results. Depending on the organization and industry, this translates into metrics along the entire buyer journey for which the CMO is accountable to the CEO, and the rest of the C-suite. This level of accountability is the only way to measure ROI on marketing costs (sometimes referred to as ROMI).
  • Unrealistic expectations – With the right analytics and accountability metrics we can measure the performance of the marketing function and the ability of the CMO to lead it. However, this assumes the rest of the business is performing up to an acceptable standard. A CMO, no matter how brilliant, cannot fix a bad product or poor service with exceptional marketing.
  • The wrong marketing jury – It is a bizarre phenomenon that many business leaders are self-perceived marketing experts. Whether it is the CEO, the CEO’s spouse, a board member, one of the functional leaders, or a sales representative in the field, everyone seems to have an opinion on marketing. Depending on who they are, and how big a “voice” they have, this can prove to be very distracting for a CMO. Ultimately, there is only one member of the marketing jury: The market (your prospects) are the ultimate arbiter of what works. Buyers will vote with their wallets. Everything else is just an opinion…opinions can be shared but there should be no guarantee of action by the CMO.
  • Marketing by committee – This is closely related to the marketing jury challenge above. Some organizations (and weak CMOs) indulge the temptation by others to provide marketing input by taking ideas and criticisms from everyone and then trying to combine it all. The end-result is predictably bad. The best marketing has a clear strategy and approach, with a strong tone and point of view. The worst marketing is wishy-washy, comes across as flat, and almost always misses the mark. When you market by committee, you are by default trying to make everyone happy. Which means you end up not making anyone happy and the marketing approach fails. The answer is simple: Avoid it!

Conclusion

Well that is all the reasons I could think of for why CMOs fail in their role. Sadly, the list ended up being longer than I expected it to be when the writing began. It definitely proves the CMO role is not for the weak!

I hope that the reasons I have shared in this article will help company leaders and their boards to navigate through, and avoid, some of the most common traps in helping a CMO to be successful.

-Onward

Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Role Archetypes

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“Marketing is not anyone’s job… It’s everyone’s job!” – Jack Welch

The Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) role is difficult even in the best of times. It has taken on new levels of strategic importance for organizations who are seeking growth in the midst of a challenging and disruptive VUCA environment.

An experienced CMO can deliver incredible value to any organization. Today’s Chief Marketing Officer typically has ownership of growth strategies and the customer experience across all brand touchpoints. By closely aligning with their sales counterpart, the CMO is a key component to sales enablement. They are also often a key partner to the CEO in defining the future vision of the organization, innovating new products and services, and then formulating strategic plans to get them to market.

Once a company leader makes the decision to add a CMO to the leadership team they should give careful thought to defining why type of CMO they need. Why is this so crucial?

Much like each organization is different, the CMO role and responsibilities can vary widely depending on the industry, company maturity, growth plans, and market traction. Each CMO will bring a unique mix of knowledge, experience, and leadership ability to the table – and to be successful this has to match what the organization needs.

Common Marketing Functions

A recurring theme when discussing the CMO role is that every organization is different. As a result, the marketing requirements and structure of the marketing organization will also be unique. With that in mind, here are the most common functions found within marketing organizations:

  • Corporate marketing – including brand, creative, PR, and corporate communications
  • Marketing operations – including analytics, optimization
  • Content marketing – including copywriting, multimedia, design
  • Product marketing – including market research
  • Demand generation – including lead generation, sometimes inside sales
  • Online marketing – SEO/SEM, social, website
  • Partner/Channel marketing
  • Field/Events marketing
  • Customer marketing – including customer success, lifecycle

…with 3 Caveats…

There are three important caveats to the above:

  1. Every marketing group is different. You will not find many marketing organizations organized exactly along these lines. These functions are often combined and grouped in different ways. However, you will generally find most of the capabilities resident somewhere in the go-to-market organization.
  2. Nobody is an expert in everything. Most experienced CMOs will have significant experience and domain expertise in some of these areas and familiarity with many of them. However, it is unrealistic to think that any single CMO possesses expertise across all the functional areas…that would certainly be a “pink unicorn” candidate!
  3. Strategic marketing skills outweigh industry experience. Many company leaders and boards get overly fixated on finding a CMO who “comes from our industry.” In my experience, this attribute is often given too much weight. Why? While knowledge of industry dynamics and history are valuable, they can also be learned quickly. I have seen many examples of a CMO from outside the industry who quickly comes up to speed, brings a fresh “newcomer” perspective, and challenges old assumptions, which then accelerates company growth.

Common CMO Archetypes

When you begin to think through the different marketing functions, and combine that with the unique attributes of the business (such as industry, customer targets, life stage, growth plans, etc) you quickly realize that different business models and competitive situations will call for different types of CMO. It all comes down to determining what type of CMO the organization needs.

Here is a cheat-sheet…

Often referred to as CMO archetypes, or CMO personas, these are essentially the different types of Chief Marketing Officer. While there is no definitive list, here are the most common ones I have seen:

  • Brand Steward – this CMO is both an architect and steward of the brand. They develop the brand look and personality. Creating and telling stories about the brand, and inviting customers to join in, is what drives their success.
  • Growth Driver – this CMO plays a central role in creating and executing the go-to-market strategic plans that drive sustainable growth. They excel at creating and executing data-driven demand generation strategies.
  • Product Marketer – this type of CMO is common in technology or complex service companies, where their technical fluency helps to connect the solution to the customer’s problems. They are often experts pricing, packaging, messaging, and building analyst relationships.
  • Customer Champion – this CMO aligns the marketing group and the entire organization around the entire buyer’s journey. They leverage data analytics and insights to deliver exceptional and personalized customer experiences, resulting in business growth.
  • Innovator – by leveraging different marketing approaches and technology platforms, this risk-taking CMO re-energizes the organization by creating innovative new products and services.
  • Thought Leader – you will often find this CMO out in the field, speaking at conferences and evangelizing for their brand. Their superpower is creating new market categories and storytelling to engage new customers. They are also often prolific content creators.
  • Strategist – this CMO builds a tight partnership with the CEO to define the company vision and build the strategic plan to get there. Their deep understanding of the market – both today and where it is going in the future – helps them to define product-market-fit.
  • Culture Builder – this CMO is a natural leader of people, and excels at engaging service workers to deliver exceptional products or services to customers.
  • Renaissance Marketer – this is the rare all-round marketing leader who can assume a number of different archetypes depending on the situation. This CMO is very valuable to have on the team as they can leverage their skills and experience to drive the company forward, can step in to lead business units or new initiatives, and can easily shift their focus as needs or market opportunities demand. If you find one of these, hire them!

Probably the best way to think of these CMO archetypes is like personality types. Most CMOs will be a mix of several, with one or two as dominant attributes and smaller degrees of others.

The CMO Secret Sauce to Success

At this point, it should be obvious that finding a Chief Marketing Officer for your organization can be extremely valuable. However, finding one with a strong competency across all the marketing skills and CMO archetypes is very unlikely.

That is okay, because the best CMOs recognize their strengths and weaknesses, and build teams around themselves to balance out the capability of the marketing group. This team building capability is truly the secret sauce of a successful CMO.

The ideal marketing leader for most organization is probably going to be a hybrid across several of the CMO archetypes presented in this article.

At the risk of striving for perfection, I would argue most organizations are better off finding a CMO who has demonstrated expertise in the one or two most important attributes. The bigger opportunity cost is not having a senior leader focused on company growth strategy and execution…

-Onward

Show Up and Do the Work

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“The only easy day was yesterday” – US Navy SEALs motto

I recently had an interesting conversation with a prospective client. The topic was about updating the go-to-market strategy for their organization. While the concept of the new strategy I proposed was straightforward (the best ones usually are!), the execution was more complex and would require making some changes to their existing approach.

After some conversation, it became clear this CEO was fishing for a quick fix solution without any disruption. He wanted all the benefits of a new, transformative approach to the market. However, he was reluctant to invest the time, money, or resources to get there.

He wanted the benefits of growth, without making any changes to the status quo, and without doing the hard work.

This reminded me of a fundamental business lesson that applies to leaders of any organization.

As Woody Allen famously said, “eighty percent of success is showing up.”

The rest is just hard work.

No Shortcuts

The real secret to success in life is quite simple.

It does not matter if the topic is family, friends, your job, or executing a strategic plan.

There is no magic pill.

There are no shortcuts. (At least not lasting ones.)

The same fundamental rule of effort applies – you have to show up. And, even more importantly, you have to do the work.

You must be in the game, playing the game, in order to have any chance of winning the game. You cannot be on the sidelines and have any hope of success.

Connection to VUCA Strategic Planning

The harsh reality is that many strategic plans fail.

It is not because these strategic plans are necessarily bad, but rather because they are not executed.

Why? There are many reasons. Leaders and their teams get distracted. Competitors make noise in the market. Customers have problems. Employees need attention. Crises and distractions abound. Life interrupts…

As a result, the brilliant strategic plans that leaders and their teams invested a lot of time and money in developing are tossed aside. Hopefully to resurface when “we have more time.”

Sad but true.

A strategic plan is useless unless someone (or some team) shows up, and then does something. This bias to action is critical. By developing a robust VUCA Strategic Plan and following an effective Management Cycle cadence, leaders can stack the odds in their favor and ensure success.

A Dieting Analogy

Like many who have been mostly housebound during the global pandemic I have put on a couple of extra pounds (a good friend of mine, who has also put on some extra weight, calls it his COVID 19!).

After doing some research on popular diets, I discovered a dirty little secret.

Wait for it…

Nearly all diets work!

That’s right. The actual diet is not the problem. The real problem is the dieter. Most of us lack the discipline to buy and prepare the right food, to exercise appropriately, and, more importantly, the motivation to stick with the discipline of the diet.

Much like strategic planning. We have to show and do the hard work. There is no shortcut.

It really is that simple.

-Onward

The Value of a Chief Marketing Officer (CMO)

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“Because the purpose of business is create and keep a customer, the business enterprise has two – and only two – basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs.” – Peter Drucker

There may be no more critical, yet inconsistently defined, senior leadership role than that of Chief Marketing Officer (CMO).

For any organization seeking to grow (dare I say that should be every organization!) having an experienced marketing leader is vitally important.

In collaboration with other senior leaders, the CMO is responsible for presenting the organization to the market, developing the strategy, and then executing the go-to-market plan to drive growth.

Does your organization need someone with the skills and experience required to be a CMO?

The answer is, “it depends.”

To define the unique value of a CMO we must think through several challenging aspects of the marketing function that sometimes feel like a Catch-22. These are:

  • Every CMO is a marketer, but not every marketer is a CMO.
  • Every company needs a head of marketing, but not every company needs a chief marketing officer (CMO).
  • The purpose of marketing can mean something very different between organizations, depending on factors like the industry and customer target (i.e. B2B vs B2C)

Defining the CMO Role

Before we define the unique value of a CMO and explore whether you need one, let’s begin with a high-level job description:

Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) – Responsible for overseeing the planning, development and execution of an organization’s marketing and advertising strategy. Reporting directly to the CEO, the CMO’s primary responsibility is to help generate revenue by increasing sales through successful marketing for the entire organization, using market research, pricing, product marketing, marketing communications, advertising and public relations.

In many organizations, the scope of the CMO role expands to include sales enablement, sales team management, new business development, product development, channel partner management and customer success.

The Chief Marketing Officers is a member of the company leadership team and usually reports to the chief executive officer. In larger organizations, it is common to have a number of senior marketing managers responsible for various parts of the marketing strategy reporting directly to the CMO.

NOTE: The CMO role has traditionally been a full-time, in-house executive position. However, in recent years, as the value proposition and complexity of marketing strategy have increased, there has been a growing number of the part-time CMO or Fractional CMO roles. Stay tuned for an upcoming article that will explore the value proposition and use case for a fractional CMO.

The Unique Value of a CMO

It is true that every CMO is a marketer, but not every marketer is a CMO.

Once you understand the true complexity and scope of the CMO role, you can begin to see that it is a challenging role. Only the most seasoned and experienced marketers, typically those who also have extensive company leadership experience and strategy development in their background, can be effective as CMO.

Furthermore, while every company should have a head of marketing, not every company needs a CMO.

There are a number of variables to consider when answering the question of whether your organization needs, and can justify having a CMO. The answer is ultimately very company-specific. However, there are some general factors to consider that can help make the decision. Rate each of the following criteria for your organization, on a low-to-high (or, small-to-large) scale:

  • Size of company
  • Company growth ambitions
  • Product/service value
  • Market size
  • Geographic scope
  • Market ecosystem complexity
  • Lead sources
  • Complexity of buyer’s journey
  • Length of sales cycle
  • Sales channels
  • Size of go-to-market (marketing and sales) team
  • Customer lifetime value
  • Industry competitiveness

Scoring: Generally, the higher you rank your organization on most or all of the above criteria, the more you can justify and should consider having a CMO on your leadership team.

The CMO Role is Complex and Evolving

As you saw in the brief job description above, the CMO role is complex. It is also rapidly evolving to meet unique company and market dynamics. The increasingly disruptive VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous) environment that most organizations now operate in is just adding more fuel to the fire.

Driven by the forces of technology, increasingly complex digital interactions with the marketplace, and the growing ubiquity of social media channels, the marketing role has a growing sphere of influence in many organizations. The expectation is for the modern CMO to drive growth, deliver the brand vision and manage the customer experience across all touchpoints and intersections: print, digital, retail, mobile, social and more.

The role of marketing no longer ends with a sale. That is just the beginning. The span of marketing now extends into building relationships and delivering value to customers throughout their buyer journey. To be successful, CMOs must create and maintain a delicate balance between growth strategy, brand purpose and value, customer success, employee engagement, creative, technology, data and analytics.

Easy, right?!

Once you decide that your organizations needs a CMO, you must also think about what type. Depending on the maturity of the organization, the industry, the growth objectives, the skillsets and interests of the CEO and leadership team, and the type/scope/complexity of the sales process there can be different focal points for the CMO. This examination will drive different requirements for the CMO and create a different profile for the role.

An upcoming blog will examine the most common CMO archetypes.

More than Just a Marketer

While it is true that a head of marketing, a VP of marketing, and a CMO all have responsibility for the marketing function, that is where the similarity ends. The level of experience, strategic vision, and cross-functional leadership that a CMO provides is what sets them apart.  

A CMO is much more than just a great marketer for the organization’s products and services. They are growth strategists and partners with the CEO to promote the company and its vision. They collaborate with the leadership team to formulate the growth vision and strategy, and lead the execution of the go-to-market plans that propel the organization into the future.

Every CMO is a marketer, but not every marketer is a CMO.

-Onward

The Only 4 Ways to Increase Sales

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“When you stop growing you start dying.” – William S. Burroughs

Almost every business organization includes growth as a key component of their strategic plan.

This objective inevitably translates into “we need to sell more.”

It is very easy to overcomplicate this – do not feel bad, most organizations do!

However, it does not have to be that way if you remember the simple sales strategy framework in this article. As you will see, we can map every marketing and sales tactic back to one of four core strategies that increase sales.

Many Tactics to Consider

We know that marketing enables sales. Therefore, developing and executing a growth strategy should be a shared responsibility between the two functions. When you consider that growth strategy truly sits at the intersection of marketing and sales, it makes logical sense that both should own it.

If there is not a dedicated growth leader, then the responsibility typically falls to the Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), or Chief Sales Officer (CSO) depending on the size and structure of the organization.

Regardless of who it is, the objective of the growth strategist is to integrate the go-to-market functions of an organization, and develop/execute a coherent strategic plan to grow the business. There are a myriad of different marketing and sales tactics to consider, deployed in many different combinations and flavors.

Here are some examples of common growth tactics:

  • Increase inbound or outbound marketing
  • Rebranding
  • Sales team expansion
  • Sales training
  • M&A to buy market share
  • Upselling and cross-selling
  • Innovation of new products or services
  • New market entry
  • Pricing
  • Distribution
  • Channel partnerships
  • Etc.

This small sampling from the nearly infinite menu of marketing and sales tactics is a great illustration of why you need an experienced growth strategist on your team.

The 4 Core Strategies to Increase Sales

All go-to-market tactics have the objective to directly, or indirectly, increase sales. Despite the confusing array of options and the many complexities of executing these tactics, every one of them maps back to a few core strategies.

There are fundamentally only four ways to increase sales:

  1. Increase the number of clients. Identifying and turning more prospects into new paying clients.
  2. Increase the average transaction. Getting each client to spend more at each purchase.
  3. Increase the frequency that the average client buys from you. Getting each client to buy from you more often.
  4. Improve the efficiency and effectiveness of each step in the marketing and sales process. Driving greater “funnel velocity” and conversion throughout the buyers journey.

A Bias To Simplicity

An experienced go-to-market leader begins to build a strategic plan for growth by first evaluating these four strategies in the context of the organization and the marketplace. With the identification of a strategy, or combination of strategies, they will then begin layering in appropriate marketing and sales tactics to create the plan.

There is always a tendency towards complexity when strategic planning. I hope that this simple framework with the four ways to increase sales will provide some structure to your planning, and help you focus on the most appropriate tactics for your growth strategy.

-Onward