1CMO

Growth strategy | Advisory | Force multiplier

Chief Marketing Officer (CMO)

How to Find and Engage a Fractional CMO

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“Marketing is not a function, it is the whole business seen from the customer’s point of view.” – Peter Drucker

The decision to bring in a fractional Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) is an increasingly common decision for CEOs and boards of emerging growth organizations.

The value of a Chief Marketing Officer is indisputable. For those organizations who are ready for growth, having a senior leader on the team who is focused on all aspects of the go-to-market effort (including marketing, sales enablement, sales, and client success) can rapidly accelerate from strategy to results.

If affordability and flexibility are important, then a fractional CMO can deliver much the same value proposition. There are many additional reasons to consider a fractional CMO over a full-time role.

At this point in the discussion, many leaders ask a simple question: “now what?”

What is the best way to find and engage the right fractional CMO?

Start by Looking Through the Right Lens

Just as every organization is different and unique, so are marketers.

While it is true that every Chief Marketing Officer is a marketer, the reverse is not always true – not every marketer has the skills or experience to be a CMO.

Furthermore, different business situations call for different types of CMO. In fact, there are a number of different CMO archetypes…it is worth studying this list before you begin searching for a fractional CMO.

It is also important to conduct an honest assessment of your organization and leadership team. Pay special attention to the current “as is” state of the go-to-market organization, and what you are trying to achieve.

This pre-work will help inform the profile of the fractional CMO you want to engage.

Searching For Your Ideal Fractional CMO

With your high-level profile in hand, where do you begin to search for the ideal fractional CMO?

To help answer this question, let’s take a step back and look at the DNA of typical fractional CMO.

Fractional Chief Marketing Officers are most often experienced executives with extensive career focus on driving business growth. These professionals often have many years of diverse marketing, sales, strategy, operations, or general management leadership in their background. Typically, this experience spans across a number of organizations and industries.

You have likely crossed paths with professionals like this during your career.

Many fractional CMOs are career executives who have reached a point in their life where they want to realize a better work/life balance, while still working on challenging business problems. Many enjoy the opportunity to work with multiple companies, across different industry sectors, at the same time.

With that in mind, here are a few suggestions for places to start looking for someone who fits your fractional CMO profile:

  • Your Network – Your personal network is always the first and best place to start. Search through you LinkedIn network for former colleagues, partners, or industry practitioners that might be interested.
  • Referrals – Referrals are a close second. Reach out to your network, describe your situation and what you’re looking for. Ask them directly for referrals.
  • Endorsements – Pay attention whenever you hear someone talking about successful growth initiatives and if consultants or third parties helped them. Recommendations and endorsements from professionals you know and trust are worth their weight in gold.
  • LinkedIn – Check out your daily LinkedIn feed for relevant posts, you might already be connected to professionals who can help. To research further, if you do a quick search for “fractional CMO” you will find many professionals have this in their profile.
  • Industry – Many trade associations, or groups, have resource directories. Look for experienced individual marketing or growth strategy practitioners.
  • Online – This is a bit of a Hail Mary approach, but a Google search for “fractional CMO” will yield a number of helpful, and not so helpful, paths to explore.
  • Third Parties – Last, but certainly not least, there are a growing number of staffing and specialized brokerages that can help you locate the right resource. Some function like executive recruiters, others are brokers who operate marketplaces for consultants. A few to get you started: Toptal, BTG, Toplink, UpWork.

Selecting a Fractional CMO

To select the best fractional Chief Marketing Officer you need to conduct thorough due diligence. A few suggestions:

  • Look for someone who brings broad executive experience as a marketing and sales leader, strategist, and operator. Ideally this experience comes from several roles, across different industries and sizes of organization.
  • While direct industry experience is nice to have, it is not a requirement, and can be a difficult filter. It is much more important to find someone who has successfully helped organizations of a similar size, or business challenge.
  • As mentioned earlier, make sure they are the right CMO archetype to best fit your business situation.
  • Interview them as you would any executive hire. Do they pass the BS test? Can you work with them? Do you trust them? Will they fit in with your team?
  • Ask about their process and methodology. You want to make sure there is some structure behind the engagement, lest it become a meandering exploration with no clear path to achieving a positive outcome.
  • What is their preferred contract arrangement
  • Once you have found some good candidates, take a look at their LinkedIn profile, Twitter, their website (if they have one), and read their blog articles.
  • Ask for a reference.
  • Another great filter is to ask yourself if this is the caliber of executive you could envision hiring on a full-time basis to supplement your team. Regardless of engagement structure, you will be working closely with them, and who knows, if the scope or value is big enough you might want to hire them down the road as full-time employee!

Structuring the Engagement

While the title of fractional CMO is relatively new, the concept is not. It has become very common for organizations to bring in experts across a wide variety of disciplines, such as finance, IT, or human resources, to work on projects or complete overflow work. These engagements are often structured as deliverables-based contracts or temporary jobs.

What is more unique about the fractional CMO concept is that it is structured to look like a part-time, or ongoing consulting, engagement versus a fixed project deliverable. In this regard, it is most like a traditional consulting retainer arrangement.

There are many options depending on the contract and the business structure of the individual (some will have set up a business entity, others are brokered through a third party employer, and some are qualified independent contractors).

The bottom line is there are no set ways to structure the engagement. It comes down to what works best for the client and the fractional CMO.

How Much Will a Fractional CMO Cost?

Cost is always a big part of the equation. So, how much will a fractional CMO cost?

You will hate this answer, but the answer is “it depends…”

There are many variables, including:

  • What is growth worth to your organization?
  • What is your level of frustration/desperation?
  • Their experience and skillset – more is more!
  • The CMO archetype – More strategic will be more expensive!
  • The complexity of the situation – As the complexity of the challenge and the SOW deliverables increase, so will the cost.
  • Market conditions – Downturns and negative market dynamics may provide better bargaining power for the organization.
  • Structure of engagement – As a rule, expect to pay relatively more for shorter or more flexible arrangements. A longer-term commitment provides greater stability for the fractional CMO, which will help drive cost concessions.
  • Time usage – This is an obvious one. The cost will go up as you consume more of the fractional CMO’s time each month.

Most on-going fractional CMO roles are structured as a monthly retainer fee, based on an agreed upon time commitment (for example, X days or Y hours per week or month.)

As a general rule, you can estimate a broad range of cost as somewhere between 1.5X-to-3X the hourly rate of an equivalent full-time CMO. This accounts for the overhead and self-employment burden that the fractional CMO must carry, and for fact that they have risk in not being a full-time employee. Obviously, the deeper their domain experience the more you will likely have to pay to secure their services.

A Few Additional Tips for Success

Once you have selected your fractional CMO and started the engagement, here are a few additional tips for a successful engagement:

  • Be sure to have a detailed, and agreed upon SOW for the engagement. What are the objectives? What are the metrics? Are there deliverables? Timeframe? Payment terms?
  • Establish a regular update meeting cadence. Ideally, this should be a set weekly check in.
  • You must commit to full transparency. Your new fractional CMO can’t develop a growth strategy if they don’t have all the details. It is vital that company leaders are honest in their assessment, and willing to hear (and confront) the hard truths.
  • Be sure to make the necessary introductions across the organization. If calling them a “Fractional CMO” causes too much confusion, just call them a “Growth Advisor.”

Concluding Thoughts

Engaging an experienced and savvy fractional CMO can be a dramatic growth accelerator for your organization.

Most CMO’s have a short tenure, so you want to make sure to get it right. There are many common, but easily avoidable, reasons why Chief Marketing Officers fail.

The investment you make in a fractional CMO will deliver a comprehensive growth strategy. Their expert leadership will then drive the building or optimization of the required infrastructure, process, and systems in order to execute the plan.

If you have questions about finding and engaging a fractional CMO, or you need a hand, give me a call.

-Full speed ahead

Should You Consider a Fractional CMO?

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“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” – Chinese proverb.

Many leaders struggle when making marketing decisions for their organization.

The challenges are not only around marketing program spend, but also marketing leadership. The reality is marketing spend historically has a well-deserved bad reputation for lack of measurable ROI, and successfully leading marketing is…in a word…difficult for many CMOs.

Yet, the value of an experienced Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) in defining and executing the growth plan for an organization can be significant. When the right CMO role archetype is hired, and given the budget and permission to do what is necessary, they can help propel a company to new heights of growth and profitability.

A proven bridge strategy to get from having no marketing leader to a full-time member of the leadership team is the concept of a fractional CMO. However, it is not always easy to know the optimal time to bring on a fractional CMO.

The Value of a Fractional CMO

A fractional CMO, essentially, is a part-time executive engaged by the organization, on some type of fixed or on-going contract basis, to lead the marketing effort.

A fractional CMO can provide all of the benefits of a full-time CMO. For those organizations with large growth aspirations but constrained budgets, a fractional CMO can deliver results at a lower cost and reduced risk. The value proposition for a fractional CMO can be very compelling.

Here are a few of the more common situations, or use cases, where a fractional CMO can make a lot of sense for your organization:

  • Emerging Growth Company – If you are a smaller organization but have big growth plans (annual revenue between $5-50M) you likely cannot afford or justify a full-time CMO. By engaging a fractional CMO you will free up cash allowing you to invest in marketing programs and to bring on experienced implementers.
  • Distracted Founder/CEO – In many startups or emerging growth companies it is not unusual for the founder/CEO to wear many hats. In addition to the proverbial “chief bottle washer” title, they may also be functioning as the head of marketing and sales. Obviously, as a company scales this becomes untenable, and relief must be found. Bringing on a fractional CMO enables the CEO to delegate their marketing leadership duties.
  • Leadership Vacuum – Perhaps because of an executive departure, or by virtue of rapid growth, the marketing group is suffering from a lack of vision or leadership. In many organizations, marketing is an after-thought behind sales and thus largely ignored, delegated to a well-intentioned but inexperienced staffer, or handed off to outside agencies who have their own agenda. In either case, the marketing function and potential for growth go sideways without a capable leader. An experienced fractional CMO can create or rebuild a marketing organization, and provide mentorship and growth opportunities to the team.
  • No Growth Strategy – The senior leadership team and board of directors want growth, but are not sure how to develop a strategy or plan to achieve it. This is a common situation where an experienced fractional CMO can come in, quickly assess the situation, and take the lead on developing and executing a growth strategy.
  • Marketing / Sales Divide – This is another common ailment found in many organizations who desire growth. When marketing and sales are misaligned, or entirely dysfunctional, an experienced fractional CMO can quickly get things back on track. It is a truism that in the best run go-to-market organizations, marketing enables sales.
  • Missed Market Opportunities – The organization consistently lags industry growth. New products or services have failed to launch effectively, and languish as a result. Aggressive competitors are consistently winning deals that the company used to win. These are all signs of a failed strategy (or the lack of a strategy at all!) A seasoned CMO is the answer.
  • Lack of ROMI Clarity – The company invests in marketing tactics like tradeshows and search engine ads, but can’t track marketing attribution and has no idea what drives new business. This lack of insight and metrics means the company has no clarity on marketing ROI (ROMI). An experienced CMO will ensure this gets fixed.
  • Transformation Required – There are cases where a CEO, board, or private equity company want to get an honest assessment so that they can affect change on the go-to-market organization. This change management process is a perfect use case for a fractional CMO to parachute in, triage, and rebuild the marketing (and sometimes sales) function.

Before making a decision on whether a fractional CMO is right for your organization there are some basic questions to answer first.

Do You Even Need a Head of Marketing?

Say what?!

I know, it is an odd question to ask in an article focused on CMO’s. However, it has to be asked.

The truth is, many organizations simply do not need a senior level head of marketing, nor can they afford the cost.

Here is a quick assessment you can use to help answer the question of whether your organization needs, and can justify having a CMO. 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 to customers
  • Market size
  • Geographic scope
  • Market ecosystem complexity
  • Lead sources
  • Complexity of buyer’s journey
  • Customer lifetime value
  • Length of sales cycle
  • Sales channels
  • Size of go-to-market (marketing and sales) team
  • Marketing budget allocation
  • Industry competitiveness

Scoring: In general, 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.

Once you have made the decision that you do need a CMO, the next task is to think about your business situation.

What Type of CMO Do You Need?

Perhaps the most important, yet often neglected, question is what type of CMO do you need? Much like every organization is different, so are marketing leaders.

CMOs are defined by their experience, temperament, and leadership style. There are a number of well-known archetypes for the CMO role, ranging from Growth Driver to Innovator to Renaissance Marketer. Which archetype you need in the CMO role will entirely depend on a number of factors unique to your organization. Carefully thinking about factors like your business model, competitive position, and company maturity, will help to point you in the right direction.

If you get this wrong, your new CMO will be severely handicapped from the start because they will not match what your organization needs. Get it right and you will enjoy a huge running start towards success. This requires an honest self-assessment by the CEO, the senior leadership team, and often the board of directions of an organization.

Unfortunately, very few organizations give the CMO archetype question the consideration it deserves.

Full-time or Fractional CMO?

After determining the need for a CMO, and thinking about the ideal archetype for the role, leaders have one final question to answer: Is this a full-time role, or should they consider a fractional CMO?

To be clear, there is no right answer, only the answer that is right for your company and your unique situation. While it is often driven by economics, that is not always the case. For every large organization that loves the flexibility and cost control of a fractional CMO, there is a small organization where a full-time CMO drives outsize value and is more than worth the investment.

Here are some additional considerations for strategic leaders to think about when making the decision about engaging a fractional CMO versus a full-time CMO:

  • How frustrated are you with your current go-to-market (marketing and sales) program? If you are spending money and not seeing results, could your current leadership and strategy be the problem? A fractional CMO can join your firm on a consulting basis to assess the current as-is situation, triage, and strategize a new approach.
  • How important is growth? Can you afford to wait? Or, do you need a comprehensive growth strategy quickly? A fractional CMO, can join your organization immediately, and add value from day one.
  • Can you comfortably afford a full-time CMO; along with an appropriate amount of marketing program spend? If not, a fractional CMO will free up budget that can be devoted to marketing programs.
  • Can you successfully recruit and retain the caliber of CMO you need, with the right experience, skillset, and leadership presence? Oftentimes you will be able to find more seasoned executives who want to work as fractional CMOs.
  • Has marketing, and/or sales oversight, become a distraction for the CEO? Is it time for a professional go-to-market leader to step in and relieve the company leader to focus on other priorities or areas of the business where they are stronger?
  • Is your organization, and company ownership, risk taking? Or, more risk averse? Engaging a fractional CMO can provide a high degree of flexibility and control, versus taking on the burden of a highly compensated executive.
  • How important is operating leverage and flexibility? If you are committed to running a lean organization, then a fractional CMO is a good option.

The final decision usually comes from a careful consideration of cost, potential impact, flexibility, and required expertise.

In balance, if there is any doubt it is always safe to go down the fractional CMO route. The CMO role is just too strategically important to leave vacant. You can always revisit the decision down the road, and you will find that many fractional CMOs would consider full-time roles if the opportunity is compelling enough.

Next Steps…

A fractional CMO is a part-time professional who can deliver incredibly strategic marketing results for your organization. As an experienced marketing leader, they will develop growth strategy and own execution of the plan, while building a robust go-to-market organization.

So, to answer the question posed in the title of this blog: when is the right time to engage a fractional CMO? The correct answer for most organizations who want to grow is “sooner rather than later.”

What are you waiting for?

If you are uncertain about next steps, or want to have a deeper discussion about your organization, give me a call.

-Onward

The Value of a Fractional CMO

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“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.”   —Sun Tzu

The responsibility for developing go-to-market strategy and ensuring sales alignment belongs to the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO).

High performing companies know that marketing enables sales, and that this strategic partnership is a proven ingredient to driving sustained growth. So, clearly, having a CMO on the leadership team is important for any organization that wants to grow. However, it is not an easy job to fill or perform. There are a number of common traps making it difficult for CMOs to be successful.

Adding to the challenge, there are also many different archetypes of the CMO role. This can make it hard for organizations who want a CMO to find the right one – the marketing professional whose background and experience match what the organization needs to thrive.

Despite all these challenges, progressive leaders of organizations often decide they need the expertise of a Chief Marketing Officer but then discover they cannot justify, or afford, to hire for a full-time role. Are they simply out of luck?

Fortunately, there is an emerging solution. Organizations can engage the services of a fractional CMO.

What is a Fractional CMO?

The concept of a fractional executive is not new. For years, companies have been bringing in seasoned experts to fill interim roles or do projects on a flexible basis. This type of role is becoming more common across all the traditional C-suite and senior leadership positions, including the CFO, VP Finance, CHRO, CIO, and increasingly the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO).

A fractional executive is a functional leader contracted to take a part-time or fixed-term position with a client organization. They are often very experienced former executives who want more flexibility in their working life, enjoy consulting, and like having a variety of clients.  

A fractional CMO, as the name implies, provides all the strategic value that a full-time Chief Marketing Officer brings to the table. They perform the executive function of a CMO without forcing the client company to commit to the full-time salary and burden of a person in that role.

Perhaps the best way to think of it is as a flexible, part-time CMO. To borrow a technology term, you might call it CMO as a service. 

Is a Fractional CMO Different From a Marketing Consultant or Agency?

The short answer is “Yes” – a fractional CMO is different from a marketing consultant or agency.

How? Well, it comes down to the difference between strategy and execution. A fractional CMO will develop a comprehensive strategy and execute, whereas consultants or agencies have their own business model bias:

  • Marketing Consultants – Consultants are the experts you engage, typically on an hourly or project basis, to develop a strategy or perform a specific tactic. Once the solution is developed, either you are on your own to execute the plan, or the service is narrow and not a comprehensive marketing solution.
  • Marketing Agencies – Agencies, on the other hand, typically give away the strategy so that they can sell you their services. The more services they provide, the more money they make. This creates a conflict of interest that is difficult to sort out if you do not have an experienced marketing leader on the team.

A fractional CMO is that experienced 360-degree marketing leader who you want on your leadership team!

They will work directly with the CEO and other functional leaders to develop a growth strategy, and a plan to execute it. The fractional CMO then takes ownership of the growth plan to manage the marketing program and team. Since the fractional CMO is not in the business of selling services, there is no bias in their recommendations – there is no risk that they will recommend marketing tactics that are not suited for the business.

What Does a Fractional CMO Do?

In short, a fractional CMO does everything a full-time chief marketing officer would do. They are the senior executive responsible for growth strategy, marketing execution, and for ensuring alignment with sales.

Great fractional CMOs will also get their hands dirty. In collaboration with the CEO and the Sales leader, they will take the lead on developing a growth strategy and plan. Depending on the needs and capabilities of the marketing team, an experienced fractional CMO will roll up their sleeves and dive into those areas or activities where they can add the most value. Powered by a strong bias to action, a fractional CMO always leads the implementation and achievement of the growth strategy.

The Value Proposition for a Fractional CMO

There are many benefits to having a Chief Marketing Officer helping define the future and drive the growth of your organization. However, not every organization can afford or justify having a full-time salaried executive like a CMO on the executive team. These organizations can benefit from a fractional CMO who will deliver much of the same value proposition with lower risk and less cost.

Significant benefits from engaging a fractional CMO include:

  • Results – A fractional CMO will deliver measurable results. The statement of work (SOW) that the CMO and CEO define together will define the deliverables and KPIs that marketing owns. The fractional CMO will ensure that marketing delivers the results you need.
  • Experience – A fractional CMO brings a depth and breadth of experience that typically spans across many roles and industries. This is often much greater than what your organization could recruit on your own.
  • Cost Effectiveness – Because you are not paying the salary and benefits of a full-time high-caliber executive, there is reduced overhead cost to have a CMO on your leadership team.
  • Expertise – An experienced fractional CMO will have expertise across a number of marketing strategies and tactics. They will bring with them an extensive toolset of best practices.
  • Flexibility – Fractional CMO engagements are structured to provide the organization with the flexibility to quickly ramp up or down depending on what the business needs and can afford. This just-in-time approach to staffing an executive position is very attractive to many organizations in times of uncertainty.
  • Strategic Impact – A fractional CMO will hit the ground running. With a clear SOW and a mandate to transform marketing, they will cut through political red tape and internal hurdles, in order to drive growth. This accelerated time to productivity helps to deliver results quickly.
  • Marketing Leadership – Providing marketing leadership, oversight, and mentoring for the go-to-market team is a big part of what a fractional CMO can deliver.
  • Strategic Advisor – A fractional CMO will also provide the CEO and other leaders with unbiased strategic counsel by leveraging their experience and “outsider” perspective. This is a valuable point of view which internal teams often do not have access to.
  • Improved CEO Focus – Many CEOs get distracted by managing the marketing function, and managing marketing/sales friction. An experienced fractional CMO is a self-managing executive that will lighten the CEO workload by managing all aspects of the marketing department. This frees the CEO up to focus on other important aspects of the business.
  • Accountability – A properly structured fractional CMO engagement ensures that the CMO develops the growth strategy and implements the marketing plan. There is a built-in accountability for performance and results.

Common Use Cases for a Fractional CMO

As you can see, there is a significant value proposition for engaging a fractional CMO. What might be less clear are the common situations, or use cases, where a fractional CMO makes the most sense. Here are a few:

  • Emerging Growth Company – For smaller organization that have big growth plans (yearly revenue between $5-50M) engaging a fractional CMO will free up capital to bring on experienced implementers and accelerate growth.
  • Leadership Vacuum – Perhaps because of an executive departure, or by virtue of rapid growth, the marketing group is suffering from a lack of vision or leadership. In many organizations, marketing is an after-thought behind sales and thus largely ignored, delegated to a well-intentioned but inexperienced staffer, or handed off to outside agencies who have their own agenda. In either case, the marketing function and potential for growth go sideways without a capable leader. An experienced fractional CMO can create or rebuild a marketing organization, and provide mentorship and growth opportunities to the team.
  • No Growth Strategy – The senior leadership team and board of directors want growth, but are not sure how to develop a strategy or plan to achieve it. This is a common situation for an experienced fractional CMO to come in and take the lead.
  • Missed Market Opportunities – The organization consistently lags industry growth. New products or services have failed to launch effectively, and languish as a result. Aggressive competitors are consistently winning deals that the company used to win. These are all signs of a failing strategy (or lack of one!) A seasoned CMO is the answer.
  • Lack of ROMI Clarity – The company invests in marketing tactics like tradeshows and search engine ads, but has no idea what drives new business. This lack of insight and metrics means the company has no idea of its marketing ROI (ROMI). An experienced CMO will ensure this gets fixed.
  • Marketing / Sales Divide – Another common ailment in many organizations. In cases where marketing and sales are misaligned, or entirely dysfunctional, an experienced fractional CMO can quickly get things back on track. In the best run go-to-market organizations, marketing enables sales.
  • Change Management – There are cases where a CEO, board, or private equity company want to get an honest assessment so that they can affect change on the go-to-market organization. This is a perfect use case for a fractional CMO to parachute in, triage, and rebuild the marketing function.

Three Possible Actions…

When confronted with the strategic imperative to grow the organization, leaders can take three possible actions:

  1. Do nothing – Sadly, this is the most common path. Instead of investing in marketing leadership, the decision is to continue down the same path, expecting a different result. The poor results are entirely predictable, and preventable.
  2. Go sideways – Due to fear, uncertainty, and a lack of conviction, some leaders hand off marketing to a junior member of the marketing team. This well-intentioned and convenient solution generally does not yield much growth by way of results. After kicking the can down the road for a while, thoughtful leaders revisit the decision and bring in a seasoned marketer to define strategy, tactics, and execute.
  3. Go forward – Strategic leaders recognize the value of delegating the creation and execution of a growth plan to an experienced CMO. If they cannot justify a full-time CMO, they will engage a fractional one.

Getting Started with a Fractional CMO

A fractional CMO is a part-time CMO who delivers full-time strategic results. As an experienced CMO, they will not only develop growth strategy, but also own execution of the plan.

Regardless of the use case that causes an organization to consider engaging a fractional CMO, they will deliver significant value – from developing strategy, to aligning marketing and sales, to mentoring a marketing team, to market positioning and messaging.

Every growth organization needs a CMO…and with the fractional CMO option, there is no excuse for not having one.

-Onward

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

by

“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