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Marketing

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

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

Marketing Enables Sales

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“In a great company everybody sells – not just the salespeople.” – Larry Ellison

Marketing enables sales.

In the world of growth strategy there is probably no more fundamental, yet frequently misunderstood, concept than the highly dependent relationship between marketing and sales.

In my work as a growth strategist, this concept is the starting point and a core intellectual foundation for building almost every go-to-market strategy and plan.

For business leaders who are responsible for growing the organization (if we are being honest, this should describe every leader!) this is a critically important concept.

Marketing and sales are vital functions of almost every organization, yet they often live in isolation. Even worse, in many companies they have an antagonistic if not completely dysfunctional relationship. Yet, marketing and sales need each other in order to be successful.

Basic Definitions, and the Challenge

For maximum effectiveness, marketing and sales have to be tightly connected, and working in an aligned and coordinated fashion. Unfortunately, for many organizations this is usually the exception, rather than the rule.

To set the stage for a solution, here are two basic definitions, which also help illustrate the root cause of the problem:

  • Marketing – According to the American Marketing Association marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large. 
  • Sales – A sale is a transaction between two or more parties, typically a buyer and a seller, in which goods or services are exchanged for money or other assets.

Once you read these definitions it is easy to see they really are not that far apart. So why the divide?

We do not have to go too far back in history to find a clue. In the late 1940’s post-war growth economy, business strategists and educators began to describe marketing as owning the creation and promotion of a brand – focused on what is commonly called the 4 P’s (product, price, place, and promotion).

And sales? Well, sales was about making the sale to those prospects who responded to marketing’s outreach efforts. The wall began to form because marketing and sales were classically viewed as two completely separate functions, despite both being aligned around wanting to make sales happen.

You can thank technology for helping to bridge the gap. Over the years, as we have layered in more tech-enabled tools like email, websites, CRM, marketing automation, and social media we have begun to break down the wall that separated the marketing and sales functions.

We have removed much of the “friction” around commerce. Knowledge is free. Communication is cheap. The lines are blurred. The connection points between buyers and sellers exponentially multiplied. The pace accelerated.

Transactions can take place without face-to-face contact. At the touch of a button, we can blast messages to thousands or millions of prospects and in many cases they can buy directly without going to a store, or even talking to a human.

In today’s hyper-connected business world we can safely reach one conclusion: everyone is in marketing, and everyone is in sales.

This all makes perfect sense, except for one small problem – nobody told marketing or sales! In many organizations, they are still living in their separate silos.

A Solution to Bridge the Divide

Is there a proven solution to bridge the divide between marketing and sales?

Yes, there is. Many modern go-to-market organizations ensure alignment and collaboration between marketing and sales through a defined sales enablement strategy and approach.

  • Sales Enablement – The process of providing the sales organization with the information, content, and tools to help sales people sell more effectively. The foundation of sales enablement is to provide sales people with what they need to successfully identify and engage the buyer throughout the buying process.

As its name implies, sales enablement is a way to make sure marketing enables sales. One simple way to think about sales enablement is helping buyers to buy, and sellers to sell. Sounds pretty smart and intuitive, doesn’t it?!

How does it work? It begins with enlightened company leaders who understand, and fundamentally believe, marketing enables sales.

Without this executive buy-in and support, sales enablement is doomed to fail, and marketing and sales will continue to live separately.

Next, the marketing and sales leaders of the organization must collaborate to build out their definition and required capability. This will look different for each unique organization since sales enablement consists of a diverse set of tactics and activities.

It often includes an expanded role for marketing to rate, score, and qualify leads. Moreover, in some organizations it can include an outbound lead generation function (sales development representatives) who work to identify and engage targeted prospects in order to develop them into marketing qualified leads (MQL).

It is very common to see sales enablement jointly owned by marketing and sales. In smaller organizations, it may be the same person overseeing both functions. In larger organizations it might roll up under a Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) or Chief Revenue Officer.

The sales enablement stakeholders then build out a strategy. They will need to define the approach to provide sales with the resources they need to sell. This strategy is always tailored to each specific sales team’s needs so they can best target their audience and close more deals. It should also include a thorough analysis of the resources, tools, content, and information to provide sales with to ensure it is helping them convert more leads into customers.

Sales Enablement ROI

Does sales enablement work?

My experience is that it does, and research backs it up! The Aberdeen Group found that companies with strong sales and marketing alignment realized 20% better annual revenue growth than peers without alignment.

Furthermore, a study from Marketingprofs found that sales and marketing teams with high alignment saw a 36 percent increase in win rates compared to less aligned organizations.

Conclusion – Go Forth Together

Sales and marketing alignment is a critical component for company growth.

The role of marketing is to identify who the “best” prospects are for a given brand, in terms of both purchasing power and the potential to become a brand ambassador. Then, marketing creates content that can engage the buyer with that brand and helps progress them on their buyer journey.

Salespeople and marketers close the deal together. It has always been a team effort, and it will always stay that way.

As social selling evangelist, Jill Rowley said, “The new reality is that sales and marketing are continuously and increasingly integrated. Marketing needs to know more about sales, sales needs to know more about marketing, and we all need to know more about our customers.”

Creating sales and marketing alignment is one of the most important ways organizations can improve the effectiveness of both teams. Forging this alignment can also help to lower customer acquisition cost, while also providing a better sales experience for prospective customers.

In a follow-up article, we will explore specific tactics to help drive alignment between marketing and sales.

-Onward