Good Chief Marketing Officer [CMO] Role Description

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An executive search firm sent me this Chief Marketing Officer role in Dallas and I found it to be one of the better descriptions I’ve seen. Others I receive are many pages long covering every last detail, but I like this CMO role description because it hits the major responsibilities clearly and concisely. Take a look and let me know what you think should be added/changed.

The Position: 

To support the achievement of short and long-term strategic objectives and to ensure our continued growth, we are seeking a Chief Marketing Officer to assume complete responsibility for our marketing activities. Reporting to the CEO and interacting frequently with the Board, the Chief Marketing Officer will serve as a member of the senior management team. 

The Chief Marketing Officer will lead the Company’s new positioning, determine and execute the messaging, and effectively shape the public perception of Confidential Company to ensure the Company’s continued growth. Additionally, the Chief Marketing Officer will create and maintain a strong marketing infrastructure; attract, build and manage a lean, cohesive and proactive marketing team; develop and execute innovative marketing strategies that build brand recognition, market relevance and awareness; and define a communications strategy and approach that optimizes the company’s position.

Key Responsibilities 

● Assist in driving strategy by working with the executive team on strategic development of products and services with the goal of productizing, merchandising, pricing, packaging, and promoting the company as it transitions from a business process outsourcing (BPO) provider to a technology-driven advertising and marketing services provider. 

● Bring a focus to market expansion and increase the visibility of our market presence and impact, particularly among our target audience and stakeholders. 

● Partner with sales leaders, sales teams and clients, and consistently ensure that all marketing tactics and strategies are aligned with sales activities and revenue generation. 

● Provide insight to optimal pricing strategies by working with sales, operations, finance and product management in order to fully understand the detailed economics and profit levers of all products and services. 

● Own product direction and strategy by developing an intimate understanding of the existing and planned products and services. Utilize input from clients and the marketplace and collaborate with peers to further refine the future product roadmap and achieve a best-in-class experience for customers. 

● Build and execute a long-term strategy for generating profitable leads via advertising, public relations, social media, event marketing and other means. Align lead generation tactics in support of vision and strategic goals. 

● Achieve full potential for the company’s brand by creating marketplace “buzz” and ensuring that all customer touch points produce an experience that is consistent and positive. 

● Provide management over the content and flow of all outbound communications and all promotional initiatives including websites, blogs, trade shows, search, online advertising, print advertising, sales support materials and client/sales messaging to ensure they’re consistent with the brand. 

● Analyze and report on the ROI of marketing initiatives. 

● Prepare the annual marketing plan and budget. 

● Build and lead a highly talented marketing team who can work together with a shared mission and goals and collaborate with other departments in the achievement of Company goals. 

● Implement customer advisory board and conduct focus groups to strengthen our strategy, become thought leaders in our chosen markets, and refine our product road map. 

● Provide management over and collaborate with human resources on “internal” branding guidelines to align them with external positioning. In addition to internal marketing communications, this would include a review of the Company’s mission, values and culture. 

● Create and deliver effective interactions with the Board that communicate the marketing team’s accomplishments, activities, and strategies in a clear and compelling manner. 

● Work with executive team to build Company culture and support an open and highly collaborative work environment that fosters high engagement both internally and externally.

Qualifications 

● Previous success in a similar position at a digital marketing services company; experience with small business customers is a plus. 

● 15+ years of experience-based mastery of contemporary marketing practices, demonstrated understanding of changing market dynamics, market development strategies, customer decision-making processes and business-to-business brand management, and expertise translating them into actionable strategies to achieve strong brand recognition and market awareness. 

● Advanced experience working with a variety of marketing teams on branding and messaging to different target audiences. 

● Entrepreneurial and risk-oriented, with an understanding of the dynamics of small, high-growth companies, and the ability to work in a rapidly changing environment. Comfortable with risk/reward equation in an emerging growth company. 

Desirable Personal Attributes 

● “Respectful persuasion” style of communication. Ability to align the organization behind a groundbreaking vision yet honor the Company’s heritage and existing strengths. 

● Natural leadership know-how with the ability to effectively lead others who have deeper industry knowledge and experience. In addition, he/she should have a track record of inspiring confidence, high energy and focus while leading an organization through uncharted waters. 

● Well-rounded business orientation with knowledge of how to optimize both revenue and profitability. The successful candidate should have the ability to demonstrate an unmistakable link between the marketing function and overall financial results. 

● Proven ability to integrate and synthesize diverse and previously separate talents, knowledge and technologies to create entirely new solutions. 

● Agile and adaptive style that effectively anticipates and reacts to changes in marketplace environment. 

● Never ending curiosity and the ability to constantly refresh his/her insight and perspective on intellectual, experiential and personal levels. 

● A reputation as a motivated and relentless self-starter. 

● Strategic orientation, strong problem-solving and analytical skills, combined with the ability to execute at the tactical level. 

We Need More Humor in Business and Marketing

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I get dozens of email newsletters each week and struggle to read them, but one that I open 100% of the time is the Marketoonist by Tom Fishburne. He’s kind of the Scott Adams [Dilbert] of the marketing world and does an outstanding job of poking fun at my profession. Check out his recent TEDTalk below about how we can use humor to create a better workplace culture and drive creativity.

One tool that Fishburne uses in all his corporate engagements is sending out a cartoon with an empty dialogue box and asking participants to add a funny caption. Below is the one he did for the MarTech Conference last year and my winning entry [full story here]. I’ve used this approach myself as a fun way to kick off sales/marketing meetings — giving props to the best submissions and getting everyone in a relaxed and creative mindset right off the bat.

Rebranding to Remain Competitive

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Some branding agencies can be over the top like shown in this cartoon, but I’ve seen way too many companies that got started with a great product and didn’t give their brand any thought.  Some have no documents about what their brand stands for and no brand style guide, so they wind up with a constantly changing kludge that looks terrible and turns off potential customers researching them online. Now they’re facing dozens of competitors and are being beaten by those who invested in branding and marketing that conveys their value proposition and drives customer interest. In today’s hyper competitive markets you must stand out from the crowd across all aspects of marketing and customer experience and that all starts with a well defined brand.  Check out my ebook on rebranding for a straightforward process you can use to rebrand your company.  

How much time do you spend online?

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If you’re like the rest of us, you spend most of your day surfing the web for content relevant to your personal life and your professional life. The typical person in the U.S. spends over seven hours online every day surfing content, watching videos, checking social media and doing email.  About 1 percent of the time we spend searching, a fraction of the time that we spend surfing, but it’s an extremely important 1 percent since it drives us to the sites that provide what we are looking for.

The takeaway for marketers is that you “must be present to win.”  Your prospects are doing a ton of research online when deciding what to buy and who to buy it from. So if you’re not there you can’t make it into their consideration set and therefore you might as well not exist.

I’m a huge fan of content marketing [as you can see on this site] but I also know that advertising is the best [fastest, most cost-effective] way to be absolutely sure that you are present to win — building awareness with prospects and influencing their purchasing decision.  My team uses what we call the “power combo,” a mix of display advertising and search engine advertising tailored for each stage of our customer buying journey.  That approach has produced excellent results for us which I’ll dig into more in a subsequent post.

time spent online infographic

The New Rules of SEO

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We just published a great new ebook with the new rules for good SEO.  The ebook lays out four practical strategies and a handy checklist that you can use to modernize your SEO efforts and drive a much higher return on investment.

You can download the ebook here.

P.S. check out the embedded stats about SEO that you can tweet right from the page of the ebook.