The Essential Strategic Mandates For Scaleup CMOs
“Marketing is the function that (1) figures out (2) what stories (3) the company (4) needs to tell (5) a specific audience (6) shifts perceptions and (7) drives the desired action. Data should be used for each of these 7 stages. The CMO must be world-class at understanding human motivations, data, and storytelling. That's why I love marketing, it's a data-inspired storytelling function that engages human beings. It really is a magical discipline.”
- Jonathan Mildenhall, Co-Founder and Chair twentyfirstcenturybrand
This quote describes the role of the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) perfectly. The best scaleup CMOs lead teams that create magic by connecting story, vision, and motivation (and often, emotion) with data-driven methodologies, rigor, and superb execution. The ultimate balance of left brain and right brain are required to succeed—and an ability to adapt and pivot to meet the demands of a fast-evolving macro environment. This complexity means that CMOs are often misunderstood by the C-suite leaders and boards with which they partner.
Businesses today are up against a changing macroeconomic environment, forcing leaders to focus on profitability first, growth second. This is a massive shift from recent years, where it was all about growth, no matter the cost.
For scaleup CEOs who are seeking to unlock “customer aha” moments and fully engage customers, they should consider this complicated landscape before hiring their next CMO. When CEOs understand the market—and some key strategies for how to navigate it—they can better partner with their CMO and align for success.
At Artico, we’re seeing a range of winning strategies across our network of hiring companies. Here’s what’s working:
Ruthless prioritization
CMOs today must drive ruthless prioritization and alignment across departments (specifically field and product) in a time when they are being asked to increase impact with far fewer resources. They’re working with fewer programs, reduced budgets, and less headcount.
Scaleup stage companies in particular are vulnerable. For them to truly scale and accelerate their growth, they must innovate beyond their core products. This may involve targeting net new customer segments. To effectively prioritize, CMOs are doubling down on alignment within their own team, as well as strategic ways to operationalize their focus, including weighing tradeoffs between new priorities and potentially distracting side projects.
“Increasingly, the role of the CMO needs to include helping the company make the right bets in GTM, correctly identifying where the biggest commercial opportunities are, and then driving the strategy (in close partnership with field and product) for successful new product launch, revenue scale up and customer adoption,” notes Lindsey Irvine, CMO of Benchling. “For a start-up to truly scale, and for a scaled company to continue accelerating growth, you must not only continue innovating on your core product, but also launch and grow new products, often to new buyers. A CMO that only thinks about brand and demand will be limited in their ability to drive impact. A CMO that is effective in driving these things and who can help lead the strategy and cross-team execution for new product launches and GTM scale up will be a successful leader of the business.”
Storytelling, with purpose
To create a lasting impact, particularly when efficiency is prioritized, CMOs must devise compelling brand stories that shape perceptions and drive actions. A great example of storytelling with purpose in a global B2B company is Recorded Future. Here CMO Tom Wentworth continues to push their mission of “securing our world with intelligence” by introducing organizations to a new way of thinking about their security program.
Data-driven strategy
With the rising prominence of data and analytical tools, it's imperative for a CMO to lead data-driven decision-making. We've seen CMOs at companies use data to understand the dynamics of the business, the market, their customers, and the channels to reach them. This data-centric approach underpins customer segmentation, informs insights, and guides ROI, CAC, and LTV calculations. This capability allows the CMO to make a compelling case for marketing investments and inform resource allocation.
CMOs also need to translate company goals into marketing objectives that support the CEO's priorities. For instance, when a company aims to acquire new customers, expand existing customer product usage, or grow in a new geography, the CMO needs to form a marketing plan that directly supports these goals. This task often involves close collaboration with Marketing Ops and Analytics teams.
An obsession with the customer experience
In the current business climate, CMOs must transcend their traditional roles to drive exceptional cross-functional customer experiences. This requires creating a customer-centric cycle that includes the discovery of the customer’s “aha moment,” facilitating purchase decisions, and eventually turning customers into advocates.
Elina Vilk, Hootsuite’s CMO, shares: “Deep customer empathy is critical for marketers. Only in gaining insights into needs, wants, pain points, and emotions—not just at the moment of purchase but throughout the customer's personal journey—can we build authentic relationships. With that deep understanding of the customer, we can then tailor our messages, target media based on where our audience is, influence product design, build stronger connections and make critical pivots when behaviors change. To drive shape-shifting growth, marketers must unlock these insights and that is only possible with a true relationship and understanding of the customer.”
AI and Automation Adoption
AI is here to stay. CMOs have an enormous opportunity to embrace AI and automation to streamline marketing processes and enhance customer experiences. For instance, forward-thinking marketing organizations in e-commerce sector are using AI-powered chatbots at the point of purchase to deliver personalized customer support, thereby fostering superior customer experiences. By capitalizing on AI and automation, CMOs can focus their teams on high-value activities and deliver stories and content more effectively.
Holistic leadership
CMOs are expected to be exceptional executives, not just great marketers. This involves ensuring marketing’s efforts align with broader business objectives. Marketing must effectively partner with other leaders and organizations—in particular the Chief Revenue Officer and Chief Product Officer—and speak the business language, plus deliver tangible results. A good measure of a CMO's effectiveness can be gauged by their ability to drive executive-level initiatives that involve cross-functional teams. For example, a CMO might spearhead a customer acquisition strategy that involves marketing, product, and sales teams. A successful CMO can command respect and exert influence across these different functions.
Alicia Tilman, Delta Airline’s CMO, sums it up beautifully: “We must understand the voice of our customers, and ensure we are building a seamless journey. There are so many teams across the enterprise that interact with customers yet often those touch points are fragmented and uncoordinated and the customer can feel it which causes frustration and erodes trust. Marketing is in a unique position to own the architecture of a connected customer journey so that messages coming from different stakeholders are sequenced, relevant and timely.”
Further, modern CMOs aren’t afraid to be versatile towards their teams, as well. For many, that may mean being vulnerable and showing up as their whole selves at work. Family, caregiving, parenthood, and other responsibilities at home came front and center during the pandemic. Forward-thinking CMOs are holding onto these concepts and showing their teams that it’s okay to experience tradeoffs.
Authored collaboratively by:
Mercedes Chatfield-Taylor, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, Artico Search
Julie Herendeen, Operating Partner, Board Director & CMO
and Brian Curran, Partner Executive Talent, Andreesen Horowitz