I’ve just come off a call with a client. And it’s kind of one of those calls that you kind of wish you’d had a few months before, because this client was somebody that I worked with.
I acted as an interim CMO for a period of about 6 months while they were really looking at recruitment for a new full-time CMO in their business. It was as a direct result of somebody leaving the company. So, they needed somebody interim while they recruited and give like a 30 day handover and all of those kind of things.
For the project itself, we started in the same way I do with all of my clients. We had a full one day meeting, it started with the CEO and his co-founder, and then it progressed to working with the marketing team, and then the sales team and then the sales team and marketing team together. That was the whole day in their office and it was an amazing time.
We, I gathered so much information, we worked out so many different things, we looked at what we could subtract and simplify. As a direct result, the next week I delivered a full strategy for the next 6 months containing 2 different identified sprints and simplified KPIs that we would measure for the direct implementation of simplified campaigns - and we hit the ground running. There was really no kind of delay or anything like that.
I got asked questions like, do you think we should simplify our brand? Do you think we should change our logo? What about this? And none of that came up because what I was focussed on were the numbers. It’s about, for me, a CMO is about connecting activity to revenue. What’s the return on investment for the activity that you’re producing?
That was the first 6 months we had less than a 30 day handover because the person who was due to be starting as their new CMO was recruited, and they were delayed by starting by a week, and my contract was ending within 3 weeks - it was okay, the CEO was cool with this.
In hand over. I focussed on what we were doing, the KPIs that we measured, the simplification that we brought into the business. I the call I just got off with was the CEO of the same company.
It’s been 2.5 months of the new CMO in place and he called me up and he said, have you got capacity to take us on again? And I’m like, “Oh what’s happened?” And what’s happened is the typical thing that a CMO will do when they come in.
They did a brand audit, which took the 1st month. And that brand audit was, is everybody compliant around messaging? Do we need to change it? They did a survey of customers. They did an internal survey and then month 2 was the start of a rebrand project.
The CMO’s focus From the moment that they started was not necessarily around. The campaigns and the measurement of things, they basically just let the marketing team run with those things. But the focus was on brand, on colours, colouring in, and logos, and how pink and fluffy things looked.
(Their brand is not pink and fluffy, but you get what I mean!)
It’s the things that really don’t matter too much when a business is wanting a CMO to come on board to really focus on how the marketing is performing. In my mind, this role of a CMO, as I’ve said, is to connect marketing activity to revenue. That’s got to be the number one priority.
But the number one priority in so many CMOs is, are we positioning the brand right? Do we change who our target audience is? Is our messaging right? Do our logos match? Is our stock photography? Is our video? All of this, all of the positioning elements, is that right?
This is not a wrong thing to focus on, but when you’re getting into the new role of a CMO, you want to make a big difference. You want to improve the bottom line and actually, fundamentally, this is why I start with a simplified day. One day to get all of that kind of strategy nailed, to see what we can simplify so that we can hit the ground running where we jump into a retainer. When we jump into a retainer, we focus on those elements that need to be worked on, that will connect revenue to activity. Once those systems are working well, and you’ve got a well oiled machine, that’s where you can start to redefine what you’ve got and ask the question, do we need a rebrand? It’s not the 1st question you ask when you’re coming in because you need to understand and work from data. Do these campaigns work? Does this activity work? All of that kind of stuff.
If you’re coming in new as a CMO to any kind of organisation or business, you need the data to be able to make those judgements. So, run the campaigns for at least the first month, 60 days, 90 days even, before you even get into making things look pretty, changing the colour of the logo, putting the pink and fluffy elements to everything.
Step away from the crayons and step into the data. That’s my big thing.
Connect revenue with marketing activity.
If I can help, if there’s something that, you know, has resonated with this and you’re a founder or CEO, of a company, where you need strategic marketing leadership, where you find that you’re the de facto marketing officer for the business and you’re involved with all of the marketing decisions. Let’s have a conversation, just email me, cmo@anthodges.com, or find me over on LinkedIn - let’s have a conversation.
Let’s see how we can simplify, subtract, and start connecting the marketing activity to the revenue produced.
I work on a performance basis with my retainer because I want to put skin in the game. And the focus is on growth, the focus is on not just making things look pretty. So let’s have a conversation. Email me cmo@anthodges.com.
Oh, and just to finish the round up the conversation, I am engaged with that company again, and they’re letting the other CMO go. It’s not ideal. I don’t want people to lose their jobs over these things, but when the focus is in the wrong direction, and it’s affecting the results that the company want to see, you’ve got to be in line with what the results of the company want to see in the first place. So let’s focus on the right things.
If you’re listening to this as a CMO, start focussing on where the results are coming from.
Focus on data, focus on simplification, and step away from the crayons like I’ve said.
