What is the modern Chief Marketing Officer?

The Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) is one of the most misunderstood positions within the C-suite. It varies by company and the responsibilities depend on the type of company and the products or services they offer. With the emergence of marketing and technology morphing into unison, the understanding of the CMO role changed even more. 

Through my experience I have led the marketing teams in Electric Vehicles, Cloud, and for many companies in various industries through my own business. After nearly 20 years of working in technology and on the marketing company side, here is my humble opinion on what the modern CMO position looks like.

Traditional or Technology

In the last 10 - 15 years marketing has rapidly changed thanks to technology. It began with traditional marketing that includes print, media, television, radio, billboards, and newspapers. Today it’s hard to believe that marketing was done primarily through these traditional methods. 

Today, technology has transformed marketing into web, digital, online advertising, video, podcasts, social media, and more. This change began with the onset of data analytics and the growth of online advertising more than a decade ago. 

During this long process of change in the last decade, many Marketing Professionals had to learn software, technology, websites, and a variety of specialized skills like content writing, online advertising, public relations, social media, and more. This process helped better define what the CMO does on a tactical level to ensure a company is properly executing their business goals. However one thing remained true - communication had more avenues for outreach and the functions and methods and strategies became more digital. 

The modern CMO has to have a keen understanding of both the traditional and technological advancements. For many legacy CMO the traditional methods gave way to those who know technology more. It wasn’t an easy, fast, or cheap transition for many companies. And filling the CMO role with technology skills was even more difficult to find. 

Communications As A Whole

Understanding the CMO position also requires keen mastery of what I call the “Communications Trinity,” that is Marketing, Advertising, and Public Relations. Together these three scholarly disciplines create a business communication that is cohesive for every company in the world. 

A solution to finding a CMO means having education, professional experience and mastery of the “Communications Trinity” so that they can properly lead the team. It provides a company with marketing focus, technology, and reporting to the C-suite with a whole landscape of the company’s communications efforts.. 

By understanding each discipline better, companies can prepare a future that provides better transparency with goals, strategies, and tactics that provide results aligned with their overall business goals. Later on, we’ll also discuss Sales and how that plays an integral role within the scope of the Communications Trinity

What does the Communications Trinity signify so company’s can find a good CMO to support leadership in a company?

Marketing

Marketing has always been the source for product development, pricing, market strategy, and now technology as well. That means website creation and management in a Content Management System (CMS). It also means Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software and/or e-commerce software that integrates with the website or other internal enterprise applications that enhances, upgrades, and maintains business operations. There are a wide variety of marketing companies that support specific marketing tasks such as social media, video, content, and more. Although they form a part of the marketing department, they still require a CMO to develop a business marketing plan for them to ensure that the tactics are useful for the company in the first place. Without that direction, some companies may deploy an endless amount of marketing tactics with no clear overall business goals for the C-suite. 

Advertising

Advertising includes traditional and technology focused communications. Today, a CMO should have a clear knowledge and experience within online advertising, traditional advertising, and how that aligns with the overall marketing business goals for the C-suite. The advertising discipline isn’t a separate matter. It must communicate directly with customers and clients what the company produces in products and services. The creative aspect is only creative if it produces results aligned with the overall business goals. Otherwise it’s very expensive, it’s difficult to track, and even more difficult to prove to the C-suite of its effectiveness. So a modern CMO has to have knowledge and experience in effective advertising as well on the traditional and technology sides. Online pay-per-click (PPC) advertising also integrated technology within advertising. A modern CMO must have knowledge and experience to align both the traditional and technology aspects of advertising, in alignment with the CMO’s overall marketing plan. The advertising part is a tactical part of the marketing plan. Which means it still requires a CMO oversight to ensure its effectiveness with communicating a company’s products and services.

Public Relations

Public Relations is the main form of business communication and relationships with media outlets for a specific company, industry, and purpose. That means writing formal press releases, which are similar to modern Knowledge Base Articles written in technology. Its main purpose is to communicate the company’s official business to shareholders, customers, clients, the general public and the media in an official capacity. That also includes holding events, having a spokesperson, and connecting the C-suite and other specialized employees to communicate effectively what the company does and how that impacts employees, customers, the industry, and the general public. Technology has changed the practice of public relations so that a company can effectively communicate both internally and externally the official business communications from the C-suite.

A modern CMO is difficult to find because understanding both Traditional and Technology as well as the Communications Trinity is quite difficult. It is a large part of the company’s overall strategy to sell products and services. Which is a good segway into the next part of a CMO.

Sales and Marketing

A modern CMO must also possess Sales skills in order to produce an effective marketing plan for the overall business goals. In fact, most of what marketing does is support sales and increase revenue and profits. All the activities above support the sales process and require a CMO who can lead it in tandem.

Having knowledge and experience in Sales is a vital experience for an effective marketing plan. Afterall, what are all the marketing activities for? To make revenue and profit for the business. A modern CMO must have experience leading a Sales team as well to be successful for any business. In the last decade, the Sales team has also transitioned into technology with software that is managed by the marketing and sales teams. 

A modern CMO is able to develop an overall business marketing plan with multiple strategies for each product, create tactics within the Communications Trinity, and apply that towards Sales to meet the business goals for the C-suite, investors, and shareholders. 

That is why finding a CMO is among the most difficult positions to fill within the C-suite. 

With this knowledge and experience, a CMO is able to bring value to the C-suite in tangible ways that meets a company’s business goals. It could include company wide evolution and it also provides the C-suite with proper executive guidance on leading the company towards revenue growth. 

Without the correct CMO, a company can suffer for years or decades doing endless tactics and strategies without a cohesive overall business marketing plan which is expensive, time consuming, and many times frustrates the CEO, shareholders, and/or investors.

It’s like hiring a CTO who doesn’t understand the full framework of the Cloud and Software, while expecting them to hire and lead a team of engineers and developers without a cohesive plan and spending money on tech stacks that might or might not be needed and then being upset that they can’t track anything properly or produce the products and services that a company truly needs. 

The Marketing Department has evolved so much that even a new position, the Marketing Technologists who manage the CMS and CRM, have a new tech focused role. It intertwines with websites and software and cloud. Those roles are also difficult to find with knowledge and expertise. So the CMO must be knowledgeable enough so they can hire each position and orchestrate the entire business marketing plan effectively.

Many companies get into a cycle of doing a lot of tactics and assuming it will produce results. They end up hiring a lot of agencies to fulfill those tactics, and sometimes it’s all uncoordinated within the Communications Trinity due to lack of strategy and overall CMO planning towards business goals. This costs businesses millions, sometimes billions, of dollars a year. Sometimes the tactics can’t be tracked properly back to revenue or profit. It causes frustration and misunderstanding for the C-suite when a CMO isn’t fully knowledgeable or experienced enough to understand the position of the modern CMO to support leading the company. 

Therefore it’s almost better for a C-suite to hold off on doing so many tactics without an overall business marketing plan that effectively communicates the company’s overall business goals and how it translates into the strategies and tactics that are required to make revenue.

At Altairzen, we provide Marketing, Communications, Research and Development, as well as Website, software, and application development in an outsourced CMO style. This was developed similarly to outsource IT and CTO services in a hybrid and dedicated manner working as business partners towards overall business goals within the C-suite. I started Altairzen after nearly 20 years of working on both the corporate marketing department and marketing agency sides to develop a full understanding of the modern CMO. 

Although this outlines a framework and understanding for how companies around the world can evaluate and find a modern CMO, it requires overall understanding of the particular industry that a company is within. The master marketing business plan must be a well guarded C-suite initiative which is unique to each company and their overall products and services. That’s why the CMO is difficult to find since utilizing a marketing plan from one company to another doesn’t work well, and each company requires different business goals. 

The worst thing a company can do? Expect the CEO to understand and manage the entire marketing function while also fulfilling their role as CEO. The C-suite are the leaders in any company so finding a modern CMO to support the CEO and C-suite is a winning strategy. Without that, a company burns through money on endless tactics, and gets frustrated at the results from agencies, which requires an overall business marketing plan.

Now that you know what a modern CMO does and builds value within a C-suite, it makes it better for a company to upgrade, enhance, and maintain business marketing operations. If your business needs support with executive CMO style advice and consulting please consider our team at Altairzen.