Marc Sirkin

My latest article on CMSWire asks CMOs, CEOs, and hiring agencies if industry experience is necessary or overrated. The deeper question I'm getting at here is: are too many great CMO candidates not even getting interviewed because they lack prior industry knowledge? Share your thoughts! Thanks to Sue Keith, Club CMO, Eric Pairitz, James (JD) Dillon, Doug Zarkin and Gaurav Bhatia for being a source! #cmo #marketing #humanresources

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My recent Creative Differences newsletter, comparing human marketers' writing to LLMs got me a ton of responses. Several marketing friends made the entirely fair point that they just don't have much autonomy in the messaging and that it is difficult and unrewarding to push anything other than the most mundane writing through the system. That's fair. I should have been clear that the marketers know their market. Executives too often have a very uninspiring view of what good comms and good writing look like. Here, are two questions ... Is there a word - not a brand or trademark or new coinage, but a plain word - that you can find in your writing that your competitors do not use? Most likely you can't think of any. Carl Buehner famously wrote, "They may forget what you said — but they will never forget how you made them feel." How do you want your readers to feel, reading your work? Intrigued, surprised, optimisitic? Even a simple set of installation instructions can impart a feeling: confidence, for example, that I can now straightforwardly achieve the task ahead. Rather than endlessly noodling on the exact phrasing that will convey the technical, or business, nuance of the product or service, pay some attention - even just a little - to how you want your readers to feel. https://lnkd.in/gz-KhmK2

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Loved a quote I heard yesterday in the Venwise CMO pod I lead: "Brand is the pipeline for the pipeline". 🎯 I'm hearing this theme a lot more in my conversations with marketing leaders lately - companies, especially B2B and B2B2C that have ignored brand investments are starting to see the repercussions pile up. It's been a hot topic with the CMO's in our group as every one of them is seeing traffic to their websites from Google and other mainstay top of funnel traffic engines (Bing, Facebook etc) fall off a cliff. New AI SEO strategies are part of it and have to be put in place asap but the brand building and community work that builds advocates is hard to compute for demand lead companies. The legend Jon Miller (Founder of Marketo, Engagio etc) had a great post about this recently that was shared in the group. It's a worthwhile post for all the B2B leaders who need to build the brand muscle. This quote slaps... "Abandon the lead-gen mindset for your brand campaigns. These are not click-or-download ads. Perhaps the ad shouldn’t even have a clickable button. The goal here is emotional connection – arousing a mix of fear about unresolved problems and trust in your brand as a solution. So drop outdated metrics like cost-per-click or cost-per-lead and focus on account engagement and progression through the buyer’s journey." https://lnkd.in/ej3u_dSt How are you thinking about your brand campaigns?

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As one who interacts with CMOs all the time I can tell you this topic is at or near the top of their collective priority list. And while I am skeptical of those who espouse best practices when it comes to generative AI - only because it is so nascent - I felt compelled to share this particular piece from my fellow CMSWire scribe, Tiffany Holland Why? Glad you asked. I felt compelled for the simple fact I agree with everything Tiffany opined on, which she breaks down into four truths, which are below along with my brief commentary. Do yourself a favor and read her piece. ➡️ Truth #1: Inaction With Generative AI in Marketing Is the Greatest Risk Yes, yes and YES. If I could climb the highest mountain I would and bellow this to the masses below. This ain't the time to "sit this one out" whilst the rest of the world, AKA your competition is taking full advantage. ➡️ Truth #2: Generative AI Offers More Value Than Just Operational Efficiency Tiffany deftly writes of the "narrow view" many CMOs and marketers have of Gen AI, which "offers only short-term benefits and overlooks the true power of machine learning." Dating myself big time here but this reminded me of the late 70's campaign professing that orange juice is not just for breakfast anymore. https://lnkd.in/e95uWbex ➡️ Truth #3: Generative AI Solutions Fails in the Traditional Marketing Model "Generative AI won’t deliver its full potential if organizations try to plug it into outdated operating models." Full Stop! Read and re-read that over and over and over and then, for the love of all things Holy, do NOT blame Gen AI if you do not adhere to this sage advice. ➡️ Truth #4: Ethical Governance of Generative AI in Marketing Is Critical I love that Tiffany saved this one for last because it is THE most important truth, by far. Gen AI and AI in general, is very much akin to the wild west right now; no rules of governance other than those self-imposed. Brands MUST self-govern the way they use Gen AI if for no other reason, it is the ethical thing to do. Please share your thoughts on all of this. I love a good conversation and yes, a debate if need be. Jeanniey John Aakansha Srota Manny Shelly Lou Jeff Raja Ted Lee David Alma Dom Rhonda #ai #GenAI #cmo

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Give me ideas. Not email commercials. I don't want a datasheet. (Watch me hit the UNSUBSCRIBE button.) Michael Vickers has said it for years: "To become Preferred, you must build trust." David Jani of GetApp nets it out in this article: "Consumers are making it clear that they won't hesitate to disengage when bombarded with irrelevant or excessive marketing." So . . . stop doing it. Think outside the product sales push. *Be* the prospect. Deliver usable insight. "Become the emotional favorite in the markets you serve. Create authentic differentiation in a crowded marketplace," says Vickers. Here's the WHY from Destination CRM: https://lnkd.in/gaAuSsGj ##emailmarketing #salesdifferentiation #marketingtrustbuilding

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Thanks to Forbes for featuring me in this latest article on a topic I care about hugely and see CMOs struggle with every day. So many marketers are dealing with data overwhelm these days. We have so many sources, it can be confusing to know which ones truly matter. Here's a little trick when you're dealing with large data sets: do some qualitative research first. This often will point you in the right direction in order to understand how to begin to look at your data sets. It's a common methodology among market research firms. Whenever I see a big complex topic at work that seems very difficult to untangle, I love to do a survey to capture rich feedback in the responses. If you ask enough people, they often collectively paint a solid picture of the answers - it's just a matter of capturing them. The very best ideas often lie right there, in the verbatim responses. And wow, am I glad AI now helps us automate dreary tasks such as verbatim coding and synthesis of the most important themes. That has always been my least favorite part of market research! Reading the quotes is always enlightening, but tagging each one manually is a pain. 👇 See first comment for a pretty cool video of how Zappi supports our customers with AI Concept Creation Agents. 👇 Check out the second comment for a link to the full article.

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“Marketing influence is a garbage metric and shouldn’t be used. It doesn’t tell you anything. Marketing should be influencing 100% of pipeline and bookings!” Yep. I’ve said it multiple times on podcasts and content. It’s eternally etched in the psyche of Internet robots and will come to Chatgpt haunt me in the foreseeable future. Most marketing influence metrics are complete garbage. This is not because marketing’s influence on pipeline and bookings isn’t important, but because most are not measuring it the right way. This is especially true of product tours on your website. I love product tours; we have over 15 on our website today, and multiple ways exist to measure their influence. And honestly, I haven’t measured it correctly in the past. But thank the Internet gods for two things: the genius of the Jellyfish marketing team and the dashboards from HockeyStack. More on the brilliant marketing team later. Product tours' influence on pipeline and bookings can be measured in various ways (mostly wrong), but HockeyStack takes a slightly different (and better) approach (IMHO). They encourage marketing leaders to analyze incremental lift: the lift in conversions (positive or negative) that is attributable to a specific marketing activity and that wouldn’t have occurred without it. And you can do that through lift analysis and conversion rates. Let’s talk about lift analysis first. Lift analysis answers the question: Can you estimate the increased likelihood of someone converting on a specific goal based on the marketing activity they engaged with? Example: how much more likely are product tour users to buy than someone who didn’t use the product tour? And then there’s comparing conversion rates between people who took action and those who didn’t, which is super helpful. I care about that because we love our website product tours. They’re fundamental to our GTM strategy, and our website is foundational to our inbound motion. The HockeyStack dashboard helps you analyze both: Website demo conversion rates (CVR) by people who viewed the product tour vs. those who didn’t Sales cycle duration for those who viewed the product tour vs. those who didn’t Win rates of deals who viewed the product tour vs. those who didn’t Pipeline and revenue generated by those who viewed product tour vs. those who didn’t:  Lift analysis: those who viewed the product tour and the likelihood to convert (Example: 3x more likely to convert into a lead and 7.3x more likely to convert into a closed won oppty than those who didn’t) It’s gold. It helps you make more informed decisions about where to spend time and energy on marketing influence. I’d encourage you to check out the “Live Demo Lift” dashboard on the HockeyStack site. Move from garbage marketing influence metrics to those that drive positive actions. 

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How Much Will It Cost to Work with a Fractional CMO? This is a common question that I get asked. The answer is "it depends" and it's probably not as much as you thought. But you will get what you pay for. Want to learn more? Contact me. https://lnkd.in/gycejtaN #fractionalcmo #fractionalexecutive #fractionalleadership #marketingb2b #saasmarketing #marketingstrategy #marketingsuccess

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I can ABSOLUTELY tell based on external facing marketing content whether or not the team is empowered and inspired to do good work. CEOs & CMOs, THIS is why culture is so important. --> From today's episode of Don't Say Content with Devin - live everywhere you listen to podcasts.

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Does your CEO really want to know how many MQLs and SQLs your marketing produced this month? Probably not. Today's marketing playbook vastly differs from the one that worked so well two years ago, including what gets reported internally. I was recently invited to speak to the Arizona Innovation Marketing Association, and I chose to discuss how my marketing playbook has changed. In my talk, which I titled, "The Rebellion of ROI: Why It's Time to Throw Out Traditional Marketing Playbooks," I shared five game-changing shifts forcing a complete rethink of the playbooks we used two, even five years ago. And the first big shift is to admit your CEO doesn't care about MQL's or SQL's. I call it a shift because they used to care about them. Not that long ago, marketing teams were being told Sales needs more "top of funnel LEADS." So Marketers created a bunch of gated assets and threw a gazillion "Marketing-Qualified Leads" over the wall to Sales. Except they quickly learned that someone downloading an eBook is almost never ready to book a sales demo. And in the end, while Marketing could claim success by generating thousands of leads, CEO's and CFO's were focused on driving revenue, not leads. This led to questions like "so how many leads do we need to produce $X in revenue?" In Q2 of last year, I stopped reporting lead numbers. The traditional "MQL" was simply too disconnected from revenue. At the same time, we also took the radical step of ungating all of our assets, which naturally caused our lead count to plunge. Instead, I shifted to reporting inbound pipeline and outbound pipeline produced through marketing outreach efforts (our SDR sits in Marketing, not Sales). The only leading indicator we report is inbound demo requests. Guess what? I've not been asked for MQL or SQL counts in more than a year. The reality is investors are no longer funding growth without profitability, so aligning our marketing efforts to revenue helped prove that our modest marketing investments are producing pipeline. Reporting on pipeline also enables us to report Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) tied to pipeline and revenue (10X and 29X respectively for last year). How has your marketing reporting changed in the last two years?

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What is SGE, and what does it mean for higher ed marketers? Search Generative Experience employs advanced machine learning techniques to produce organic search results and recommendations that are customized to the unique needs and preferences of each user. SGE "provides 'AI Overviews' in response to certain keyword searches in the form of interactive bubbles above traditional organic search results." Why should we care? Carnegie lays out exactly how higher ed institutions can use this tool to their advantage. #SGE #AI

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Online subscriptions were meant to offer convenience, but many brands now use deceptive tactics to lock customers in. The FTC's "Click to Cancel" rule aims to change that. As I explore in my latest article, this shift will force companies to prioritize customer value over short-term revenue. The future of loyalty depends on how brands respond.

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Too often I see SME marketing teams use brand value metrics reporting to the C-Suite or Board. Don't. Use the metrics that show contribution to profits when engaging with the C-Suite, especially the CEO & CFO. Engage with Finance to develop these so they're already bought in. #marketing #finance

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Dumping your CMO as a scapegoat for lost sales? Think again. In many cases, they're not responsible. As the shortest tenured executive at most companies, CMOs are an easy target. But cutting them may not be the right answer if other leaders are making all the client-side decisions. Perhaps it's time for more companies to consider a Fractional CMO and reevaluate who really owns sales decisions, sales leadership, and client relationships. Often, it's not the CMO's responsibility at all. #CMO #MarketingExecutive #MarketingLeader #CreativeLeader #CreativeExecutive

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Thanks to Joseph Nyahay for having me on your podcast! Loved hearing about your marketing niche as well - great to focus on conversions! Being an "active listener" and asking smart questions was not just what made me a good reporter, it's what is making me a good marketer today as well. Here's to traveling more in 2024 and beyond! #marketing #fCMO #podcasts

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Personally, I believe we're years past the point where marketing should own pipeline. That's just a given. If marketers own pipeline, shouldn't they own all of the segmentation and go-to-market strategy around buying groups? Chief Market Officers = drive where the market is going = influence all incoming parties. What else do you think makes marketers uniquely suited to drive buying groups and opportunity-oriented pipeline? Side note: If you're wondering what I mean for the term buying groups (there are about 42 definitions), here's what I use:

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I’m excited to share my contribution to the latest Forbes Communications Council article, "15 Tips For Allocating Resources Effectively." With a small marketing team, it’s all about prioritizing impact over quantity. While the team I lead at NCR Voyix is not considered small, this core strategy remains the same—focusing on high-impact activities that directly align with our business goals. By zeroing in on the channels where our audience is most engaged, we’ve driven meaningful results without spreading ourselves thin.   For any marketing leader with limited resources (and who doesn’t?), the key is to invest where it truly counts. Focus on initiatives with proven ROI, and ensure every effort aligns with what moves the needle. Check out the full article for more tips on maximizing resources—perfect for teams of all sizes! https://lnkd.in/eAUngsPJ   #MarketingStrategy #ResourceAllocation #ForbesCouncil

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Why is contextual advertising gaining so much attention? 👀 Brian Danzis, President of North America at Seedtag, joins the MarTech Podcast for a two-episode series. In this second episode, he walks us through the renaissance of contextual advertising and explains how recent innovations have made it a powerful, privacy-first solution for advertisers. “[Contextual advertising] works because you're leveraging AI to cut through biases. You're getting more granular on different interests, and you can spot trends in the interconnectedness of key categories,” Brian explains. Listen to the full episode in the link below. #contextualadvertising #privacyfirst #contextualAI

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