Ryan Holck’s Post

How Is Marketing perceived in your organization? Is it viewed as a vital, strategic function led by senior leadership? Or is it treated as a support role, managed by inexperienced junior staff? Unfortunately, many organizations fall into the latter category—underestimating the power of marketing and failing to build a team capable of creating a strong, lasting brand. No wonder why CMO tenure tends to be short!   In a push / pull marketing environment with strong tension between brand building and performance marketing efforts, how do you staff your marketing organization? While much commentary is focused on big issues of the day like AI and how to best deploy marketing tools, little time is spent on discussing the importance of how a marketing team should be structured for long-term success.   Key questions to consider are: ·        What’s the balance required between strategic and executional skills ·        Does the organization speak the same language in defining marketing, sales and business objectives ·        Should you hire by marketing objective or marketing discipline   These are important considerations in helping to determine the type of talent you should bring on board, the ability to effectively track marketing success or develop long-term successful relationships with agencies. It’s time for organizations to invest the resources – time and funding – to develop a successful marketing organization that can help drive both growth and innovation.   In our latest blog post, How to Build the Right Marketing Team to Win, we explore why marketing must be treated as a strategic imperative. https://lnkd.in/grEfAeuX

The Successful CMO: A critical goal in your first 100 days as the new CMO is to establish (or reestablish) your brand’s authority. A major role of marketing is building trust. You must show prospective customers that your brand understands their challenges and has the solutions they need. Unfortunately, many companies approach this in a “hammer and nail” fashion, pushing their products without truly understanding the customer’s needs. Make it your job to flip that script. Start by identifying areas where your company has unique expertise and where this expertise aligns with your customers’ pain points. Leverage subject matter experts within your organization to create content that resonates with your audience. This is where true thought leadership comes into play — providing value through expert insights rather than self-promotion. Keep an eye on industry trends and competitors, but don’t simply mimic what others are doing. Instead, ask yourself: What conversations are missing? Where can your company offer a fresh perspective? Thought leadership content that addresses these gaps can position your brand as an industry leader, building trust and authority with potential customers. Learn three additional strategies to help you drive impact and exceed expectations in your first 100 days by reading Bold Marketing & Communications co-founder Bob Finlayson’s article in CMSwire. For additional insights or help creating and managing successful marketing programs and campaigns, contact Bob or Bold co-founder Paul Brunato for a free consultation. #CMO #MarketingStrategy #ContentMarketing

LinkedIn LinkedIn News Marketing Week Russell Parsons Mark Ritson Colette Connors CIM | The Chartered Institute of Marketing Adam Tarsh I've been baffled by this for 25 years. I honestly thought marketing had a very clear role, defined around the 4P's (Product, Price, Promotion & Place) and evolved into the 21st century with Digital Marketing / Brand Engagement. For a long time we see job adverts for Growth Marketers / Performance Marketers. To make matters more complex, job adverts go through 2 or even 3 entire recruitment cycles (as in readvertised roles). Even the role of CMO is questioned by businesses. Why is there such a lack of confidence in marketing? Is marketing misunderstood? Excuse my possible ignorance, but I can't think of any other career, whose role has been so questioned. Passionately, I believe Marketing is the beating heart of a company - as the custodian of the Product / Brand & Consumer Engagement. CIM | The Chartered Institute of Marketing Mark Ritson - would you agree? Let's have a lively debate, and actions for the future.

7 questions marketing leaders should be able to answer instantly: 1. Who is your target customer? A good answer includes three things: ICP, persona and trigger event. 2. How would your customer describe the problem you solve for them? It's important that you can answer this q from the customer's pov, and not pitch deck jargon. 3. Why do customers choose you over the alternatives? Articulate precisely why you win competitive deals or overcome the inertia of status quo. 4. What are the unit economics of your marketing spend? Be fluent in CAC, payback, cost per closed won, in addition to knowing channel and campaign metrics. 5. How are you improving the efficiency of direct response? Sometimes the answer is brand marketing, but sometimes DR still has a ton of low hanging fruit, the key is to have a clear thesis on what you're doing. 6. What is your brand's unfair advantage? The answer should be from the customers' pov - not your org chart - so this answer often involves product and GTM. 7. What's your narrative (and why will it resonate)? Plenty of marketers are excellent channel tacticians, - but too few are storytellers. This is a mashup of questions I've gotten from mentors, or questions posed to me - that caught me off guard and I looked like an idiot 🙃 As a marketing leader, you should know these answers cold, because part of your job is to educate the company to make sure everyone can answer them cold too.

Is your marketing team busy, but not strategic? Here’s why that’s a problem: Your team is hustling, maybe even burning out: busy making videos, posting on social, sending emails, running ads... But if there's no overarching strategy, no clear connection to business goals, no leadership, it's like playing chess without a plan: 'lots of moves, no checkmate' (cheesy chess pun excuse - I watched Queen of Katwe the other day...) Here’s what strategic marketing should include: ⭐ Data-influenced decision-making: clear success metrics; ensure you are tracking what's useful and actionable, not just what's available and easy. Assume nothing - use data to challenge the status quo and don't be afraid to make changes to things that once worked to keep optimising. ⭐Aligned messaging: Are your sales and marketing teams talking the same language? Does your pitch align with your brand story? Are your marketing tacticians working as a team vs a group of individuals with specific skills? ⭐ Ruthless prioritisation: Do less, do it better. Dig deep to get clear on what's working, or not, and prioritise for impact. Many teams I work with have a group of brilliant individual marketers, all busily doing wonderful things that the rest of the business has no idea about. But when they align behind a strategy, understand the role they play individually and as a team, and get clear just a few key critical metrics, suddenly they see the path and how to relate their work to the rest of the business. Ready to move from tactics to strategy? Let’s discuss how a Fractional CMO can bring clarity and focus to your marketing efforts. 👉 Click the calendar link in my bio to book a discovery call.

We're certainly biased but I think the best growth is through the lens of marketing. The companies that are leaning on marketing for growth are 2X more likely to have greater than 5 percent annual growth. Still, it' a challenge. Only 10% of Fortune 250 CEOs have marketing experience. The CEO / CMO relationship needs to deal with these issues: 1. The ability to define the role of marketing within a CEO's strategy. 2. Understanding the levers of modern marketing capabilities. 3. Measure impact: Linking marketing activities to business outcomes. Our favourite passage: "I view the CMO as the chief customer advocate, because that person’s role is to go across the company to advocate, to make it easier for the customer to do business with the company." This is a great read (or listen).

According to a survey by McKinsey & Company, CEOs who place marketing at the core of their growth strategy are twice as likely to have greater than 5% annual growth compared with their peers. These findings are unlikely to surprise marketers, yet many organizations don’t view their marketing team as a strategic partner to the business. From a 30,000-foot perspective, the marketing team must be thought of as a strategic partner to the organization, and it must be integrated into all lines of the business. Here are few of the insights I found interesting in the article. 𝐀𝐬𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐞 𝐀 𝐒𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐠𝐢𝐜 𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐧𝐞𝐫 𝐀𝐧𝐝 𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐌𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐬𝐞𝐭 𝐅𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐃𝐚𝐲 𝐎𝐧𝐞. Marketing should no more be a step child, rather be the most favorite one! Marketers are the closest to your customer. 𝐏𝐮𝐫𝐬𝐮𝐞 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐑𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐌𝐢𝐱 𝐎𝐟 𝐓𝐚𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐭 Identifying the right talent requires people who can easily swing between different skill sets. Time to get the T shaped skillset team. 𝐄𝐧𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐚𝐠𝐞 𝐀 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐜 𝐌𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐬𝐞𝐭 It’s essential to approach marketing from the customer experience—not just for the benefit of the organization but, more importantly, for building a great customer experience.  Do give it a read!

I'm certainly biased but I think the best growth is through the lens of marketing. The companies that are leaning on marketing for growth are 2X more likely to have greater than 5 percent annual growth. Still, it' a challenge. Only 10% of Fortune 250 CEOs have marketing experience. The CEO / CMO relationship needs to deal with these issues: 1. The ability to define the role of marketing within a CEO's strategy. 2. Understanding the levers of modern marketing capabilities. 3. Measure impact: Linking marketing activities to business outcomes. This is my favourite passage: "I view the CMO as the chief customer advocate, because that person’s role is to go across the company to advocate, to make it easier for the customer to do business with the company." This is a great read (or listen).

Years ago, I worked with a marketing leader who loved product features. In particular, he loved cramming them into ads. Turning emotive advertising materials into descriptions of everything the buyer would 'get.' The thing is, most of the readers did not give a sh!t about any of that. Most of our audience weren't ready to buy, so what they 'got' didn't matter. But worse than that, our ads full of details didn't make our audience feel anything. And because they didn't make people feel anything, they were forgettable.  Which is another way of saying... our advertising sucked. If I had known what I know now, I would have quit. To make a lasting impression on your audience, you have to make them feel something. But you'll never do that by adding more and more information. If you're in B2B, one of the most effective ways to do this is by leveraging the personal brands of your leaders. And the research confirms it's effectiveness. Edelman data shows that 73% of decision makers were more likely to believe (and remember) thought leadership content, than the same business' marketing materials. If you've been waiting for a sign to rethink your B2B strategy. This is it. _ Hi, I'm James. I work with business leaders to help them leverage their personal brands to change their business fortunes. If you'd like to learn how we do it, get in touch. Merlin, Caleb Stevenson

As a Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), staying in the know means learning how to adapt and evolve with the right trends. A recent Forbes article highlighted 20 of the best strategies to help CMOs navigate the ever-changing marketing landscape. Here are some of our favorites: 🔗 Stay Connected: Subscribe to publications, blogs, and newsletters to learn from other marketing leaders and spark new ideas. (Okay, shameless plug: sign up for our monthly newsletter: https://lnkd.in/eUCJFe7B) 💡 Foster Internal Innovation: Your team offers a goldmine of fresh perspectives. Sharing your strategic plan with the whole marketing crew—from content creators to developers—and encouraging collaboration can reveal unique insights. 👂 Don’t Forget to Listen: Learning and observing from the work around you, both within the industry and beyond, can unlock fresh insights. Real-world examples demonstrate the trends and tech tools at play. https://lnkd.in/eRp9tpw6 To all the marketing leaders out there, how do you stay ahead in the evolving marketing landscape? Share your thoughts in the comments below, #marketingtrends #marketing #b2bmarketing