Diary of a first-time CMO - Random acts of marketing
Hey B2B marketers
Here it is. Four years, $50m+ ARR and 200 pages later… My journey as a first-time CMO.
Covering the key learnings I've gathered in four years of leadership. This diary reveals the lessons that helped me scale Cognism from $3m to $50m ARR, build a team from 3 to 39, and transform our set-up from a classic lead gen function to a demand gen engine.
It’s my handbook for B2B marketers looking to thrive in leadership.
(especially if you’re as daunted as I was when I started out!)
Random acts of marketing
Execution.
I’ve touched on this quite a lot throughout this diary and my LinkedIn posts. But I think it’s fair to say it’s a critical part of what is required to be successful.
Refine Labs introduced me to the term ‘random acts of marketing’ and I think that summarises what I was trying to hit on in this post. More importantly, what I wanted to avoid in 2022.
I think this becomes even more important as your team grows; more people does not always mean more output if you don’t have the right focus and processes in place.
So how do you create an environment where people execute, and importantly execute meaningfully, rather than randomly?
I think the starting point as a leader is being very clear on what marketing metrics matter and where you are placing your bets in terms of driving forward those metrics.
You need to think about this like a campaign. This message needs to be repeated over and over again and you need to have regular cadences for stopping, reviewing and ensuring the focus is where it needs to be.
For us that looks like bi-weekly sprint cycles and running all of our tasks through a project management tool - Asana.
If it’s not on Asana - it didn’t happen.
Sprints enable us to be reactive to shifting priorities based on insights and how we are tracking towards our core metrics. Many marketing campaigns and ideas have met an early demise through this methodology and it’s really helped us to keep scaling output with headcount effectively.
When I interview I always set a practical case study. This is because I value execution so much. I have worked with ‘ideas’ people before, and ultimately their impact is very limited because they are unable to transition from ideation to action.
In every role I have held, my bias to action has always been the thing that gets highlighted above all else as being my critical strength.
This coupled with a mindset of done is better than perfect are core traits that I believe you need if you are going to be effective in B2B marketing. Start practising these traits daily, and the incremental impact will be surprising.
