5 Ways An Interim CMO + Team Accelerate Growth
An interim CMO should create momentum and scale
There comes a time in every growing business when an injection of new marketing leadership and thinking is necessary. Maybe you’ve received an investment boost, defined new aggressive growth metrics, or proven that your product or service is viable and ready to enter its next phase of growth, expand into new markets, or get serious about competing for industry leadership. Perhaps you’ve lost your marketing leader and the existing team needs direction and the creative spark that comes from inspired leadership. Perhaps you have a new CMO, who is struggling to activate a high performing team in today’s highly competitive job market. Any one or all of these scenarios indicate it may be time for you to think about bringing in some short-term talent to help your business accelerate.
CEOs often find themselves in the difficult position of needing to move the needle on results, while waiting for their marketing organization to take off. An interim CMO might be just what you need to shift marketing into high gear. But they are often difficult to secure, and the good ones are in high demand. What’s more, many Interim CMOs don’t have the team they need to make things happen and may spend their time planning, designing organizations, and making incremental changes vs. radical moves to activate a high-performing team dynamic.
A courageous, people-oriented leader, committed to lasting change, combined with a team of seasoned execution talent to shore up program design and execution can be a powerful force of acceleration. With the remit to work with business leadership to design the future of the organization, recruit key players, and meet near-term growth targets, there’s no need to wait until the permanent team is in place to see impact.
The benefits of this model have been proven in emerging and transforming businesses across high-stakes industries like technology and healthcare. If this is an investment you’re considering, set the bar high and make sure your acceleration team prioritizes these five key areas to drive rapid, and scalable results.
Define an achievable set of objectives and metrics to frame short and long-term solutions.
One of the things I often hear when I’m leading an interim team is “Wow, you get a lot done quickly.” The impression that many people have of consultant leaders is that they move slowly, or hang around poking at things here and there with little impact on the long term. Within the first 10 days, we dig in deep working across the organization to define the marketing OKRs against corporate objectives and current business capabilities and realities. We analyze performance against those objectives and determine what’s working and what’s not. We’ll validate revenue projections and establish a baseline proforma to future-proof bookings. We’ll then define a set of actions, including programs, channels, and campaigns and set daily, weekly and monthly pacing goals that reveal the truth about how well and how fast activities convert.
We’re not shy about telling the truth. If there are toxic dynamics, we ferret them out quickly and have the difficult conversations needed to resolve conflict that impedes progress. If there are underperformers that need mentoring, we get in there and help them rise to their potential. If there are overlooked areas of high potential, we uncover them and push them to the forefront.Activate a people-first environment where current and future team members can flourish.
People-first companies don’t grow, the people inside them do. One of the biggest challenges that we encounter in fast-growing, highly leveraged companies, is that the traditional masculine models of brand and leadership have established themselves and the team is operating out of fear vs. passion. That’s a big problem that needs to be fixed for everything else to work. If your marketing team isn’t living your brand values and exuding enthusiasm for your mission, good luck getting the outside world to believe. Inspiration is a powerful antidote to burnout so one of the most important things we lean into is finding ways to help existing team members become inspired, motivated, and collaborative as quickly as possible. This includes really examining the team members and dynamics. Not only within the marketing and sales organizations, but across the business.
Are beliefs and behaviors aligned to healthy company values? Is there a growth mindset at play? Where are the toxic patterns that need to be cleared in order to free up emotional space for the team to take risks? How is the organization structured? Are there clear lines of responsibility and interdependence? Do people know how to get things done together? This is often the most overlooked aspect of any short-term assignment because it’s the most difficult. It involves going deep with people and being willing to make difficult observations and maybe even tough conversations. But in the end, it’s the area that can often have the most powerful impact on momentum.Create a customer-driven vision for the organization and brand that sets the stage for long-term market leadership and customer love.
One of the most important missing elements we find in every business is the lack of customer insights required to drive an effective, customer-oriented strategy. While many consulting companies offering interim CMO services will suggest a long start-up process involving deep research-intensive to define personas and journeys, we take a faster, more iterative approach.
Often, we find that the insights exist in your business data, your sales team, and third party research. We’ll work across the organization to quickly create a set of personas and journeys to help make sense of the needs of customers and use in-market testing to evaluate activities that drive results. We’ll refine the journeys and personas along the way, and when the business is ready, do the quantitative research needed to drive deeper innovation and longer-term value. This exercise also helps us look at the product / marketing connection. Is this a product-led growth opportunity? If so, how well are the product and marketing teams working together to drive priorities and measure impact?Implement quick wins to accelerate performance and define a long-term plan.
Once we better understand the customer needs and organizational priorities, we apply our Ready For Anything model to define a set of plays that will have the most impact and sunset any activities that aren’t moving the needle. For instance, a recent client was marketing an end-user driven product to enterprise decision makers before the market was really mature enough for enterprise deals at scale. There was a conflict between enterprise lead generation, and driving self-service business users which created organizational discord, and weakened the impact of end user demand generation.
We suggested lowering the MQL goals and shifting activity to drive more end users at a higher volume while engaging enterprise decision makers in more “business reasons” thought-leadership activities. What we found was that while we drove fewer enterprise leads for sales to follow up on, the leads we did drive were from accounts that were growing quickly across all departments and believed in the vision set forth through thought leadership. This actually generated higher numbers of users per account thereby meeting overall ARR goals and keeping sales happy. We’ll build optional models to demonstrate what can be done with incremental resources, and budget and what might happen to current projections if we change course.
Sometimes those quick wins happen overnight, like when one of our client’s key competitors dropped the ball. We were there with a set of offers and responsive messages ready for the Social Media and Affiliate teams to do their magic. The result was a massive 75% spike in revenue over a 14 day period, with engagement and revenue levels settling down to + 20% of previous run rates and ongoing 45% year over year growth.Create short-term capacity with experienced professionals while filling in the gaps for the long term.
Often, leaders think they need to make a choice between driving change and getting work done. We’ve proven you can do both. Our business model is designed to curate high performing marketing teams, quickly combining existing in-house resources, and filling in the gap with seasoned professionals who live our values. Our bench of leader/ doers come from across all disciplines including product marketing, brand strategy, creative development, media, analytics, and digital ecosystem design. They’re motivated to drive rapid results, and coach in-house team members at the same time. We’ll work with your recruiting team to find the right permanent talent including the new CMO, onboard the team, and remain in coaching roles, as needed, once the entire team is in place. Meanwhile, we’re launching campaigns, measuring results, and delivering board reports monthly to demonstrate our progress.
The reasons for bringing in an interim CMO are many, but choose wisely. Results may vary.
Don’t take our word for it. Here’s what Jeff Shiner, the CEO of 1Password had to say:
“The InfiniteEdge Consulting team made a big impact on our marketing operation in a very short period of time. Interim CMO, Mary and her team of experts, got to know our business fast, addressed some challenging team dynamics and helped us move quickly to meet aggressive goals. The new B2b campaign they helped the team create, delighted our founders and customers, and helped us quickly create the conditions to capture new opportunities in a rapidly emerging space. Working within our teams as thought leaders and mentors, they inspired our people to switch into big-picture mode, creating efficient processes that allowed us to introduce new programs and product releases in record time, boost our SOV, and strengthen our category leadership position.”
Jeff Shiner, CEO 1Password
Ask us for a quick assessment. It’s like free therapy.
If you’re refining your approach to marketing and need help deciding where to focus first, we’d love to chat. Within about 45 minutes, we can get to the heart of your biggest challenges and help you determine where you need to prioritize to up-level your game. Schedule some time to tell us about your “Ready for Anything” challenges.
About Us
InfiniteEdge is a consultancy of marketing and culture experts that helps companies build trust and navigate today’s rapidly evolving market environment, while providing all the marketing services you'd expect from a top-tier integrated agency. Invite us in to help you transition your marketing operation from reactive to responsive and develop a roadmap to help you thrive through the coming unknown.
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