Two equally smart chief officer marketers – only one will succeed – which one are you?
The CMO is the primary driver of growth in the company. Well, some marketers work but never manage to create significant results.
It’s not so much about talent; it’s more about what you spend your time on and understanding the successful CMO traits to be successful.
What’s the difference? And are you on the successful path?
To demonstrate the importance of CMO skills, we have determined two people: “Anna, who does everything” and “Dina, who works with Digitalfeet.”
We will also present the case of “In-between Marit.” They are equally old, equally smart, equally creative, of the same sex, and work in identical companies.
We have followed them around on a regular workday to observe their priorities and skills.
Their working day presents these challenges:
08:00 Technical issue in WordPress that prevents the website from loading properly.
09:00 A breakfast seminar is scheduled in three weeks, and she need to create banners and mailings. The marketer awaits the final agenda, which will be ready and sent through email by 09:00.
10:00 The GENERAL MANAGER looks at the marketer’s office and asks about two things:
- She wants to attend a meeting to schedule an event two months ahead at 13:00.
- She can gather relevant figures from the web and the marketing work to be presented at a board meeting the next day.
12:00 The company has won an important award, and a presentation is in the foyer. In addition, there are ongoing campaigns, blogs to be created, websites to be regularly updated, etc.
Anna is doing everything by herself.
08:00 Anna rushes in and takes on the WordPress issue. In the first hour, she tries to fix the problem by googling error codes and watching YouTube videos, and she finally believes she has the solution.
09:00 She responds to the email immediately and says she will get the campaign ready today.
10:00 She was supposed to go to the IT department to resolve the WordPress problem, but it’s now fixed. She replies yes to the meeting at 13:00 and says she will probably send over some numbers during the day.
10:30 She spends her lunch break trying to make some banners in Photoshop. She knows enough about Adobe Cloud to make it appear professional and refers to YouTube videos when confused.
11:30 She eats a quick lunch to be ready to take a picture of the presentation and post it to social channels.
12:00 She snaps a picture and publishes it to the company’s Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn pages, along with a caption expressing their joy at winning the prize.
12.30 The banner is nearly completed. She makes it look good before the 13:00 meeting.
13:00 She attends the meeting and overhears the practical planning of the event. She takes some notes but needs to find out if they’re necessary.
14:00 It’s now time to create the landing page for this event and send out the invitations. “Where did I have those templates left?” Everything is prepared for the following day.
Anna spends the rest of the day setting up a landing page in WordPress and mailing it. She won’t be able to create the advertisement today. She’ll just put that on the plan tomorrow.
16:00 Oh no, she forgot the report with numbers! While logging into Analytics, she calls and asks her better half to pick up their kid at the kindergarten.
She discovered that the number of website visitors last month was 5,000, which was around the same as the same month the previous year.
She logs into Facebook and LinkedIn and finds some numbers around engagement on records and increases in followers. Then, she sends a fetching PowerPoint with the numbers to the general manager.
17:00 Leaves her job after a hectic day.
Dina working with Digitalfeet
08:00 Web issues:
Dina posts a message to the developers in Digitalfeet, marking the task’s urgency. It will be fixed within the first half-hour.
She is checking over the plan for the day. There is an award ceremony, and she has a draft press release ready. It’s going to be exciting. She looks over and plans how she will manage her time today.
09:00 Sees the email that the agenda is ready. She’s been asking for this for a while. The email is forwarded to Digitalfeet, who already knows what to do.
She received an answer confirming that the design draft for the landing page, email banner, and mailing would be available in a few hours. The templates have already been made. All that remains is to fill up the content and post images of the speakers.
Unfortunately, she didn’t get to make any teaser videos for the ad that would promote the breakfast seminar. DigitalFeet, therefore, creates a video show of the images of those who will talk.
She makes the first draft of the ad text (she can only make it now that she sees the full agenda). But she sends it to Digitalfeet as a draft, asking them to take a look and rewrite it a little, if they think it’s necessary, before putting the ad live.
Also, check the “customer journey,” i.e., all the participants’ emails in advance, reviewing the before and after event emails. Everything looks fine.
10:00 Dina asks the general manager some questions around the meeting at 13:00, as she has a busy day. She finds that it is mostly about planning and that she can be involved later.
She logs into the dashboard that Digitalfeet has set up to collect figures from all data sources, including the website, mailings, social media, and advertising, as well as the KPIs set by marketing and how they perform on them.
Gives the general manager the regular monthly report the system sends out and asks what kind of time and numbers she wants. After receiving his response, Dina prepares a report and sends it to his email address.
The report shows traffic, ROI, and how many millions in new sales and cross-selling were generated from marketing activities last month and the previous quarter up to the corresponding period last year.
10:30 Dina notices when she looks at the numbers that there are slightly fewer sales from marketing than expected last month. One thing is what comes directly from marketing activities and customer journeys; she has control over that.
But it also tends to record sales inside the CRM system, which is manually labeled ” coming from marketing.” She has instructed the salespeople always to mark where sales come from in CRM so that she can keep track of it all. She sends an email to the sales manager saying something is wrong.
The sales manager says something has happened because they’ve made updates inside CRM, and the tag that comes from marketing has gone missing.
The marketing manager goes over to the sales manager and asks if fixing it during the day is possible to ensure they are correct and updated figures are presented at board meetings.
The sales manager is initially hesitant, saying they are busy, but agreed that it should be fixed during the day. She then informs the general manager that there will be an updated report.
11:00 She takes lunch. She sat down with those who would receive the award and managed to schedule a short interview after the presentation.
12:00 She takes pictures during the awards ceremony and recorded a short video interview. Dina rough-cuts the video and uploads it in Teams to Digitalfeet.
She posts a photo on her company’s LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram pages with well-composed text about the award and their gratitude, tagging all eight people in the photo and thanking them for their efforts.
She sees how likes, comments, and reactions come almost immediately, especially from those she has tagged.
Dina updates the press release. She sends an email to the general manager and asks him to send it to a contact person in the local newspaper and one in the regional newspaper.
She attaches the text he will have in the email, the press release as a PDF, and the email addresses he will send it. Finally, she asks him to update if anyone calls.
13:45 The general manager tells us that the local newspaper will be here next Wednesday for an interview.
14:00 She holds its regular weekly meeting with Digitalfeet. She regrets that there were some “last-minute tasks” just today. She is trying to instruct the rest of the company.
She reviews draft designs, ad drafts, etc., in the meeting. At the meeting, they look at statistics and how they compare to quarterly targets in relation to figures and tasks. They also plan to end up on the web, creating blogs.
She wants to work even better with data-driven marketing. She, therefore, asks to have her meeting with Lars from Digitalfeet.
And ensure that all marketing sales are registered as that. She needs to work with modern and data-driven marketing.
Another important thing is that we take care of the opportunity the press coverage provides. She uses the meeting to make a small plan for preparing.
The general manager wants to get the most out of the interview and what should be published in various channels now.
She has a video with a nicely done intro by Digitalfeet, optimizing for social media and texts. And then the press comes—a good opportunity to create publicity.
15:10 Dina goes to the sales manager’s office and asks about the tag. They go through this together, so she is sure that all sales coming from the market are registered correctly from now on. She sends an email to the general manager.
15:30 She looks at the meeting summary from her meeting with Digitalfeet. She enters the tasks on her calendar and looks over the schedule for tomorrow.
How about “In-between Marit”?
Marit would forward the web challenges to the web developer company. The event banner will be sent to the designer, and when it’s ready, she will send the landing page assignment to a web agency.
Then she could talk to another agency about advertising. Marit would juggle her capacity and time and try to make it all go up in a sensible unit, but she may need help to keep an overview and document the results.
Here, it depends on how good the agency composition is and how good Marit is at juggling it all.
Who do you think will succeed?
The most crucial thing for success or failure is whether the marketer is in the driver’s seat and controls the marketing. Or running around pretending to be the jack of all trades who can attend to anything and extinguish all fires.
The marketer’s ability to document their results is also essential. In some companies, the sales department is very cooperative, while elsewhere, sales would rather claim full credit for sales.
Dina has an overview of marketing-related sales and keeps sales in her ears while working as a marketer. She can focus on her key marketing roles without being distracted by other important tasks.
Her workday appears to be more productive than others since she can maximize her potential as a marketer with complete control over her time at work.