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Panelist
- Todd Wilms, Fractional
- Lauren Vaccarello, Talend
- Matt McAllister, Mobile Tech RX
- Carilu Dietrich, Classy
Key take aways of being a CMO
- Counter-intuitively – the higher you are in the hierarchy the more silo-ed you become
- Alignment is the most important thing
- your primary team is the executive team
- Always figure out what the CEO is reading
- Start thinking about needs of board, investors and C-Suit
- strategic mindset:
- start thinking in terms of framework
- step away from the minute details
- it is the job of the VP of marketing to fill in the details within the framework
- look across various functions for solutions
- move beyond your own functional area when required
- as opposed to marketing which is
- minding the day to day activities
- moving the levers to drive conversion rates
- Growth mindset
- be ready to go where the business needs you
- Be hypothesis driven
- market focus
- actively monitor the markets
- define a new category
- size of market
- competitors
- disruptors
- read earnings report of company and competitors
- read more Wall Street Journal
- Understand the P&L so as to understand how money is flowing through the company
- Important allies
- Someone on the sales team
- Someone on the finance team
- they know where money comes from and where money is spent
- Brand values
- clarify the narrative for your team to do their job
- quite similar to core values
- the personality that will dictate how interaction occurs at all touch points
- Creating the customer communications play book
- Analytics
- on users
- secondary data from researchers
- to gain influence to own the P&L
- Perpetual learner
- The new paradigm
- AI disruption: Department of defense using AI to parse through PHD thesis to figure out new technology to defend against
- start utilizing the services of coaches for private help as the stakes are high
- Marketing
- demand generation
- digital marketing
- On hiring
- ask about topics not related to their area of interest
- see if they crumble under pressue
- how did they turn a crisis into an opportunity.
Related readings
- The hard thing about hard things, Ben Horrowitz
- Beyond Product, Todd Wilms