marketing plan - Artful Thinkers

April 12, 2017May 10, 2017

10 Reasons for Hiring an Outsourced CMO

What is an outsourced CMO?

Let’s start with the easy part, the CMO is a Chief Marketing Officer. The C-suite designation is earned through experience in leadership and management of the marketing function within an organization. Typically CMO’s will have a dozen or more years’ experience in both strategy development and tactical execution.

The CMO’s role is to advise the CEO and other executive team members how best to expand markets, increase awareness, build loyalty, drive engagement and grow revenues. The high-level marketing leader is responsible for creating the “voice” for the organization through the brand experience.

A CMO is the brand ambassador, loyalty activist and customer champion.

Internally, the function of a Chief Marketing Officer is to bring together the talent, processes and technology that helps an organization realize the vision and execute upon the strategy that is aligned to specific organizational goals. It is the CMO’s responsibility to build the marketing plan that outlines roles, responsibilities, budgets, resources, timelines, tactics and measurable outcomes. They lead the marketing organization and orchestrate their day-to-day activities.

Outsourcing for a company or organization is to purchase (goods) or subcontract (services) from an outside supplier or source.

Outsourcing is simply giving the responsibility of the position to someone that does not reside within the business. Why would you outsource an executive-level position?

Top reasons organizations outsource:

Experience and competence
Budget and/or need to reduce costs
Assessment of people, processes and/or technology
Gaps in skills and capabilities
Need for industry and market expertise
Resource constraints within existing teams
Urgency to drive initiatives or deliver critical projects
Strategic development
Team leadership
Tactical management and oversight
Need to streamline operations and workflows
Test job requirements and long-term business needs
Reduce risk
Advise and consult with leadership

Startups, SMBs, high-growth, turnaround and transitioning businesses can lack the time and dollars required to invest in bringing aboard a full-time senior marketing executive. Outsourcing the CMO function allows leaders to leverage high-level talent in smaller increments of time and budget, while still gaining qualified and capable expertise that can help accelerate strategic business plans.

When do you need an outsourced CMO?

You have a strong tactical marketing team; however, you do not have a marketing person sitting at the table where company decisions are made about the vision, mission, strategy, tactics and growth plans for the next 3-5 years.
You lack a marketing strategy or plan.
You desperately need a sustainable marketing engine that can deliver predictable results.
You spend money on marketing, though you see little ROI or do not have the capabilities to track budgets, measure performance or forecast results.
You need better competitive analysis and market research to know if you are talking to the right people and delivering the right products and services.
You need a comprehensive assessment of marketing tactics, team members and capabilities to ensure you are built for long-term success.
You know digital transformation can greatly improve your business, yet you lack the expertise that can represent marketing’s role in that process.
You want to implement advanced tactics or implement marketing technologies to help the organization best utilize their data and assets to improve the customer experience.
You need an expert that can help you improve brand loyalty, reduce churn and supports the business development team to achieve their growth targets.
You are dissatisfied with results of marketing and the impact on revenue and know that you are missing out on existing market opportunities.

Today’s marketing function is complex. Business are operating at Internet speed, content is coming in from right and left, technology is taking over the world and digital transformation is accelerating the way we operate in our global economy.

Compounding it all are needs to manage vast amounts of data, utilize advanced analytics, define complicated customer journeys, understand the infiltration of artificial intelligence, manage talent, assess numerous marketing technologies, facilitate demands for personalization and improve customer experiences and create endless amounts of content to stay relevant. And that’s just the beginning. It’s overwhelming for most organizations, along with managing everything else that impacts growth.

It can’t be overstated, marketing is getting more and more complex. Companies need experienced executive marketing leadership to help manage growth, breakdown internal silos, and improve efficiency and economics.

Senior marketing expertise and leadership is essential at a macro-level to bring together the micro-level experts needed to deliver results in this entangled environment.

Having a competent leader that can help an organization stay abreast of trends, recognize opportunities, align resources, implement strategies and resist temptations to waste money is critical for any organizations’ success – whether working within the leadership team or as an outsourced contributor.

An outsourced CMO can provide the experience required to create, define, build, manage and execute the multitude of tactics needed to achieve your business goals.

If you don’t have the resource internally, outsourcing the Chief Marketing Officer function provides flexibility for a business to utilize an experienced resource for the required time, scale and budget that the business can afford today.

If you have questions about the benefits of an outsourced CMO or are looking to assess your current marketing function, contact me at [email protected].

Jamie Glass, CMO + President, Artful Thinkers, a sales and marketing consulting company.

February 12, 2013

2013 Marketing Forecast Report Summary by Software Advice

Guest Post by Software Advice, Ashley Verrill

Traditional forms of marketing, such as direct mail, print and television advertising, continue to fall out of favor with business-to-business marketers, according to our recently-released Software Advice report.

We received responses from 155 primarily executive-level marketers in a poll we called the B2B Demand Generation Benchmark Survey. They were asked about spending plans for the New Year; as well as which channels, content and offers they find most powerful for producing quality and quantity of leads.

The sample included primarily smaller businesses, with marketing budgets of $250,000 or less, although there was some representation in the tiers up to $100 million in marketing spend. The sample was also primarily from technology companies with less than 100 people.

One of the first things we discovered were the most popularly-used channels. Email marketing to a house list came in as the most-used channel, followed by search engine optimization, social media (not ads) and trade shows.

These results reflect an increased focus on what’s popularly called “inbound marketing,” or driving traffic to your site from customers already searching for your product. Many times these channels are also lower cost. You’ll notice a correlation between the cost per lead of each channel and their popularity in the chart below. Trade shows was one exception to this trend.

One thing marketers need to be careful about, however, is the quality of leads from these channels. Even if the cost is low, it’s important that your return on investment translates over into the kinds of leads your getting from each channel. Lead scoring is one good way to measure this quality. This usually includes gauging factors such as the decision-making power of the contact, their purchase timeline, budget, industry, or what kinds of content they’ve interacted with or downloaded.

“If you just look at a program on the surface from a solely cost perspective you might never realize it’s just not bringing back the right people. You could end up with a whole database full of contacts of people that will probably never buy from you,” said Elle Woulfe, marketing programs director for Eloqua.

In this regard, the sample agreed that in-house email marketing and SEO provide the most high-quality leads because they are prospects that have proactively sought out your company or product. They’ve clicked on a link, and want to consume something that you are offering. While social media is popular, it has yet to produce such quality leads, at least as consistently as other channels.

Also interesting, 3rd-party lead originators and search engine advertising received the largest percentage of votes for being high quantity channels, yet they didn’t score high on the popularity scale. This is likely due to cost, but again these are often really high quality leads. Marketers should look at the total cost-to-spend ratio.

Despite marketers admitting social media doesn’t produce quality or quantities of leads on a consistent basis, the channel received among the highest percentage of votes for elevated spending in 2013. This more likely to do with the buzz than anything else.

Even if you are a director of marketing and see how all of these programs perform, likely a CMO ahead of you is saying, “You need invest in these programs because that’s what everyone is doing.”

For questions about content, marketers didn’t mirror the trend as far as prioritizing high quality or quantity of leads. Videos, for example, was listed as the second most popular, yet didn’t score well on our scale for quality or quantity.

This is likely due large part to the marketers need to produce content in a way that customers want to consume it. Videos are popular because people don’t have as much time to read.

Content success has a lot to do with where you are targeting customers in the sales funnel. A video testimonial from a customer, for example, could convert really well for high-scoring leads that are near the end of the sales funnel.

Alternatively, a lot of content is used pre-funnel and not meant to be highly-converting. It’s more about getting the customer educated and developing preference over time. For this reason, a one-size fits all approach to content can backfire. You need to measure success against varying goals.

Guest Post by Ashley Verrill
Ashley Verrill is a market analyst with Software Advice. She has spent the last six years reporting and writing business news and strategy features. Her work has appeared in myriad publications including Inc., Upstart Business Journal, the Austin Business Journal and the North Bay Business Journal. Before joining Software Advice in 2012, she worked in sales management and advertising. She is a University of Texas graduate with a bachelor’s degree in journalism.

October 14, 2012October 15, 2012

Return on Marketing Requires an Investment

One of the most important decisions a business owner or CEO will make is establishing a budget for marketing. Like talent, product and infrastructure, marketing must be viewed as a necessity in business. Marketing expenditures are essential investments for growth.

An average SMB (small-to-medium size business) will typically set a marketing budget at 4% to 6% of sales revenues. There are several factors that can impact this budget. As an example, a well-funded startup may invest 20% of revenues for aggressive consumer acquisition programs and advertising. Notice, the “well-funded” qualifier. Likewise, there is always difficulty in setting a budget for a pre-revenue company. Entrepreneurs will often spend most of their investments in product and then struggle to bring in sales. Startup costs must include marketing. For every dollar invested in product, people and infrastructure, an equal dollar should be set aside for investment in sales and marketing.

Here are three simplified phases for marketing investment planning:

1. Brand Awareness: Your marketing investment should start with focus in reach and awareness including brand identity, a website, company advertising and direct and social marketing.

2. Engagement: The second phase invests in additional marketing programs that support your sales efforts including lead generation, publicity, web marketing (SEO and SEM), market validation, events, advertising, presentations and customer case studies.

3. Nurture: Finally, maximize your marketing investments with customer communications, CRM services, loyalty initiatives and nurturing programs to maintain the valuable potential and existing customer relationships. Once you have them engaged, use your marketing spend wisely to develop and grow your relationship.

After your marketing budget is defined, you will want to establish how you will measure the success of your investment. ROMI is the acronym for Return on Marketing Investment. The calculation is total revenue divided by marketing spend. ROMI = Revenue ($) / Marketing Spend ($).

Some marketing activities such as branding, advertising, PR and social media are harder to track impact and influence. As a rule of thumb, the simple ROMI equation gives you a thumbnail sketch of your return on your marketing investment. ROMI is a good KPI (key performance indicator) for leaders to use in the business dashboard.

If you are a startup or pre-revenue, the marketing spend will be set as your budget for purposes of forecasting. Some may argue that there should be other factors added or subtracted, such as attributable revenues; however, most businesses have a difficult time tracking every dollar spent on activities such as advertising. Start with the broadest “buckets” and as you increase your marketing reporting and tracking sophistication, you can scrutinize spending with finer analysis.

Marketing is an investment. Success in ROMI requires budgeting, reporting and analysis in order to fully actualize the benefits.

In lean times, business owners have a tendency to cut marketing spend. Lost time and lack of investment, even during challenging periods, impacts long-term growth. The result may not be felt right away. It is an illusion. Prolonged periods of reduced marketing spend can dramatically reduce sales opportunities. The fewer dollars you put into a marketing budget the greater the exponential impact on future revenues.

Similar to an investment savings account, the more you put into your “growth” marketing account, the higher potential return on your investment. The more dollars spent on high risk marketing activities, the greater risk to returns. Any sound investment advisor, marketing or financial, will counsel a business owner and CEO to invest based on the organization’s risk tolerance. Marketing investments should be treated like any financial investment. Know your risk tolerance, invest accordingly. If the business has low tolerance for risk, eliminate marketing spend in expensive tactics that are difficult to measure. Always diversify your investment to mitigate risk.

In order to qualify for a return, it requires an investment. Failing to set aside funds to market is failing to invest in business sustainability. Expectations of sales without an adequate marketing budget is a business built on luck. Though we would all like to be lucky, if you plan to sell something, invest in marketing to create the sale.

“I have a problem with too much money. I can’t reinvest it fast enough, and because I reinvest it, more money comes in. Yes, the rich do get richer.” -Robert Kiyosaki

By Jamie Glass, CMO & President of Artful Thinkers and Managing Director of Sales & Marketing Practice at CKS Advisors.

June 25, 2012

Market to Your Strengths

Recently at an entrepreneur camp for high school students, I worked with several teams in preparing a 3 minute pitch to sell their inventions and innovations to a panel of professionals. My focus was to help these young entrepreneurs identify their business and product strengths so they could convincingly sell us on their idea in a very short amount of time — much like the real world.

I shared my experience in managing sales teams and evaluating investor presentations about what works and what does not work in pitching. I let them know that even the most seasoned professionals can mistakenly focus on the “hot” features without direct alignment to what makes you stand out against your competition.

My lesson, you must compete for mind share before you get market share. Whether selling your idea, your services, your business or just you, always use your valuable marketing resources to promote what makes you better than the rest — your strengths!

Have you identified your market strengths? Recently? And once you found your strengths, have you effectively managed and built them up in your marketing?

The easiest tool to define your strengths is the simple risk assessment that every marketing plan must include — SWOT Analysis. No matter the size of your business, you must know your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.

If you have already completed a SWOT analysis on your company, product or service, dust it off and review it today. Is it still accurate? Hopefully you have evolved! Your strengths are not set in stone. They are dynamic based on competition, economics, innovation, market growth or decline and shifting attitudes toward your business and products from consumers and employees.

If you have not completed a SWOT Analysis, take out a piece of paper now. Draw four boxes and label them: strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. In each box, list out what you currently say, believe or understand as your strengths and your weaknesses, the opportunities you see where you can grow and threats in your business to achieving your goals.

This initial SWOT Analysis is meant to be quick; however, a thorough strategic marketing plan will take more time and resources for a complete evaluation. You will ultimately want an assessment that has multiple inputs including employees, executives, vendors, partners and current, potential and lost customers.

A SWOT analysis is useful to make sure you are current with messaging on how you are perceived and understood in the market place. It is a business planning tool that should be evaluated quarterly to make sure market opportunities are seized and threats are assessed and mitigated.

The next step is to audit your current marketing programs and communications to see how effective you are in defining your strengths. Are you placing all your strengths on the first page, first paragraph, above the fold and in your elevator pitch? Review your marketing tactics to see how well you represent your strengths. Start your assessment with:

1. Branding – Do you clearly communicate and represent your strengths in the essence of your brand and your identity?

2. Communications – Do you detail your strengths in all your marketing communications, including sales presentations, collateral and on your web site?

3. Sales – Can your sales representatives and customer-facing employees recite your top five strengths? Where are they detailed in your standard sales presentation?

4. Public and Analyst Relations – Does your boiler “About Us” include your marketing strengths? Are you able to weave your strengths into every new release?

5. Social Media – How often do you remind your fans and followers about your strengths? Are they listed in your social profiles? How many weekly posts include mention of your strengths?

In order to create demand and achieve anticipated growth, you need to market to your strengths. Make sure you are consistent, clear and current in your messaging and get the word out why you are better than all the rest.