Hiring a CMO is a crucial decision for the growth and success of your company. A right fit CMO can make a world-class team of marketers that can work as a catalyst of growth. The best CMO can change the entire face of your company right from handling marketing campaigns, making cost-effective growth strategies, bringing in more leads to creating a perfect brand image in the market.
But what is the right time to hire a CMO? How will you get to know when do you need an incredible CMO in your team?
You might need a CMO when you are facing the below mentioned challenges –
1. You don’t have enough time to focus on Marketing
Usually, in the initial phase of startups, a CEO performs all the significant roles in the company, right from operations to marketing. But as the company grows, the team and work become complex. Eventually, you cannot dedicate your adequate time to the marketing team and activites. As a result, the growth of the company hampers.
That’s when you need expert support to completely dedicate the time to marketing strategies for the company’s growth.
2. You need to scale
There is no better way to rapid growth or scale than hiring an expert with high experience in a particular field. A CMO is a critical asset of your company. If you have recently got funded or looking to scale up the business, you might need someone who has done it before.
That’s the time you need to bring in an intelligent and experienced marketer as your CMO for rapid and sustainable growth.
3. You have to strengthen a particular department
Even if you don’t see expected results and growth after running multiple marketing campaigns across various channels, you need an experienced stalwart to look into the matter.
You might need someone to craft your brand story or to handle your marketing team or someone excellent with data. You can hire the right CMO to turn your weak department into your strength with their expertise.
The Perfect CMO for 21st Century
The CMO of the 21st century is quite different from the traditional ones. A few years back, those who were not good with technology chose the marketing stream, which was considered a non-technical work. But as technology advanced, things have changed. Today’s marketers can’t survive without familiarity with Martech tools and data.
Here are the few qualities of a 21st century CMO –
- A data scientist who is good at identifying patterns in numbers and data.
- A Storyteller who can craft stellar brand stories.
- A Copywriter who is good at picking up the right words to weave your brand story.
- A Marketer who understands customer’s pain points and eureka moments pretty well.
- A tech enthusiast who has a good hand in a variety of marketing tools essential for the success of campaigns.
According to Google, “The 21st century CMO is expected to be a marketing miracle worker, an alchemist who combines the classic art of branding with the latest advances in data and measurement.”
Now you know the characteristics of an ideal CMO, but how will you hire the perfect one for your organization?
Hiring a CMO isn’t an easy task. Unfortunately, most first-time entrepreneurs make the mistake of hiring the wrong CMO, which eventually brings trouble for the organization.
So here are the things you need to keep in mind while hiring the perfect CMO for your organization –
1. Understand their Thought Process
Your CMO is responsible for revamping your brand and accelerate your growth. To do that, it’s essential to understand their thought process. It’s crucial to understand their deep-rooted thoughts and whether it syncs with your ideology or not.
To do so, ask them to explain your brand in their own words. How do they see your brand, and what’s their vision for your brand? By asking these questions, you get a chance to dig deep into their thought process.
2. Strategic Mindset
There is a massive difference between Goals and strategies, and your CMO understands this. It’s great to set ambitious goals, but the important thing is to develop strategies to hit those goals. Your CMO should be able to see the big picture and make strategies accordingly.
To understand their strategic approach, you can ask about the marketing strategies they admire and find out the rational reasons. You can also ask about the process they have set up previously in their career that brought some remarkable results.
3. Adaptability
It is one of the essential characteristics of a marketer. A CMO must have it. Adapting to the changing ecosystem and oscillating customer interests are crucial for your CMO. Only the organizations with adaptable CMOs have survived this pandemic. A good CMO embraces change and challenges.
Ask them about the situations when they had to completely change their product strategy, channel, or target audience overnight in their previous experience. Also, ask them about the most unpredictable decisions they had to take. These questions will help you to figure out their characteristic adaptability.
4. The intersection of Data and Instinct
Marketing is the right balance between data-driven strategy and marketing instinct. Your CMO must understand and analyze data to drive marketing campaigns. On the other hand, great CMO’s have a marketing instinct. They believe in their gut feeling and sync it with the data-driven results to bring the best results.
You can ask about the situations when they have used their instinct to make an unconventional decision. For example, how would they handle the situation when their instinct is against the data. Such questions will help you to understand their marketing instinct.
5. Emotional intelligence
A good CMO has a high EQ. They have a good sense of people’s feelings. Having a CMO with high EQ is suitable for your team and good for your clients because, above all, marketing is all about understanding your customer.
Ask them about the situation where they have managed conflicts within their teams. Also, how they tend two opposite people to collaborate and work together. These questions will help you to understand their emotional intelligence along with their diplomatic skills.
Finding the right CMO isn’t a piece of cake; it’s a difficult job. But it’s not impossible; all it takes is patience and diligence. So focus on setting up the proper process to find your CMO, and eventually, you will find your perfect CMO in your office soon.