What should you do in your first 30-days as a Chief Marketing Officer?
Congratulations, you've just got appointed as Chief Marketing Officer for a growing company - now what? What would be your first steps as a newly appointed CMO? How will your first 30 days look like in the company?
If you have been working as a marketing leader for years, you probably saw a lot of company setups. Every company is different, of course, but they tend to have similar challenges when it comes to marketing - no wonder why marketing agencies are offering similar services on the market. So just by routine, you probably can guess your first steps within your new role.
But if this is your first opportunity to act as a CMO, you either learn the hard way or prepare yourself for the challenges. This article gives you an entire process that can be customized or applied to almost any company.
Who’s this article for?
Now let's start particular 'any company' part. The process I will detail below can help those marketing leaders working for growing companies with dedicated resources and somewhat defined marketing goals. The industry doesn't matter much, but technology, professional services, healthcare, and innovation-heavy sectors are the best where this process can shine. Also, this process is somewhat redundant for those enterprise-level companies that operate in multiple locations with a staff of more than 1000+ people. So in plain English, we are talking about growing businesses with 20-100 people on board and around $1M monthly recurring revenue (MRR).
One more thing. You have to have reasonable experience in marketing. I tend to see that companies, especially early-stage startups, appoint a head of marketing & CMO staff while their entire marketing team is one junior marketer. I'm all into the fact that it is better to let a senior marketer grow into the position of the CMO within 2-3 years internally. You can't just start your company's marketing team from the top-down. Therefore the process that I detail here can be helpful for the 1-person-army marketing "team" leader; it works better for those with at least 4-5 years of experience in marketing and managing at least a 3-5 people-strong marketing team.
So now that you know the context - let's dive in.
Your first week
Some people tend to skip the first week and focus only on familiarizing themselves with the team, the company, and the internal working style. Usually, the first week has a lot of meetings with a whole lot of meet & greet. If there is any onboarding process within the company, they tend to dedicate the first week for an entire onboarding process. However, as the new hire, you should have your own goals to achieve - even on the first week of the job.
Find out the why
First, the most crucial goal is to find out why they hired you in the first place.
Why do they need a marketing leader? What are they lack? What is the main pain point for the company when it comes to marketing? Was there a previous marketing leader, and what was their experience? These points will help you understand what the main priorities for the job are. They also help you provide immediate insights for your strategy - these are the points that will serve as the foundation for quick wins.
Learn more about the current marketing setup
Second, learn as much as you can about the current setup they have for marketing.
What platforms do they use, and what are the results? What tools do they have, and how do they use them? What are the material resources, what's the marketing budget? A simple checklist is helpful to walk through with the leadership. If the answer is unknown or not defined for some questions, there should be a why behind it. For example, if there is no pre-defined marketing budget, or they calculate marketing staff salaries into that budget, there should be a conversation about the proper allocation. The insights on the current setup will help you understand the causes behind the current problems, which will help you form your strategy on how to solve the current challenges.
Meet your marketing team
Third, get to know the people. You probably will report to the CEO or the founder(s) or someone equivalent. How they manage will define the success that you can deliver. Especially at early-stage startups, the founders tend to be micromanagers - they just can't let go of their baby. Learn as much as you can about their priorities. You should also get to know the people that you will be working with directly.
Every member of your team wants two things from you: support for the work they are already doing and support for more growth within their career. Learn what they do and where they aspire.
If you achieve all three goals within a week, you probably end up with enough insights to form a strategy. You will know what you can do from what resources. You will also understand the internal dynamics, team structure and start to bond with your marketing team.
Your first month
There is a lot that you can achieve within 30-days. However, while the first week detailed above can be applied to almost all scenarios, the first month can be different depending on the company where you work. The process here splits into two ways, but fear not, there is only a subtle difference between the two.
If you did your first week properly, you are overwhelmed with insights. The number one insight that you should pay attention to is this: does the company have an existing marketing strategy, or do you have to create the first one. If they don't have one, the process is simple. If they do have one, you should review that strategy and come up with improvements.
There are three things that you should do within your first month.
In order, prepare a comprehensive audit on the current state of marketing at the company, prepare a strategy based on the audit, and prepare an annual roadmap on how you would implement the strategy.
If the company already has a marketing strategy, you should review it within the audit and develop your version anyway. That's where the two roads are different, and that's all.
Prepare a marketing audit
Remember those insights that you gathered during your first week? They will serve as the backbone of the audit. If you think you still need more information, spend the second week on research as well. Sometimes it's worthwhile to invest in user research and other external services, but I wouldn't advise going that deep during your first weeks.
Simply put, your audit summarizes the current marketing activities, their current results, the current marketing team, and their responsibilities, the existing resources and their review, and finally, the goals and objectives of the company with marketing. The audit is unbiased, factual, so gather as much data as you can to support your statements. Your audit should be a written material, ideally a presentation, and you should present it to all the stakeholders internally. The audit has two goals: it sums up the current scenario and instantly gets everyone on the same page.
You can choose to prepare the strategy and present it simultaneously as your audit, but I would advise you not to do that. While you can summarize the current marketing ecosystem for the company, getting everyone on the same page might be challenging. I would get everyone's approval first, then go with the strategy.
The audit's primary purpose is to act as the foundation for your plan and show that you have understood the company quickly and analyzed the setup.
Prepare your marketing strategy
Once you are done with the audit, it is time to show your strategy. Every marketing strategy is different, of course, but all should have five elements. It doesn't matter what business you are in, the industry, or what the audit showed you - it is the same five elements. Now we can go deep-dive into management consulting terms, strategy matrixes, and whatnot - but I believe in the power of plain English, so let's break it down into these five parts in a straightforward manner.
The first element is all about considerations. It is the part where you recap the insights of your audit, but you go slightly forward: show what we could learn from the audit, what we should consider. What are the pain points, and where is the market going. What should you be aware of, and what are the key challenges? What are the company's key strengths, what can we capitalize on when planning the growth? You should pave the upcoming strategic statements within this section.
The second element is about goals and objectives. By this time, you had the chance to talk to everyone and learn everything about the company - recap the goals and objectives here. There are two types of goals - business and marketing. Business goals should come from your CEO & founder(s), marketing goals should come from you. These goals are essential to state in the strategy because you will provide KPIs and metrics on how to measure these goals at the end of the strategy.
The third element is your strategic approach. The core part of the marketing strategy describes how you would meet your marketing goals while taking into account all the considerations.
There's no standard recipe here - it can be a highly detailed marketing funnel, a creative content platform, or anything you fancy. The bottom line is, you have to be precise, sharp, and your approach should deliver a predictable outcome of results.
The fourth part is your tactical approach. You should be able to describe how you would implement your strategy. It is not a project plan; that is the roadmap - but you should explain what needs to be done to implement the plan. It has to describe the possible fixes of the current setup, providing quick wins. It has to tell the upcoming activities, immediate actions, and it has to detail the exact purpose of the activities. Your considerations and goal-setting are the why. The strategy is the how, while the tactical approach is the what.
The last part is the metrics. Sadly, this is the most overlooked part of every strategic marketing plan. But without proper metrics, you won't be able to measure the results of your strategy. It is different what metrics you should consider using; it all depends on your plan. I always love to provide four types of metrics: hard KPIs, soft KPIs, and hard & soft metrics. KPIs track the results, metrics track the performance of your activities. There should be a hard (primary) and a secondary (soft) for each.
The more important the result, the harder the metrics should be. Once the strategy gets approval, you should track all your metrics from day one. Monthly reporting of marketing activities is all based on these metrics.
Sell your strategy to your team
After you show your strategy, there are two remaining things you should do within the first month. First, you should sell the strategy internally. You need to consult with your marketing team to get their feedback and make sure they are on the same page with you. Being a marketing director is collaborative, so you need to communicate with all the stakeholders internally to finalize the strategic phase. Lastly, you have to present a roadmap - this should come entirely from you, as you are the team leader.
The roadmap brings your strategy to life - it details the marketing activities as a project. It is an annual plan broken down into quarters, but it starts with a pre-work phase, the quick wins.
By this time, you know the situation with the marketing, what you need to do, and you are aware of the problems. Some problems are easy to fix or amend - you should do so within your first month. These are the quick wins that provide immediate results, plus by improving them, they establish your credibility internally as a marketing director.
Your first 90-days
After you did everything right in your first 30 days, what usually happens is that you can turn your focus on the long-term results. The following two months are insanely different for everyone. It all depends on your current setup, the company you are working with, and your strategy.
Most of the time, 3-months are enough to show long-term results. It is enough to set a foundation for long-term marketing activities, launch a new campaign, kickstart a marketing funnel, or create a content platform. You can also make amends to your marketing team as well, hire new people if needed. It is enough time to do experiments and see their results, check your metrics, and see what worked, what didn't. No matter what you need to do, at the end of your 90-days, you should review your strategy again publicly and make adjustments for the next quarter, if needed.
I hope this article helped you to get more comfortable in your new seat. Share your feedback, or share your first 30-days story by dropping a line here. If you need further support, do reach out - I would be happy to help.
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