Enjoying a long-term career as a Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) takes more than a drive to succeed and a love of marketing. You can be a top-performing digital strategist. But without the right skills in your repertoire, your desire to become a CMO might be just wishful thinking.
Today’s enterprise brands are looking for exemplary skills from those they place in pivotal marketing roles. To improve your odds of landing a chief marketing officer position, you need to hone the following five essential skills.
Top Five Skills for a CMO
If you are going to succeed as a chief marketing officer, you need to understand the mindset of those in your employ. It’s not enough to be excellent marketing professional. You must understand what motivates your team and how to bring out their best efforts.
Are they looking to move up the corporate ladder? Do they want to work for a company with a solid social responsibility mantra? Without understanding what motivates your team members, you can’t hope to be successful as a CMO.
Prioritization skills are crucial for chief marketing officers. As the person in charge of marketing, you will often find yourself torn in multiple directions. Your content strategist will want your input on the latest content campaigns. Your social media marketing manager will like to discuss trending social events on which they hope to capitalize.
Your CEO will want an update on current SEO (search engine optimization) efforts and how your PPC (pay per click) efforts are progressing. Unless you know how to clone yourself, prioritizing your activities will be critical for maximum work output. Fail to prioritize, and you’ll be ineffectual at best.
Technology analysis is another essential skill CMOs need to hone. Technology is rapidly changing the marketing landscape. In a post on Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Resume Guide, it’s your job to remain current on everything from artificial intelligence algorithms to blockchain-enabled marketing tools.
If you are lucky, you can delegate this research to a technical member of your team. However, staying abreast of the latest tech innovations within the marketing sector is imperative.
Diversity is becoming increasingly crucial for chief marketing officers. The team members you hire have a considerable impact on how your department performs.
Understanding your current diversity statistics is critical if you hope to recruit new team members to bolster your company’s diversity ratio. Bottom line, you’ll need to get better at diversified hiring as an essential skill.
Organizational understanding is another top skill for CMOS. Marketing is only one component of a healthy business enterprise. A talented chief marketing officer needs to understand the role their team plays in business success.
They also need to have a clear vision where other organizational groups fit into the overall growth strategy. The adage “no man is an island” definitely applies to the multi-departmental organization. A top-performing CMO should understand how each spoke in the business wheel works together to keep the company moving forward.
Ann Example
Ann Lewnes, Executive Vice President and CMO of Adobe, is an excellent example of the far-reaching work and skill of a successful CMO. Lewnes oversaw a creative campaign to help community members recognize their heroes during the pandemic. Lewnes also led Adobe in transitioning its biggest annual in-person event to a very successful virtual event. Forbes featured Lewnes on the 2020 list of The World’s Most Influential CMOS.
These five essential skills should be at the top of your priority list if you consider a career as a chief marketing officer. The more effort you put into working on these skills, the likelier you will attain your dream career.
Keep working on the attributes enterprise business leaders are looking for, and you will make yourself an irresistible candidate.
Need a fractional CMO to help in a short-term situation?
I can help. You can set up a time to chat with me about your marketing challenges using my calendar. Email me jeffslater@themarketingsage.com Call me. 919 720 0995. The conversation is free, and we can explore if working together makes sense. Watch a short video about working with me.
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