On the CMO Track: How to Become a CMO [Podcast]

Product Marketing, you’re a solid director, you might be a VP, you’re not a CMO. Demand generation, you’re going to be a VP, because you have to … Read source

Chief marketing officers are in high demand these days. The CMO role has grown in importance and scope, and not just because companies are growing larger. CMOs are more likely to be directly involved in the product development process than ever before, for example.

Demand for marketing personnel is growing faster than the pool of talent, generating opportunities for people who want to advance their careers on the marketing side. And with so much opportunity, companies who want to attract these talented professionals need to know how to attract them.

At the same time, CMOs themselves need to know how to become CMOs. The job is more competitive than ever before, and it takes a certain kind of person to be successful in this role.

If you’re a marketer who wants to become a CMO, or an executive who wants to attract this type of person, here are five tips that might help:

1. Produce creative work. If you want to become a CMO, you need to be creative. This is something that is increasingly important in today’s marketing environment. A decade or two ago, it was enough for a marketer to simply produce ads that were better than a competitor’s. Today, however, brands need content that stands out from competitors and is memorable enough to generate sales leads over time.

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2. Develop relationships with other departments. As a CMO, you will have the opportunity to interact with the heads of other departments within the company — including sales and product development people. This means you’ll have an opportunity to forge strong relationships with these people and build trust with them over time. This will help you gain support from other departments when you need it most.

3. Improve your analytics skills. If you want to become a CMO, you need to understand how analytics works and apply it as part of your day-to-day workflow. This involves having access to analytics data and taking the time to analyze it on your own — including looking at what other companies are doing and determining what opportunities exist within your own company for improvement based on what you learn from this analysis.

4. Be a good communicator. The CMO role involves overseeing marketing at many different levels within the company — from managing individual campaigns internally all the way up to interacting with the media (which includes bloggers). If you want to become a CMO, or if you want your company’s CMO candidate to succeed in this role, he or she needs to be good at communicating effectively with other people at all levels of the organization — including employees as well as external partners and associates. Communicating effectively involves listening as well as speaking — being able to hear what others have to say and respond accordingly in a way that is both effective and productive moving forward.

5. Be willing to take risks. If you want to become a CMO, you need to be willing to take risks. This is an environment in which it is often necessary to make hard decisions with incomplete data, and the best CMOs are the ones who are willing to do this, who are willing to stand up for what they believe to be right even when they don’t have all the facts in front of them. Such decisions might be unpopular to some people, but the best CMOs know that the ability to make hard decisions is critical to being a successful CMO.

The CMO role has changed significantly over the past decade or two. There are more opportunities for marketing professionals today than ever before, and it’s wise to take advantage of these opportunities by developing your skills so you can meet the needs of companies that are hiring for this role today.