Startup CXO

Chapter 53CEO‐to‐CEO Advice About the Marketing Role

Matt Blumberg

What comes before a full‐fledged CMO? In most startups, there is at least a medium‐sized and quite busy marketing department with multiple mid‐level leaders well before there is a seasoned leader at the helm. One of those leaders may be a VP of Marketing—depending on the nature of the company, it is likely someone with a specialized area of focus within Marketing (brand, digital, event, etc.) who has some working knowledge of the other areas.

Signs It's Time to Hire Your First CMO

You know it's time to hire a CMO when:

• You wake up in the middle of the night concerned that no one in your company but you knows how to orchestrate a successful product launch.
• You are spending too much of your own time managing smaller pieces of marketing because your marketing leader isn't experienced enough across all of the function's many sub‐disciplines.
• Your Board asks you how you would spend an extra $2m in marketing if you had it—or what you'd cut if you had to reduce your marketing spend by 50%, and you don't have a great answer and aren't sure how to get to one.

When a Fractional CMO Might Be Enough

A fractional CMO may be the way to go, if you have a generalist marketing manager or director who has strategic inclinations but not enough experience operating as a strategic executive and who just needs a little more supervision in order to “level up.” Or if you have a series of more junior leaders of marketing sub‐functions, ...