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Turbulent State of the CMO

Turbulent State of the CMO

Economic rollercoasters and the marketing organization

Closed Lost
October 09, 2023

Yo. Happy Monday. Or not. Whatever. Lets go.

Today we’ll be covering (<6.3min read):

🛬 Feature: The Turbulent State of the CMO

👀 Advice from the 1%: Golden Nugs from Leaderboard Legends

🧐 Schmuck Insurance: Stayin’ in the Know

Time to DIY Your Growth!

The Turbulent State of the CMO

During 2023’s wild economic rollercoaster – CMOs have been getting their asses absolutely kicked.

Not known for their longevity, CMOs now face even more scrutiny to produce more pipeline with even less dollars.

Marketing budgets have fallen from 9.5% of company rev in 2022 to 9.1% in 2023.

According to the annual Gartner CMO Spend and Strategy Survey – 71% of CMOs admit they're short on budget for 2023 and aren't optimistic about 2024.

Gartner CMO Spend Report

So what's their plan?

🤟 The Big 3 of budget items come into focus 🎯

Tech, Talent, and... TikTok? Nah, Media!

TECH:

Despite being a major chunk of the budget, martech’s ROI has been hard to pinpoint. Add to that utilization rates have dropped from 58% in 2020 to 42% in 2022 (woof)

Instead of fixing underused or flawed tech, many CMOs aim to buy new solutions to optimize their stack, drive up utilization and get higher ROI.

✍ Sales Pitch? Hit them with how your tech will reduce tech sprawl, consolidate spend and optimize their CURRENT stack. Capture $$$ from existing line-items vs net-new budget. Find ways to drive up usage rates at all costs (paging CS? Are you there CS? 😶‍🌫️)

TALENT:

In a world of layoffs and wallet-crying inflation, the fierce competition for strategically important roles continue to push up the cost of talent.

With labor munching up 24% of the CMO’s budget — they're now hunting for more diverse role-players and broad expertise vs 1-off ninjas.

✍ Sales Pitch? Stay alert! Roles are morphing, orgs are reshaping. Stick close to your allies and help design the new org blueprint if you can.

MEDIA:

Despite years of high investment in digital… impressions are declining

But still, 28% of CMOs’ multichannel budgets will be spent on awareness in 2023.

Where are they putting their dollars?

53% likely to increase spend year-on-year in social
51% likely to increase spend on data and analytics
26% likely to decrease spend on search advertising
22% plan to cut spending on demand generation and sales enablement

Above all – CMOs will be searching for the most relevant multichannel KPIs that clearly connect to business outcomes

✍ Sales Pitch? Link media bucks to tangible results and KPIs. The spotlight's on genuine business impact, not just "Look at me!" campaigns.

TLDR;

Marketing budgets are only getting skinnier, dipping from 9.5% in '22 to 9.1% in '23.
75% of CMOs gotta stretch each penny. Tech spending? On the chopping block.
Want to sell to CMOs or Marketing?
- 🫵 Growth, yield and return will be top of mind
- 👁 Look out for recalibration and consolidation of the marketing org
- 👩‍👩‍👦‍👦 Provide tech optimization and get to high internal utilization or die
- 🤝 Highlight specific multichannel KPIs and connect to real business outcomes

Now, go forth and conquer those CMOs before a new one starts next quarter! 💼🔥🚀

Advice from the 1%

Every week the sales elite will spill the beans: What's their secret sauce to consistently topping the leaderboard? 🚀🥇🔥

This week, we're serving up wisdom from a sales juggernaut with a 10-year winning streak in enterprise deals. Six years without missing quota and a consistent track record of 7-figure W2s.

Talk about goals! 🎯

His biggest tip?

People buy from people.

I have the ability to regularly see my prospects and clients face to face, so I make a point of doing so.

But even if you don't, you can still do what I do to create long lasting relationships.

I am a huge believer in the FORD approach:

Family - Married? Kids? Tell me about them! Write down their names and any relevant notes. Watch a client light up by just asking about their family by name and how last week's soccer game went.
Occupation - How did you get here? What do you love about it? Drive down to the core of how they got to where they are, their philosophies on the role and department.
Recreation - What are your hobbies? You might find some great common ground or at minimum and interesting Christmas gift to send them.
Dreams - Why do you work? What do you want to do? Can you tie yourself to their story?

Of course, you need to navigate personality types so how much time you spend, the questions you ask, and how you ask them will need to vary.

Just build real relationships and care.

Golden nuggets from a true sales pro 🌟🧓

Schmuck Insurance

What you need to know this week:

😳 Israel at War - Terror organization, Hamas, launched a series of attacks inside of Israel’s borders over the weekend. This event will create ripples through our economy for some time to come. Thinking of doing some cold-outreach today? We’d suggest hitting pause or expect some fierce “REALLY? NOW?!”. Go clean up those account notes for a few days. Link
🤬 Enterprise Software Recession - Even the big dogs in enterprise software are still hitting some speed bumps. Wild to watch the industry's top guns continue downshifting in the fast lane.
LTM = Last Twelve Months
NTM = Next Twelve Months
As go the public comps, so go the small.