“Looking for a new CMO who is passionate about winning and thrives in an entrepreneurial environment. The perfect candidate knows how to build and lead a team, effectively utilize data and analytics, and has experience in creating and executing a strategic marketing plan that drives business growth. They should be both strategic and hands-on when it comes to accelerating revenue and building a strong brand. The CMO must foster collaborative relationships both internally and externally, and manage marketing operations like a business while keeping an eye on finances. Candidates should have a proven track record in acquiring and retaining customers, boosting conversion rates, and expanding within an established customer base. Responsibilities include online and offline marketing, customer acquisition, retention and loyalty, social media, marketing communications, public relations, and branding.” This reflects several recent CMO job postings. It’s a challenging role that requires today’s CMOs to have a wide range of skills, including the ability to use both creative and analytical thinking, and to act quickly with strategic purpose.

The most recent CMO SpencerStuart report shows that the average tenure for CMOs has reached almost 4 years, up from just 2 years in 2006. Although CMO tenure differs by industry, long-serving CMOs have some common traits. As mentioned in the job description, effective CMOs can show a positive impact on the company and influence areas beyond just marketing. They often think like business leaders, providing strategic guidance and using data and analytics to make informed decisions.

In addition to being an exceptional marketer that is technically proficient, there are three attributes we see among successful long-term CMOs.

  1. Customer-centric. These tenured CMOs connect regularly with customers. They do more than conduct voice of customer research, review customer data, or meet with a customer advisory board. They are actively and regularly engaged in customer conversations. Do you describe your customers for example as engineers with X years of experience in Y industries, Y accreditations, who attends B events, reads Y publications, and uses Z social media? If this example seems familiar you may be missing the mark. These long-tenured CMOs have a deeper understanding of their customers’ needs, wants, emotional state and motivations, what it takes to engage them, and the kind of experience that needs to be delivered. These CMOs serve as the window into the customer for their companies. They are relentless in their pursuit to know and understand the customer.
  2. Outcome-oriented. It is clear to the leadership team that these CMOs have marketing well aligned to the business with metrics and performance targets focused on producing business outcomes rather than marketing outputs. These CMOs understand that outputs such as visitors, fans, followers, etc. create more contacts, connections and engagements that are important. They also understand that their job is to translate these outputs into something relevant and meaningful to the leadership team, such as how marketing’s contribution is reducing the sales cycle/accelerating customer acquisition, reducing the cost of acquisition or retention, and improving product adoption and win rates. These CMOs have an excellent handle on what touch points and channels are most effective and efficient depending on the needle that needs to be moved.
  3. Alliance-savvy. There’s been a great deal of coverage on how important it is for the CMO to have solid relationships with their sales, IT, and finance colleagues. The VEM/ITSMA 2013 MPM study suggests that best-in-class CMOs do more than that. These CMOs have forged formal explicit partnerships with these counterparts. They invest in these alliances because they believe that the partnership will enable the organization to be more customer-centric and more competitive. As a result, these companies are able to enter new markets and bring new products and services to market faster. What is different about the alliances formed by these CMOs? They work with their colleagues to plan, form, design, and manage a formal working agreement that focuses on developing the right working relationship, taking into the account that each function most likely operates differently. They create and execute an agreement that emphasizes how the organization’s committed resources will achieve a common set of objectives, how to leverage the differences to the company’s advantage, and how these differences are designed to facilitate collaborative rather than competitive behaviors among all the members of each team. Performance metrics are established to support the alliance with a focus on both the outcome of the alliance as well as the process.