The University of Melbourne of Australia recently published a structural view of what a fully built out marketing staff working under the direction of a Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) could look like. The published bulletin indicated a multi-million dollar budget to support this infrastructure and ongoing marketing activities placing it outside the boundaries of many companies. However, the org chart above shows the basis of a very well thought through staffing approach that can be leveled up or down to meet your specific needs.
The question is, does your company need a CMO – Chief Marketing Officer? To answer this question, ask yourself a few more.
- Does your company have both a short and long-term strategy in place that it regularly follows and are they producing the positive business results you need to achieve?
- Does your company have an objective process to identify and prioritize your most promising initiatives?
- Does your company have a way of determining objective parameters to achieve your business goals?
- Does your company track and measure your contact to lead to prospect to customer ROI to determine the most effective way to market your products and services?
The foregoing are the responsibilities a CMO assumes day one. They are at the core of what makes or breaks his or her first year and beyond. If your company is not continuously accomplishing these issues then you may need to consider hiring or contracting a CMO to help lead your growth curve.
Let’s assume your company does not have a CMO and that it shares these responsibilities among several managers in your “inner circle.” The following chart displays what the type of planning you should be doing.
As you can see, there are strategy responsibilities with expected outcomes to track and refine. In many companies the idea of developing this detailed a marketing communications program would be unthinkable and unrealistic. But if you stop to think about it, there is a very good chance that you may be suffering from declining sales because you haven’t designed a winning strategy nor timed it annually with fruitful sales marketing programs.
Today’s market doesn’t care so much how long you have been in business as what you have to offer. If you are expert at communicating your brand messages you have a much greater chance of being a success. Although there are no guarantees in life, or marketing, there is more certainty for those companies that push ahead until they find their secret sauce. Sometimes, perhaps much of the time, you need a new voice, a new perspective to get you out of what you have been doing and into something new that will work. That’s what a CMO can do for you. Maybe it’s time.