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Beat Short CMO Tenure By Learning The Stages Of Leadership

Forbes Communications Council

Monica, CMO of SOCi, holds 20+ years of tenure in digital marketing & advertising, with a foundation in sales, strategy, and data analytics.

A CMO’s job is incredibly tough, and the role’s demands are showing in CMO tenures. According to SpencerStuart, the average CMO tenure in 2021 was down to 40 months—tied for 2020 as the shortest in over a decade.

A lot feeds into this challenge of short tenure, but one area where marketers can do more is better understanding how their role evolves. What a CMO does at a fast-moving startup often changes as quickly as the company does. And those CMOs who don’t realize they’re playing a different role at each growth stage may find that their work isn’t providing much of an impact.

Change The CMO Playbook

I’ve found that the complexity of a CMO’s job is accelerating. They have to be creative, use more technology and data, build and manage teams, and stand out at the C-suite level. CMOs typically enter these roles with their playbooks from past experiences—the concepts and best practices that drove rapid growth at their previous companies.

But the role’s complexity makes it difficult for CMOs relying on their playbooks to adapt to the changes in growing organizations. Many fail to recognize that their playbook has to evolve alongside their companies. A CMO has different skill sets to exercise and responsibilities and expectations to meet depending on their company’s growth stage.

The Early Stage CMO (Series A And B)

CMOs coming in early are the marketers who have to “do it.” Leadership wants you to build a pipeline and enable rapid revenue growth. You should be an expert at quickly generating demand at this stage. Build the demand-gen engine, then tie your successes to your budgetary needs to expand your fledgling department’s capabilities.

When you secure a larger budget, you become less of a doer and more of a manager. You’re hiring a team to accelerate your demand-gen engine. Two great first hires are a generalist marketing manager who can deploy marketing technologies and automation to boost demand gen and a content marketer who can feed the engine and build pipeline.

The Awareness CMO (Series C And Up)

At Series C and beyond, CMOs leave the driver’s seat. You’re hiring a director and charging them to optimize the demand-gen engine. Your time should now go toward generating brand awareness in the marketplace. You’re asking yourself, “How am I going to stand branding and awareness up?”

That’ll look different at every company, so you’ll flex many diverse muscles: Demand gen, branding and communications require very different skill sets. You’ll also discover needs more specific to your company. For example, maybe you need a bigger focus on product marketing, or you might take ownership of business development. You’ll likely handle those new areas at first; once you prove value and build more budget, you can hire and delegate.

The Late-Stage CMO ($100 Million-Plus Annual Recurring Revenue)

Eventually, the company will be too large for a successful CMO to turn the knobs for each department. Making great hires at this stage is vital, as you’ll need to manage and trust department leaders to build the best teams and keep growing what you started.

Now you’re investing much more time in developing a long-term strategy. You’re considering where the company is going and whether an exit is on the horizon. You might feel pulled away from executing the marketing craft—and you are. You should spend more time with the executive team, listen to what the market is saying, gather and analyze data, and then determine your company’s next bet.

How Can CMOs Prepare?

The CMO job should be malleable to ensure it keeps providing value to companies at every stage of a high-growth company. But CMOs of any stage should prepare to enter a new role (or reinvent their current role) without their old playbooks. This will help them find long-term success.

1. Know yourself. What are you looking for in a marketing role? And where do your strengths lie? Understand what you want in the role and your nonnegotiables.

2. Interview the company. As one Harvard Business Review article explains (paywall), poor CMO job design will sink even the best-prepared marketer. While no job description is perfect, learn if the company is building a role where you’ll succeed for the long haul. When interviewing, ask questions and take steps like:

• What does success look like for someone in this role at this company today and in a year from now?

• How will success be measured?

• Will this role have a seat at the table in devising a strategy, or just driving an existing strategy?

• When and how often does the leadership team collaborate?

• Watch for red flags in job descriptions and interviews. You’re committing yourself to a significant, evolving role—ensure it’s the right one.

3. Prioritize your time. Once you find the right fit and start your new job, set your plan and align the leadership team on their investment in your department. Be choosy about where your time goes, as you should prove their investment is successful as quickly as possible.

4. Earn little wins—then build a budget and team over time. Give yourself winnable opportunities in your plan to demonstrate to the leadership team that you’re succeeding and need more resources to succeed further. These wins will unlock the chances to evolve the role; learn to embrace the changes.

5. Get a mentor or join a CMO community. Nobody does this alone. Learn from colleagues who have experienced changing CMO roles before. I’ve learned from incredible mentors and been part of CMO groups that helped me navigate small-scale struggles and market-altering shifts like Covid-19.

A CMO’s job is undoubtedly tough, but by understanding how the role changes, they can better demonstrate their value to growing companies and increase the length of their tenure. Know yourself, earn your wins over time, and lean on mentorship, and you can walk your best CMO journey.


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