The Mini-CMO Mentality: The Key to a Thriving Marketing Career in the Digital Age

Throughout my career, I've sought advice and mentorship from those marketers I truly admire. For many who have an aspiration of being a global CMO, one of the best pieces of advice I was given was to start looking at my career as a series of two-year rotations.

Marketing has always housed a broad array of different functions. Brand marketing, performance marketing, product marketing, communications, and media, to name a few.?

In today’s world, it’s no longer enough to simply understand and excel in one area of marketing; you must have a solid understanding of other areas and how they work together. There is no better way to do that then by actually taking on each role; rotating to something new every 18-24 months.

No matter what type of marketing role you are in, having a mini-CMO mentality is essential to success. It means having a holistic view of marketing, understanding the impact each area has on the other, and being able to collaborate and influence for shared success.

A great example of this is aligning your internal communications with your external communications. Every good marketer knows that an internal communication can often be leaked to external sources. You want to ensure that the same message communicated internally reflects what you want the external world to see.

Developing an outstanding external marketing campaign requires you to align and have a firm grasp of various marketing functions such as content creation, events, SEO, paid/earned media and how they all work together to create a unified strategy. This means understanding each functions’ needs, challenges, and timelines. It means creating shared goals with clear accountabilities.

It also means having a grasp on the different technologies used to track and measure performance, and having an understanding of how data can be used to inform your strategy and decisions in real-time.

A great way to align marketing functions is to know your customer or client’s journey. By walking in the shoes of your customer or client, it ensures that all elements of the marketing mix are in sync with each other at key moments. In a B2B context, this is the core role of an account-based marketer.

Having a mini-CMO mentality isn’t just beneficial for marketers, it’s also beneficial for businesses. It enables marketers to identify and take advantage of opportunities, identify and resolve issues quickly, and create a unified and integrated marketing strategy. This means better results and higher ROI for businesses.

In short, having a mini-CMO mentality is essential for success in the marketing world today. Learning by doing each function is a great pathway to grow into the big seat CMO role.