My first 30 days as a CMO of a startup

Let me start by saying I’ve never grown as much as I did ever in my career during the past month. I am so grateful for all the things I’ve learnt and everyone who believed in me and supported me.

I wrote this article partly for my own record, but also for anyone who may be curious about what a CMO does at a startup. I’m alone in my department so I’m a one woman army. And I love it.

First week

• I spent the first week getting to know everybody, understanding the business, our growth plans, getting on the same page as my boss and our investors in regards to marketing priorities.
• I talked to key people in the team to understand our sweet spot. Who our ideal customer is. An ideal customer to me brings in the cash, is easy to deal with and does not cost much to maintain.
• I worked on our vision, mission, and core values project. To grow into great company, we need to get our values right so that only the right people are “allowed” to join the family.
• I interviewed a couple of candidates for a growth hacker role over Skype.
• I reviewed our new branding project. Exciting stuff.

Second week

• I wrote my first campaign landing page and got our social channels active again.
• I still hadn’t figured out all the different tools we were using so I made a couple of mistakes. No worries I knew it could only get better from here :)
• I studied our competitors in details. I learnt everything about them including how their teams were structured. I knew then we were in much better position simply because our product rocks.
• I went to my first sales meeting where I learnt heaps in an hour than I could have learnt in a day sitting in front of the computer. I got all excited about our product at that moment.
• I sat with our success team leader who was onboarding new customers to learn about the product. Funny thing was I did not get to learn all that much because the customers did not have any question - the product is simply too intuitive!

Third week

• I wanted to get a freelance Swedish copywriter so I went out with a question here on LinkedIn and got overwhelming response. One sent me a book he wrote! And we found a guy who was perfect.
• I started writing new content for our website and I cleaned up old stuff while familiarizing myself with the editor.
• I drafted a press release but it was not well-received so I felt a little discouraged.
• I got really frustrated with our marketing automation tool because it was so complex. I considered switching it to something else and started researching different options.

Fourth week

My last week sucked so I was determined to make shit happen this week.

• Sales and I got effing excited about a secret campaign that I couldn’t reveal for obvious reason.
• I decided right then and there that marketing KPIs = sales KPIs. I don't care about the number of leads, I only want to pass on the lead if I know it will close. That's the only way to do it.
• I met with a couple candidates and then decided not to hire any of them. It is tough to find the right people when you care about who you bring into the team.
• I really needed our marketing automation tool to work so I spent two days testing like a mad scientist and taking crash courses on YouTube. It worked! For the first time we could get every lead into our CRM directly. The future looks really good.
• I launched our new blog. We gained 10% organic followers on LinkedIn.
• I wrote our marketing goals, strategy and plan - ready to roll.

Lessons I learnt

• Sleep is super important.
• Your third week will be the toughest and then the reward will come.
• Everyone wants to help you (especially the LinkedIn community ;) so don’t be afraid to ask. And then say thank you!

That's all.

If you enjoy reading this article, please like or leave a comment because it will totally make my day :)

Thank you for reading my friends.

PS: I want to thank my colleagues, my boss, our board and investors for giving this opportunity to me. I am blessed to have the most supportive and loving fiancé, the most wonderful daughter and the happiest most loyal Brutus our pug.