5 Questions Keeping CMOs Up At Night—And How To Put Them At Ease

Steve Ohanians is the CEO of Clear Digital, an agency that delivers digital and brand experiences for real-world impact.

Chief marketing officers carry an incredible burden of ensuring that their brand’s story reaches the marketplace in a meaningful way. When they work with agencies, whether for specific projects or long-term engagements, they do so because they need support. For agencies, winning the sale and forging a positive relationship with a CMO means demonstrating that you can carry their vision forward.

In decades of work with CMOs, I’ve found that there are a handful of pain points that agencies must address to build a meaningful partnership. Here are the top five questions that are keeping CMOs up at night and what to do about them.

Does this brand narrative resonate?

CMOs understand that a compelling story is the lifeblood of a brand, fueling its growth and consumer perceptions. This means you must be able to identify the brand’s target audience’s desires and pain points and incorporate them into the strategy. This may sound obvious, but it’s one of the places where you can miss the mark if you are trying to win a CMO’s trust. Agencies often face a temptation to focus so much on wowing prospects with exciting campaign ideas that they often miss the foundation of the work: You have to demonstrate that you know how to carry the brand’s narrative forward.

Is the strategy driven by data?

CMOs must navigate an intricate maze of consumer behavior, market dynamics and trends. And they expect their partners to join in on this process. Data reigns supreme, and CMOs are frequently at the crossroads of information overload. It’s up to you to help them parcel out that data into meaningful information.

The challenge isn’t a lack of data; it’s how to understand it and what to do with it. You’ll hit a pain point with CMOs if you aren’t data-driven because when they’re called to justify the spend on agency partnerships, they’ll need data to back them up. To win the trust of a CMO, you must demonstrate how your strategy was built from robust data analytics, and you must also interpret this data to show its meaning.

Is this partner organized, efficient and dependable?

Operational excellence includes everything from your agency’s communication strategies to how you use meeting time to the marketing tools you recommend for your partners. If you cannot demonstrate that these functions work like a well-oiled machine, you’ll lose the trust of your CMO partners. Remember, the CMO is always going to be in a place where they need to justify costs and explain spend. If you aren’t delivering or are slow to show progress, that’s a pain point.

Some emerging challenges you will need to address to win the trust of CMOs are cybersecurity threats, data breaches and technological vulnerabilities. Because digital marketing is, by nature, reliant on digital tools, agency partners need expertise in cybersecurity and data management. With concerns about security present across the C-suite, you will be held accountable for your data and security practices. This is becoming a crucial part of the overall equation of operational excellence.

Are all partners operating in harmony?

For CMOs, seamlessly integrating design teams with in-house departments and extending their marketing teams when needed is a balancing act. Agencies are part of that equation. Demonstrating that you can work alongside other partners and in-house teams to carry out a unified goal is critical.

This, again, is about taking the burden off of the CMO. While they play a key role in unifying all of their partners and ensuring that the vision is aligned, each partner still bears some responsibility in this. Make sure that your processes for collaboration are clear (from communication to technology) and stay in alignment with the overall vision.

Are we moving forward and maintaining relevance?

CMOs face constant pressure to stay ahead of the curve and navigate evolving technology and consumer preferences. No CMO wants to be behind the trend or teetering on the edge of irrelevance, but many are told that this is where they stand, especially when they are being pitched new projects. (“Your website isn’t up to modern security standards.” “Your branding looks dated.”)

While these assessments might be true, CMOs don’t need you to spend hours, days or weeks convincing them that they need to be doing more or better. The pain point is not whether there’s room for opportunity; it’s how that opportunity will be realized. They will be asking themselves whether the project is moving forward and whether it’s maintaining the brand’s relevance in the market (or bringing the brand back up to speed). To set a CMO’s mind at ease, you must be data-driven and insightful about the emerging technologies and strategies that will bring their brand up to speed in the marketplace. Identify trends and tools that are relevant, but focus on how they will be used, not just why they are important.

The best way to build trust with a CMO is to demonstrate that you understand their pain—because marketing is a pain sometimes. The goal of your partnership should be to realize the CMO’s vision. Winning trust and securing the sale will come down to addressing their pain points and providing a path forward.

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