growth stage marketing consultant Mark Donnigan

Mark Donnigan develops disruptive innovative start-ups. Mark's superpower is architecting go-to-market plans and marketing movements that drive real business outcomes for technical and product-centric creators. Mark's growth and market development experience covers 20 years as a transformative B2B marketing and service leader, driving demand, brand name advancement, and technique for start-up and growth-stage companies.

As a specialist and virtual marketing leader (fractional-CMO), Mark Donnigan handles startup developers and CEOs from B2B disruptive development technology business to assist them establish, bootstrap, and scale their marketing and go-to-market actions.

FIND OUT MORE: https://growthstage.marketing

Mark Donnigan has actually managed teams as large as 25, comprising SDRs, AEs, and marketing, producing $29mm/year. Mark brought budget plan commitments to $3mm/year for operations and $400k/year for marketing. Deal sizes varying from mid-five figures to mid-six figures every year.

As a startup marketing specialist, Mark Donnigan's incoming and outgoing marketing experience consist of structure and mentoring high-performance groups that carry out as needed generation, brand and item marketing, PR, digital, and occasions where he develops and executes high-impact programs that drive income, produce ROI, trigger the marketplace, and provides service outcomes.

Mark Donnigan thinks that the very best marketing specialists and marketing leaders are doers. Mark's marketing experience consists of all aspects of requirement generation, ABM, SEO, email marketing, paid marketing, occasions, PR (internal & company), and product marketing.

Mark is an issue solver and a first-principles thinker who is creative and analytical. Mark always works cross-functionally and has actually shown success, structure, leading, and mentoring marketing, sales, and service advancement groups that have actually produced more than $500mm in revenue/shareholder worth.

Mark has actually found that building a classification should be the leading objective for every single marketing leader and it is the foundation of his approach and method. Mark Donnigan has substantial B2B marketing experience that includes structure and mentoring high-performance groups.

Mark Donnigan is a systems thinker, and he places a high value on team effort. Mark has comprehensive experience working alongside sales, product, operations, and financing to ensure that business and revenue objectives of the business are always gone beyond.

Growth Stage Marketing exists to supply business owners and founders services for:

Architecting the market classification that is best fit to the distinct value proposition of your technology.
High effect marketing assistance so that you can reach your earnings objectives and scale sustainably.
Achieving go-to-market positioning across the sales and marketing companies.
Drawing out the highest value from every marketing dollar.
Insider knowledge and insights about the B2B purchasing journey and how to browse a significantly fragmented consumer decision hierarchy.
Operationalizing marketing, from system and process development to making the first hires.

Ideas on what it takes to be a successful online marketer and CMO today.

If you are a CEO who feels your B2B marketing does not have a clear connection to business, you are not alone. A study completed by the marketing consultancy Fournaise discovered that 80% of President are not pleased with the work their top Marketing leader is doing. Evaluating what the present service reality implies for marketing leaders, I kept in mind the principle of a Peacetime leader and a Wartime leader from Ben Horowitz's book "The Hard Feature Of Hard Things."

Horowitz described the principle in a short article where he composed that the Peacetime CEO "concentrates on the big image and empowers her individuals to make detailed choices." The Wartime CEO, on the other hand, "values a speck of dust on a gnat's ass if it disrupted the prime directive."

The Peacetime CEO "comprehends what to do with a huge benefit," while the Wartime CEO "is paranoid." Peacetime CEO "works to minimize disagreement," and Wartime CEO "increases the contradictions."

Peacetime in organization is when a company has the capability to grow in its core market due to a significant benefit vs. the competitors. In times of peace, the service concentrates on broadening the marketplace and improving the organization's strengths. For CMO's, Peacetime is when we are absolutely free to be imaginative with our trademark name building by attending each exhibition with an even bigger cubicle than last year's and investing exorbitantly on sponsorships, all under the guise of constructing the brand.

Wartime is a different thing totally because, in Wartime, the life and death of our business might be on the line.
As I write this post, the entire world is fighting an unnoticeable enemy called COVID-19, which has let loose an aggravating dose of company uncertainty globally. For CMO's, the COVID-19 pandemic is organization equivalent of war. No longer do our 2020 marketing techniques make great sense.

This is more than remaining in an area with the light on, and all of a sudden you find yourself in pitch-black darkness, so you walk tepidly, continuing in the same instructions understanding that you were heading towards the door prior to the lights got shut off. No, not just has the pandemic turned the lights out, its blown a massive crater in our course that was not there prior to, and lacking light in the room, can not be seen. Nevertheless we should avoid at all costs falling under the crater.

No one longs for war, however a Wartime leader does not avoid the battle, rather, they recognize that Wartime is the single finest possibility to leapfrog sidetracked rivals and take ground away. What follows is a set of suggestions and concepts to help you discover your "Wartime CMO battle plan."

How to act as a Wartime CMO.

During Wartime, everybody remains in uncharted waters, however this is where the opportunity is for many companies who previously had a difficult time to compete versus larger competitors and dominant market forces. Now, for the extremely first time, you might be on comparable footing as your more effective rivals. It's the perfect chance to specify your future.

In an international decrease like what COVID-19 has activated, absolutely nothing makes sense. And yet, a few of your competitors will continue to perform their normal "tried and genuine" marketing playback, assuming that building the brand name with corporate interactions messages from the CEO is going to contribute to their service objectives. Now is the perfect chance for the Wartime CMO to take ground in the market.

Take strong action.

Imaginative marketing is required in Wartime more than ever. Now is the time to check your vital presumptions. As the around the world service environment has modified, and the stability of the core service cast doubt on, CMO's needs to be all set to reassess their preliminary strategy.
Think of that less customers will relate to decreased need. And lowered requirement means markets will not respond as they did prior to the crisis.

Think about it in this way, when individuals buy less, advertisers invest less. However prior to you follow a slash and burn the marketing invest playbook, here are a couple of things to be experienced about:

Financial investment bank Cowen and Company evaluated the last 6 financial recessions offered that 1950 and discovered that spending on direct marketing grew throughout the previous economic recessions. Significance, you will want to consider your mix of brand marketing carefully compared to sales activation marketing. It's not time to stop marketing. Remember, there will be deals throughout the board as media outlets see business cut their marketing and advertising spends. Press marketing and branding drops in a slowdown, but sales activation marketing constantly increases.

Shift costs to more measurable channels so that you can adjust quickly. Speed is whatever. Marketing initiatives able to be tracked with uniqueness will be a lot better than broad mass-market jobs. Downturns accelerate the reduction of interruption-based mass marketing. In its place will be an increased concentrate on measurable and relationship-based techniques.

Downturns develop an opportunity for companies that are more efficient at turning marketing monetary investments into revenue. In the middle of a decrease when marketers are cutting their costs is a fun time to benefit from low CPMs and Qualified public accounting professionals.

The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising finished a research study in 2008 that found, "Following a budget plan cut, a brand name will continue to get from the marketing financial investment made over the previous couple of years. This will minimize any short-term business impacts, and will result in an alarmingly deceptive increase in short-term success. The longer-term company harm will be more significant, however will not be observed in the start."

Millward Brown reported in their research study "Marketing During Economic Decline: To Invest or Not to Invest?" that 60% of trademark name that went 'dark' throughout a financial recession by cutting their TELEVISION marketing invest for 6 months experienced a decrease in Brand name Usage by 24% with a 28% reduction in Trademark name Image. Brand names that cut their advertisement spending plan at a higher rate relative to their competitors were at an even higher risk of share loss.
There are an extraordinary number of marketing studies that validate in a decrease, brand names that continue marketing and advertising efforts recover faster. It takes strong action to invest when the data advises that ROI is not possible. A Wartime CMO fights to maintain the spending plan needed to continue marketing.

Maximize the worth of each lead produced.

In a slowdown, risk-averse buyers take even longer to research purchases, and this applies similarly to B2B and B2C purchasers. When you first acknowledge a prospect, they will likely remain in the awareness phase of your funnel and will not be all set to engage with an SDR or BDR. Do not require this interaction. Marketing must make sure not to move a possibility through the funnel too rapidly. Keep in mind, the prospect's skilled life has been switched on its head. What was an issue simply a number of weeks or months earlier, is most likely not top of mind today.

It's appealing in a decrease to tighten your grip on leads because the reasoning is that now more than ever, all leads are important. Here is where lead scoring can be a valuable tool to recognize highly engaged prospects from those who are not likely to become your consumers. Now is the time for Marketers to hold on to MQL's for a prolonged period so that you can groom the prospect to the optimum possible degree prior to handing them off to sales as a SQL.

Without lead scoring and a perfect prospect tracking system throughout your digital channels, as many as 9 out of 10 MQL's who are not yet sales-ready might be lost. They will purchase, just not now. You don't wish to miss out on the future sale since you didn't keep in contact and include worth though the journey. In a "Wartime" economy, you should do whatever possible to enhance the worth of your MQL's.

CMO's that do a far better task of handling leads and establishing early-stage potential customers into sales-ready leads will remain in the finest position to win during the crisis and most absolutely once it has actually passed.

Concentrate on your present customers.

It's less expensive to grow earnings with your existing customers. Think of whether now is the time to scale back your mass lead generation programs and focus on building deeper relationships with those who already understand your organization. This does not imply to stop your requirement gen efforts, but it does imply that you may want to explore with product and sales how you can sell more to your existing customers.

In Peacetime, marketing groups are working on autopilot in pursuit of driving MQL's to please sales reps. For a service that has actually gotten traction on their method to ending up being a classification king or queen, this approach, though pricey feels good since of the amazing volume of activity that is being produced. However, without careful analysis, the high degree of activity fools numerous CMO's and management groups into thinking that their need generation engine is finely tuned when, in reality, it's discharging enormous contamination, i.e. exceptionally high CAC, greater than typical churn for the classification, low CLTV, and so on.

Marketing must line up with sales.

A brand-focused Marketing leader concerns business with an exceptional education and pedigree, having actually held significant titles with big business. There was a time when the marketing group might handle all corporate and product information and messaging with the market. If a purchaser preferred to learn about a brand-new item or check out whether a service may meet their requirement, they had no alternative however to call business.

Responses to concerns such as, Who's real and who isn't? - Who's item works, and whose does not? - What's coming? Now where offered with a single post on the correct forum or LinkedIn group. As a result, the power shifted to the purchaser.

We understand that online marketers are no longer in control of the buyer's journey. It is essential to define a funnel that describes evictions a possibility ought to hand down the method to doing business with the company. Buyers can get in touch with us on the platform of their picking. As the purchasing group has actually expanded to as numerous as 2 lots people, the notion that they will follow our process as we have actually prescribed is rarely genuine.

You require a value developer CMO who is revenue-focused.

A revenue-focused CMO will manage the engine behind a CEO's development plan. The shift from business being physical item developers or service companies, to digital innovation business where the item is dispersed as software application or software as a service through the Web, has decreased the function of marketing. And is the element a revenue-focused CMO who is a value developer is what all start-ups and disruptive development business require today.

Today, marketing needs higher levels of technical ability as a result of the surge of digital media and the marketing innovations that are related to internet marketing. This improvement has actually been highlighted by Forrester, mentioning a 20-year-old transition to digital as the driving force behind CMOs moving from being brand-builders to profits drivers. Forrester goes on to Mark Donnigan Startup Marketing Consultant report that a worth developer, revenue-driven Online online marketer, need to be a story maker and not just a writer.

The CMO today need to be a specialist at creating and leading creative engagement and business method to establish a classification for the organization to control.

Here are a couple of approaches that a revenue-driven CMO need to operate:

They will work thoroughly with the sales group to find and map the buyer's journey. Where presumptions do not match what is happening in the market, a worth designer CMO will leave the workplace and hang out in the field. This leader understands that you can not drive revenue if you aren't near to where the sale happens.

A revenue-focused CMO produces content targeted at each stage of the purchaser's journey. Consider the purchaser's journey as a set of gates where the content reacts to the primary issues a purchaser has at each action so that they can complete the buying journey.
The brand-new generation CMO will collect engagement metrics for each gate while examining the success of the end-to-end marketing cycle to provide the most timely and licensed result in their sellers. A value developer CMO sees marketing as close allies to the sales group.

The revenue-centered CMO is always discovering from and tweak the procedure so that they can enhance the amount and quality of leads that included to the pipeline and closed organization.
Incomes attribution and marketing ROI designs will reflect genuine outcomes, not extrapolated or "presumed" requirements. This information is essential for the revenue-focused CMO to resolve because they care about marketing's influence on business.

A revenue-focused CMO will focus on how their marketing efforts map to closed/won offers that drive the income and organization objectives of the company. Vanity metrics like traffic, click-thru rates, CPM, and CTA conversions inform just a piece of the story.

What to search for in your next CMO.

In the dynamic state of service today, working with an efficient CMO is among the most hard things to do. Every market, service, and market section is different. Even where you can acknowledge potential customers from the very same service neighborhood or environment, it's not adequate to simply take a look at years of experience or education. You require to analyze the motivations and thought patterns of the individual. Ask:
Is the CMO a problem solver?

The most significant danger today is on the marketplace side and not innovation. A marketing leader who isn't a concern solver will struggle to handle the fast-changing nature of the marketplace and community structure.

Are they a doer?
In many marketing groups, there will specify specialists who can work at the greatest level throughout the series of capabilities required. It's incumbent for a marketing leader to command consider as a doer. The CMO, who can demonstrate functional ability in the core locations that the group operates, will be more reputable than a manager just.

Has the CMO held cross-functional positions?

The finest way to guarantee that you bring in a CMO who is revenue and not brand-driven is to employ someone who has actually turned up through item, sales, and corporate method. Having direct exposure to the inner operations of item and sales is especially helpful as business technique is ending up being a more substantial part of the CMO's series of commitments.

Do they believe in systems or approach business in a structured way?

As digital has actually exploded the number of marketing interface points, allowing buyers to disaggregate the service from the purchasing journey, a CMO needs to have the ability to consider systems and structures rather of securely defined marketing lanes. It is no longer sufficient to prepare in regards to the social project, content marketing project, events, and PR, all as different activities. The effective CMO will begin with organization objective they are serving and be prepared to question whatever.

Can they connect outside the walls of the company to the market?

To end up being a story-maker, you ought to deserve listening to. A CMO is in the ideal position to presume the evangelistic function for the service. The most successful CMO's in any market are highly noticeable spokespeople for their business.
Are they a motivator?

As the CMO will require to work cross-functionally to guarantee that they have placing with item and sales, the marketing head ought to be an incentive. To develop a classification requires conversation, settlement, and the ability to try to find and reach a contract.

Do they allow their group, or run by command and control?

A CMO who attempts to lead with ultimate authority will struggle to accomplish service objectives of business. Marketing groups today should work as engineering groups operate in a nimble fashion. Instead of well organized 90-day project cadences, a nimble marketing group performs a consistent circulation of efforts while preserving the flexibility to alter as the marketplace or service needs figure out.

Does the CMO comprehend category style?

I have actually made up about category style and why every service needs to own a classification to accomplish its optimum potential. There is a structure for performing classification style. Still, whether a Marketer follows the summary or approaches category style another way, a CMO must be putting regular thought and preparation into how they specify the classification they mean to control. Without input from the CEO and other members of the executive group, there is no method to complete an appropriate classification style.

The Wartime CMO will require to increase the responsibility of marketing by showing the result of each marketing activity on the pipeline as determined by earnings contribution.
In a decrease, marketing should move the understanding of being a cost center to an earnings motorist. Reporting beyond the variety of marketing qualified leads produced to include the overall possibility worth for each lead source is an outstanding method to represent the function marketing is playing to drive the economic goals of service.

Studies have actually revealed that a properly developed landing page can double your conversion rate over sending traffic to your house page, which tends to do not have the proper call to action that matches the ad. Since of this, examining landing pages can increase conversions as much as 50% or more. Together, these techniques can supply a 2.5 X increase for every single dollar you invest in marketing. Yes, conversion rate optimization makes a difference.

During Wartime, every marketing dollar is valuable, and a Wartime CMO understands that winning will not boil down to a single method or "silver bullet" technique. Rather, lots of little things carried out well. The CMO, who can not comprehend the interplay of copy, messaging, imaginative style, and innovation, will struggle to discover and acknowledge rapidly where little adjustments can use much better conversions.

This material technique worked, for a season, sort-of. However with the increase of Google RankBrain, the method has not worked for several years. Without being in the middle of a crisis, you require to stop this ineffective activity. Now as spending plans are under pressure and every marketing activity must count, the manner in which we do content marketing needs to be upgraded.

Now, the material that we create requirements to interest someone searching for our solution, and it must consist of buyer intent activates like keywords and expressions that a purchaser would utilize as they get near acquiring choice. A Havas Group research study revealed that 84% of individuals expect brand to produce content, yet 60% of the content produced is of bad quality or unimportant, stopping working to meet the requirements of the audience. Despite a 71% correlation in between content efficiency and a brand name's impact on individual wellness, simply 40% of the world's leading 1,500 brand name names produce content that fulfills this requirement. Brand name's are failing to produce considerable content.

Stop producing assembly line content that is just meant to establish the brand name or introduce the item. Instead, material needs to target particular personas to fix any troubles preventing the possibility from proceeding. This material will take longer to produce and need a higher community and product understanding level.

CMO's in Wartime should have an outstanding understanding of the buyer mind and their psychological needs so that they can produce content that eliminates worry and addresses the sincere concerns they have.

CMO's in Wartime double down on Category Design so that their organization will come out as the leader, making them the dominant option, putting them in the enviable position to take as much as 76% of the economics from the entire category.

Read more about Category Design.

The B2B sales process today is fragmented and intricate, with lots of stakeholders requiring to validate a purchase decision. This renders basic marketing ROI and attribution techniques less helpful for anything besides academic research study.

The marketing function today breaks down into three practical pillars comprising Item, Requirement Generation, and Classification Design. Due to the fact that numerous marketing leaders have in fact not completely embraced category design, it's a remarkably easy way to beat an incumbent during a crisis. As quickly as the sector begins to discuss the classification as you have really defined it, your company will end up being the category and the apparent option.

To do Category Design needs a various working cadence. Wartime is the ideal time to embark on Classification Style considered that absolutely nothing is "normal" throughout a crisis.
To deal with the difficulty of building a Classification King service needs a ton of grit, determination, and an unfaltering drive to win. For the Wartime CMO, who handles the difficulty, there can be no bigger pot-o-gold if effective.

Read the book Play Larger to discover out all about category design.