Mark Donnigan - growth stage marketing

Mark Donnigan constructs disruptive ingenious startups. Mark's superpower is architecting go-to-market strategies and marketing movements that drive genuine service results for technical and product-centric founders. Mark's development and market development experience covers 20 years as a transformative B2B marketing and magnate, driving need, brand development, and strategy for startup and growth-stage companies.

As a specialist and virtual marketing leader (fractional-CMO), Mark Donnigan deals with start-up creators and CEOs from B2B disruptive development technology companies to assist them establish, bootstrap, and scale their marketing and go-to-market actions.

DISCOVER MORE: https://growthstage.marketing

Mark Donnigan has actually handled groups as big as 25, comprising SDRs, AEs, and marketing, producing $29mm/year. Mark carried budget obligations to $3mm/year for operations and $400k/year for marketing. Offer sizes varying from mid-five figures to mid-six figures every year.

As a start-up marketing expert, Mark Donnigan's incoming and outbound marketing experience include building and mentoring high-performance teams that perform as needed generation, brand name and product marketing, PR, digital, and events where he establishes and executes high-impact programs that drive profits, produce ROI, trigger the market, and delivers organization results.

Mark Donnigan believes that the best marketing experts and marketing leaders are doers. Mark's marketing experience consists of all aspects of need generation, ABM, SEO, e-mail 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 constantly works cross-functionally and has actually proven success, structure, leading, and mentoring marketing, sales, and company development groups that have in fact produced more than $500mm in revenue/shareholder worth.

Mark has found that constructing a category needs to be the top objective for every marketing leader and it is the structure of his approach and approach. Mark Donnigan has comprehensive B2B marketing experience that includes building and mentoring high-performance teams.

Mark Donnigan is a systems thinker, and he puts a high worth on team effort. Mark has extensive experience working together with sales, item, operations, and finance to ensure that business and revenue goals of the company are constantly exceeded.

Development Phase Marketing exists to offer entrepreneurs and creators services for:

Architecting the market category that is finest matched to the unique value proposal of your technology.
High effect marketing assistance so that you can reach your earnings objectives and scale sustainably.
Accomplishing go-to-market alignment across the sales and marketing organizations.
Extracting the highest value from every marketing dollar.
Insider knowledge and insights about the B2B buying journey and how to navigate an increasingly fragmented client choice hierarchy.
Operationalizing marketing, from system and process advancement to making the very first hires.

Thoughts on what it takes to be an effective marketer and CMO today.

If you are a CEO who feels your B2B marketing does not have a clear connection to the company, you are not alone. A study completed by the marketing consultancy Fournaise discovered that 80% of President are not happy with the work their leading Marketing leader is doing. Evaluating what today organization reality means 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 an article where he made up that the Peacetime CEO "concentrates on the huge image and empowers her individuals to make in-depth decisions." The Wartime CEO, on the other hand, "appreciates a speck of dust on a gnat's ass if it interfered with the prime directive."

The Peacetime CEO "understands what to do with a big benefit," while the Wartime CEO "is paranoid." Peacetime CEO "works to decrease conflict," and Wartime CEO "heightens the contradictions."

Peacetime in organization is when a service has the ability to grow in its core market due to a substantial benefit vs. the competitors. In times of peace, business concentrates on broadening the market and enhancing business's strengths. For CMO's, Peacetime is when we are completely free to be imaginative with our brand building by going to each exhibit with an even larger cubicle than in 2015's and investing exorbitantly on sponsorships, all under the guise of building the trademark name.

Wartime is a different thing entirely because, in Wartime, the life and death of our organization might be on the line.
As I write this post, the entire world is fighting an invisible opponent called COVID-19, which has let loose a frustrating dosage of business unpredictability globally. For CMO's, the COVID-19 pandemic is business equivalent of war. No longer do our 2020 marketing strategies make great sense.

This is more than being in an area with the light on, and suddenly you find yourself in pitch-black darkness, so you walk tepidly, continuing in the exact same directions understanding that you were heading toward the door prior to the lights got switched off. No, not simply has the pandemic turned the lights out, its blown an enormous crater in our course that was not there previous to, and without light in the space, can not be seen. However we should prevent at all expenses falling under the crater.

No one longs for war, however a Wartime leader does not diminish from the fight, instead, they recognize that Wartime is the single finest chance to leapfrog sidetracked competitors and take ground away. What follows is a set of ideas and concepts to help you find your "Wartime CMO fight strategy."

How to function as a Wartime CMO.

Throughout Wartime, everyone is in uncharted waters, but this is where the opportunity is for lots of business who previously had a difficult time to contend versus larger competitors and dominant market forces. Now, for the very very first time, you might be on equivalent footing as your more powerful rivals. It's the perfect opportunity to define your future.

In an international reduction like what COVID-19 has triggered, definitely nothing makes sense. And yet, a few of your competitors will continue to perform their normal "attempted and genuine" marketing playback, assuming that building the brand with business interactions messages from the CEO is going to add to their service goals. Now is the ideal chance for the Wartime CMO to take ground in the market.

Take strong action.

Creative marketing is required in Wartime more than ever. Now is the time to inspect your important presumptions. As the worldwide organization environment has modified, and the stability of the core organization brought into question, CMO's must be all set to reassess their initial strategy.
Consider that less customers will correspond to reduced requirement. And decreased need implies markets will not respond as they did prior to the crisis.

Think about it in this manner, when people buy less, marketers invest less. However prior to you follow a slash and burn the marketing invest playbook, here are a couple of things to be well-informed about:

Investment bank Cowen and Business evaluated the last 6 economic declines considered that 1950 and found that spending on direct marketing grew throughout the previous economic slumps. Significance, you will want to consider your mix of trademark name 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 companies cut their marketing and advertising spends. Push marketing and branding drops in a slowdown, but sales activation marketing constantly increases.

Shift spending to more measurable channels so that you can adjust quickly. Speed is whatever. Marketing initiatives able to be tracked with specificity will be a lot better than broad mass-market projects. Slowdowns speed up the decline of interruption-based mass marketing. In its location will be an increased concentrate on quantifiable and relationship-based techniques.

Slumps create an opportunity for companies that are more effective at turning marketing monetary investments into profits. In the middle of a decrease when marketers are cutting their spending is an enjoyable time to take advantage of low CPMs and Licensed public accountants.

The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising ended up a study in 2008 that discovered, "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 lower any short-term service effects, and will lead to an alarmingly deceptive boost in short-term success. The longer-term organization damage will be more considerable, however will not be noticed in the beginning."

Millward Brown reported in their research study "Marketing During Economic Recession: To Invest or Not to Invest?" that 60% of trademark name that went 'dark' during a financial recession by cutting their TV marketing invest for 6 months experienced a decline in Brand Use by 24% with a 28% decrease in Trademark name Image. Brands that cut their ad budget plan at a higher rate relative to their competitors were at an even higher danger of share loss.
There are an extraordinary variety of marketing studies that validate in a decline, brand name names that continue marketing and advertising efforts recover faster. It takes strong action to invest when the data suggests that ROI is not possible. A Wartime CMO battles to keep the budget plan required to continue marketing.

Maximize the worth of each lead produced.

In a slowdown, risk-averse purchasers take even longer to research purchases, and this uses similarly to B2B and B2C purchasers. When you first acknowledge a possibility, they will likely stay 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 prospect through the funnel too rapidly. Keep in mind, the prospect's expert life has actually been switched on its head. What was a concern just a couple of weeks or months ago, is likely not top of mind today.

It's appealing in a decrease to tighten your grip on leads considering that the reasoning is that now more than ever, all leads are necessary. Here is where lead scoring can be a valuable tool to recognize highly engaged potential customers from those who are not likely to become your clients. Now is the time for Online marketers to hold on to MQL's for an extended duration so that you can groom the prospect to the optimum possible degree prior to handing GET MORE INFO them off to sales as a SQL.

Without lead scoring and a perfect possibility tracking system throughout your digital channels, as lots of as 9 out of 10 MQL's who are not yet sales-ready might be lost. They will buy, just not now. You do not 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 must do everything possible to enhance the worth of your MQL's.

CMO's that do a better task of dealing with leads and developing early-stage potential customers into sales-ready leads will remain in the finest position to win during the crisis and most certainly once it has passed.

Focus on your present customers.

It's more affordable to grow incomes with your existing consumers. Believe about whether now is the time to scale back your mass lead generation programs and focus on structure deeper relationships with those who currently understand your organization. This does not suggest to stop your requirement gen efforts, however it does suggest that you might wish to explore with item and sales how you can offer more to your existing clients.

In Peacetime, marketing groups are running on autopilot in pursuit of driving MQL's to please sales reps. For a company that has gotten traction on their method to becoming a category king or queen, this method, though expensive feels good because of the exceptional volume of activity that is being produced. Nevertheless, without careful analysis, the high degree of activity fools numerous CMO's and management groups into believing that their need generation engine is carefully tuned when, in reality, it's producing enormous contamination, i.e. extremely high CAC, higher than typical churn for the category, low CLTV, and so on.

Marketing needs to line up with sales.

A brand-focused Marketing leader worries the business with an amazing education and pedigree, having in fact held significant titles with big companies. There was a time when the marketing group may manage all business and product information and messaging with the market. If a purchaser wanted to learn about a brand-new item or check out whether a solution may fulfill their requirement, they had no option however to call the service.

Actions to concerns such as, Who's authentic and who isn't? - Who's product works, and whose does not? - What's coming? Now where readily available with a single post on the appropriate online forum or LinkedIn group. As an outcome, the power shifted to the buyer.

We understand that online marketers are no longer in control of the purchaser's journey. It is very important to specify a funnel that details expulsions a possibility should pass on the method to doing organization with the company. Purchasers can connect with us on the platform of their choosing. As the buying group has actually expanded to as numerous as two lots people, the idea that they will follow our procedure as we have actually prescribed is rarely real.

You need a worth developer CMO who is revenue-focused.

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

Today, marketing requires higher levels of technical capability as an outcome of the explosion of digital media and the marketing technologies that are related to internet marketing. This transformation has been highlighted by Forrester, discussing a 20-year-old shift to digital as the driving force behind CMOs moving from being brand-builders to revenue drivers. Forrester goes on to report that a value designer, revenue-driven Online marketer, must be a story maker and not simply a writer.

The CMO today need to be a professional at developing and leading creative engagement and service approach to establish a classification for the service to dominate.

Here are a number of techniques that a revenue-driven CMO requirement to run:

They will work thoroughly with the sales group to discover and map the buyer's journey. Where assumptions do not match what is occurring in the market, a value designer CMO will leave the work environment and hang out in the field. This leader understands that you can not drive profits if you aren't close to where the sale takes place.

A revenue-focused CMO develops content targeted at each stage of the buyer's journey. Consider the purchaser's journey as a set of gates where the material reacts to the main concerns a buyer has at each action so that they can finish the purchasing journey.
The new generation CMO will collect engagement metrics for each gate while assessing the success of the end-to-end marketing cycle to deliver the most prompt and licensed leads to their sellers. A worth developer CMO sees marketing as close allies to the sales group.

The revenue-centered CMO is constantly finding from and fine-tuning the process so that they can enhance the amount and quality of leads that contributed to the pipeline and closed organization.
Revenues attribution and marketing ROI styles will reflect genuine outcomes, not theorized or "presumed" requirements. This information is vital for the revenue-focused CMO to solve given that they care about marketing's influence on business.

A revenue-focused CMO will concentrate on how their marketing efforts map to closed/won offers that drive the earnings and business goals of the organization. Vanity metrics like traffic, click-thru rates, CPM, and CTA conversions tell just a piece of the story.

What to look for in your next CMO.

In the dynamic state of business today, dealing with an effective CMO is amongst the most challenging things to do. Every market, business, and market area is various. Even where you can acknowledge prospects from the very same company neighborhood or environment, it's inadequate to simply take a look at years of experience or education. You require to examine the motivations and thought patterns of the person. Ask:
Is the CMO a problem solver?

The most substantial danger today is on the marketplace side and not innovation. A marketing leader who isn't a problem solver will have a hard time to handle the fast-changing nature of the market and neighborhood building.

Are they a doer?
In lots of marketing groups, there will be specific experts who can operate at the highest level throughout the series of abilities needed. It's incumbent for a marketing leader to command consider a doer. The CMO, who can show practical capability in the core areas that the group runs, will be more dependable than a manager just.

Has the CMO held cross-functional positions?

The finest way to guarantee that you attract a CMO who is profits and not brand-driven is to work with somebody who has turned up through product, sales, and business approach. Having direct exposure to the inner workings of item and sales is particularly helpful as business method is becoming a more significant part of the CMO's series of commitments.

Do they believe in systems or technique business in a structured manner?

As digital has actually exploded the variety of marketing interface points, enabling purchasers to disaggregate the service from the purchasing journey, a CMO needs to have the ability to consider systems and structures instead of securely defined marketing lanes. It is no longer adequate to prepare in concerns to the social task, content marketing task, events, and PR, all as separate activities. The effective CMO will start with organization objective they are serving and be prepared to question everything.

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

To wind up being a story-maker, you need to be worthy of listening to. A CMO remains in the perfect position to presume the evangelistic function for the business. The most effective CMO's in any market are extremely visible spokespeople for their business.
Are they a motivator?

As the CMO will need to work cross-functionally to ensure that they have placing with product and sales, the marketing head ought to be a motivator. To establish a classification needs discussion, settlement, and the ability to search for and reach a contract.

Do they enable their group, or operate by command and control?

A CMO who attempts to lead with supreme authority will struggle to achieve service goals of the business. Marketing groups today need to work as engineering groups work in an agile style. Instead of nicely arranged 90-day job cadences, a nimble marketing group carries out a consistent circulation of efforts while preserving the adaptability to alter as the marketplace or service needs figure out.

Does the CMO comprehend classification design?

I have really composed about category design and why every service needs to own a category to achieve its ideal capacity. There is a framework for carrying out classification design. Still, whether a Marketer follows the summary or techniques category design another way, a CMO should be putting routine thought and preparation into how they define the category they imply to control. Without input from the CEO and other members of the executive group, there is no chance to complete a proper classification style.

The Wartime CMO will require to increase the accountability of marketing by showing the impact of each marketing activity on the pipeline as determined by income contribution.
In a sluggish down, marketing should move the understanding of being a cost center to an earnings vehicle driver. Reporting beyond the number of marketing qualified leads produced to include the total chance worth for each lead source is an exceptional method to represent the function marketing is playing to drive the economic goals of company.

Research studies have in fact exposed that an appropriately created landing page can double your conversion rate over sending traffic to your home page, which tends to do not have the proper call to action that matches the ad. Since of this, inspecting landing pages can increase conversions as much as 50% or more. Together, these methods can supply a 2.5 X increase for every single single dollar you invest in marketing. Yes, conversion rate optimization makes a difference.

During Wartime, every marketing dollar is important, and a Wartime CMO understands that winning will not boil down to a single technique or "silver bullet" method. Instead, many little things carried out well. The CMO, who can not understand the interaction of copy, messaging, creative design, and development, will have a hard time to find and recognize quickly where small 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 actually not worked for lots of years. Without remaining in the middle of a crisis, you need to stop this inefficient activity. Now as budgets are under pressure and every marketing activity should count, the method that we do content marketing needs to be updated.

Now, the content that we create needs to interest someone searching for our solution, and it needs to consist of purchaser intent activates like keywords and expressions that a buyer would utilize as they get near to purchasing choice. A Havas Group research study exposed that 84% of individuals expect trademark name to produce material, yet 60% of the content produced is of bad quality or unimportant, failing to meet the needs of the audience. Regardless of a 71% connection in between content effectiveness and a brand's impact on personal health, simply 40% of the world's leading 1,500 trademark name produce material that meets this requirement. Trademark name's are stopping working to produce significant material.

Stop producing assembly line content that is simply implied to establish the brand or introduce the product. Instead, material must target particular personas to fix any holdups avoiding the prospect from carrying on. This content will take longer to produce and need a higher community and product knowledge level.

CMO's in Wartime must have an excellent understanding of the buyer psyche and their psychological requirements so that they can create content that relieves fear and addresses the genuine issues they have.

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

Find out more about Classification Design.

The B2B sales process today is fragmented and complicated, with great deals of stakeholders needing to validate a purchase decision. This renders basic marketing ROI and attribution strategies less advantageous for anything besides scholastic research study.

The marketing function today breaks down into 3 practical pillars making up Item, Need Generation, and Category Design. Because many marketing leaders have really not entirely embraced classification style, it's a surprisingly simple method to beat an incumbent throughout a crisis. As quickly as the sector starts to discuss the classification as you have really specified it, your organization will wind up being the category and the apparent option.

To do Classification Style needs a different working cadence. Wartime is the perfect time to embark on Classification Style considered that absolutely nothing is "typical" during a crisis.
To deal with the difficulty of building a Classification King organization requires a heap of grit, decision, and an unfaltering drive to win. For the Wartime CMO, who handles the obstacle, there can be no larger pot-o-gold if effective.

Check out the book Play Larger to discover out everything about category design.