Congrats on the new CMO job!
You've probably filled out all the paperwork, set up your email, maybe even scheduled your first few meetings, and now you're ready. But what should you tackle first? How will you know if you're seeing the whole picture? What aren't you thinking about that you should?
Coming into an organization as the new CMO or marketing lead means you need to internalize everything from brand messaging and internal dynamics to top marketing channels and customer profiles. And you need to do it quickly because time’s already ticking for you to make a positive change in the sales funnel and brand recognition.
We’ve made it a bit simpler. For your first few weeks, consult this guide to make sure you’re asking the right questions of the right people—and not digging yourself into a hole while you do it. We’ve even written out the questions below.
MAKE THE MOST OF YOUR MEETINGS
We recommend planning a series of meetings to ask the questions outlined below in order to get the full story you need to do your best work and make an impact.
Take copious notes in these internal meetings, and try very hard not to make commitments in them. You will be eager to, but at this point, you don’t know enough to make promises you can keep with confidence.
You may hear wildly conflicting accounts, which may need some time to resolve. Don’t try to understand fully what you hear just yet; this is about taking it all in and looking for patterns of information or themes.
Focus on taking excellent notes and try to record thoughts after each meeting.
Give yourself short breaks between meetings to record more of your insights. It’s a little-known hack that taking time to reflect and process your own thoughts is the best way to remember and assimilate what you’ve learned.
You may want to consider creating a Leader’s Operating Guide or User’s Guide for yourself—a quick get-to-know-ya document that introduces people to your preferred styles of communicating, when to schedule meetings with you, and any quirks that others may want to know. Forbes has some tips to get you started.
BRASS TACKS: WHAT QUESTIONS TO ASK
We’ve seen CMOs struggle with budget, buy-in, and proving ROI. Some of the problems CMOs face down the road could be avoided by having conversations that pull out this information sooner.
MEET WITH YOUR MANAGER
Questions for your Manager:
What are the key priorities you have in mind for my first 90 days?
What’s my budget and how do I access it?
Who do you think I should meet with?
How do you like to receive information? What drives you crazy as my manager and how can I best support your objectives?
MEET WITH YOUR MARKETING TEAM
Questions for your Marketing Team:
What are your personal goals and objectives?
What’s standing in your way?
What do you wish the leadership of this company knew but doesn’t seem to?
What’s your personal schedule and preferred way of working? How do you like to receive feedback and information?
What tools and processes does the team use to get work done? (And do you like them?)
MEET WITH YOUR COUNTERPARTS
Questions for Finance:
You want to establish that you are a partner to the company’s financial objectives and laser-focused on making money from day one. Get to know your counterpart in finance as well as possible. This relationship will be critical to getting the budget you’ll need to make your vision into reality.
How are funds allocated and budgeted?
How does the organization make its money; what’s most lucrative?
What are the company’s financial objectives and where does marketing fit in?
What can you tell me about the context I’m coming into?
Questions for Engineering:
Your website is your window to the world, so you need partners that will walk with you through fun experiments like CTA testing, pop-ups, and landing pages.
How are changes made to the website? On the marketing pages?
What’s the normal turnaround time for, say, a landing page or a new form page?
How is the marketing team perceived in the engineering department? Is this a relationship that needs work to improve, or is it in a great place already?
Are we using a tag manager and if so, which one?
How difficult is it to implement on-page structural changes to the code to support marketing activities (i.e., SEO, structured data, etc)?
How optimized is the site currently for organic marketing activities (i.e., SEO, social, etc)?
How is the email system managed? Have we already been tagging emails with tracking parameters for channel attribution?
Questions for Sales/Biz Dev:
Get to know and understand the Sales team. They can often be excellent channels of understanding and support. These individuals are the soft power in the sales organization.
Who are the top salespeople?
What materials or steps in the sales process could marketing make easier for you?
Do you have a good sense for how marketing drives leads to sales? Or is it a bit of a mystery?
How is the marketing team perceived by the sales department? Is this a relationship that needs work to improve, or is it in a great place already?
Questions for Legal:
Depending on the regulatory environment of your company, your legal department may be your constant companion or an occasional colleague. Either way, it’s better to find them earlier than later and start to build the relationship and trust you’ll need to navigate important questions.
Are we currently complying with the GDPR and/or CCPA?
What kind of data retention policies do we have in place and are we compliant with them?
Do we already have the legal framework in place to do retargeting?
Are there any restrictions from a legal standpoint on the marketing activities we can do?
Questions for Business Units:
If you are managing a horizontal team of marketers that work with business units, you’ll want to meet with those managers and understand their perspectives.
How has marketing supported you in the past and how did that go?
What are your goals and what’s standing in your way?
What are your particular business objectives? Your frustrations?
Questions for Product Management:
If product management is where technology strategy happens, you’ll want to support this team to make the most of product launches and new features.
How has marketing supported you in the past and how did that go?
What are your goals and what’s standing in your way?
Do you have a feature road map I can review? How can I identify which features on the road map are metrics-driven, customer-request driven, or for customer delight?
How is marketing informed of upcoming changes to the feature road map? How can I best stay informed?
Are there any major product launches upcoming in the next year that you believe will require considerable marketing resources and support?
Questions for Data/IT/Analytics:
In order to measure and report on the goals you’re going to set, you’ve got to have the data.
Are we currently using a tag manager on the website?
How often have we been reviewing data?
What systems are we using to manage and report on data?
How are we unifying data across different platforms currently?
When was the last time our martech stack and data were audited for accuracy?
Where are our biggest blind spots in tracking and attribution in the sales funnel?
MEETINGS TELL YOU A LOT.
BUT KEEP DIGGING AND REFLECTING.
Begin reviewing all your internal marketing artifacts (and note the absence of key ones like a branding or positioning statement).
Begin reviewing marketing data as it exists: analytics performance, cost per acquisition, agency costs, etc.
Who are the company’s customers and what do they think of the brand? Does the company know this information as well as we should? If the company doesn’t know, this is likely very high priority.
THINGS TO BE THINKING ABOUT MONTH ONE:
How do we make money and how does marketing fit in? How is it perceived across the organization? What barriers do we face internally?
Look for red flags or smoking guns. What is causing difficulty in the organization and the marketing department specifically? To be blunt, organizations don’t switch CMOs easily or without a reason. Is anyone on the team unhappy, overworked, or unfulfilled? Make notes and refer to them as time goes on.
Don’t overpromise. The larger the company, the more time you will need to establish your authority and make any necessary changes. You may wish to simply continue the current budget, but focus on managing it to new priorities, then go back for more once you show results.
Along the way, you’ll be preparing for your first board or executive presentation. In your first quarter, if not sooner, you’ll be asked to propose a budget and a hiring plan.
CASE STUDY: MEET VANESSA Fiske, DVD NETFLIX
“When I was hired at DVD Netflix in 2015, less than 40% of Netflix customers were aware that mail subscription was still a service. Marketing was constrained by budget and staff, and I faced the challenge of acquiring and engaging customers in a declining market while keeping costs low. I needed help analyzing the data and unraveling the opportunities, so I reached out to Timeshare CMO.
TCMO conducted an SEO audit and suggested modifications that drove record SEO performance. They audited our paid advertising agency’s performance and worked with those agencies the way an in-house CMO would. The TCMO team helped us make the case to the executive team for starting a blog, then designed and executed that blog to great success. Ultimately, Timeshare CMO helped our small team see 10 straight months of year over year growth in a declining market, giving me everything I needed to make my case to the executive team—and always making me the hero of the story.”
LET’S MAKE YOU A ROCKSTAR
We can help you set a course that will keep your new Marketing job longer. Starting with coaching prior to your start date or in your first months on the job, Timeshare CMO can be your secret weapon for understanding your new company and building your marketing plan.
When you’re ready, we can also help your team execute on that plan. From a full-stack marketing and analytics audit to hiring plans and tactical execution, we’ll navigate alongside you to ensure your success.