Today’s marketing leaders are under a constant challenge to scrutinise how they can have the biggest impact – something that isn’t going to change any time soon with new conditions and tools relentlessly changing how business is done.
At tml Partners we’re often asked about the common traits of great marketing leaders. For hard skills this is heavily dependent on numerous aspects ranging from sector, product and customer profile through to the size of an organisation.
However, having met many successful CMOs and Marketing Directors from a wide range of backgrounds and engineered hundreds of senior marketing appointments over the years, these are some of the softer skills that are consistently evident.
- Upbeat influencers
A Marketing Director’s ability to deliver isn’t only a product of company culture. It depends on the attributes of the individual. The marketing leader must stand up to the task of being a strategic marketer and business leader. Being the authoritative voice of the customer requires a constant need to positively educate and influence those outside marketing.
I’ve lost count of the amount of times senior marketers have complained about the frustrations of senior stakeholders, other functional heads or the Board “not getting” marketing which makes their job difficult to do. Many businesses are not marketing led (albeit many say they are) so the impact a Marketing Director can have is directly related to their ability to educate and influence these people.
Having “strong influencing skills” has almost become a customary addition to every job description we see. But what does this look like in practice?
When we meet successful Marketing Directors their influencing skills are self-evident. They talk fluidly about changing perceptions, embracing change and have been able to break through management silos by being a customer thread in the leadership team.
If you’re a marketing leader and there are senior people in your organisation who “don’t get marketing” then you have to ask yourself what your role is in changing those perceptions.
- Performance cultures
If point one is about the need to influence – this second point is about how best to achieve influence.
Performance marketing is the catalyst to drive influence. When we interview marketers from the best brands they are able to talk clearly about performance and results because it’s in the DNA of their business – a culture that has been nurtured by the marketing leader.
The best marketing leaders create a culture with a data centric and performance driven discipline – where everyone in the department is able to directly identify successful business outcomes to marketing investments. It becomes second nature for their management team to use data to target precisely and embed processes that measure continuously.
Bringing this insight into the Boardroom to reduce uncertainty in the marketing domain is critical for today’s CMO or Marketing Director. But data and results are no longer enough on their own. With brand purpose high on the C-suite agenda as well as search and social marketing being so content hungry, today’s marketing leaders also need to be master storytellers and content gurus.
- Masters of authentic storytelling
Here’s a secret. Today’s best marketing leaders are great sales people.
Dan Pink has written an excellent book called “To Sell is Human” which is well worth a read. He talks persuasively about how “we’re all in sales now” and our ability to ‘move’ people by selling our ideas and beliefs so that others will act on them. It’s something the best marketing leaders are masters at – externally with customers and internally with stakeholders through authentic storytelling.
Great Marketing Directors recognise that customers are inundated by social noise and pleas for their attention. Today customers are channel blind. So marketing heads have to lead brand interactions with stories and experiences that serve the customer need seamlessly across multiple channels.
With authentic stories and great content top marketers are able to intuitively situate their brands at the moments that matter. They achieve customer centricity and authentic content that wins the hearts and minds of their audience and the Boardroom.
- Generational chameleons
As people live and work longer our offices today have up to four wildly different generations all under one roof. We know strong leaders tend to have high EQs and there is plenty written on the topic. Whilst great marketing leaders also have high emotional intelligence it is their ability to effortlessly communicate with many different generations and demographics that truly sets the best apart.
Again we see this having equal importance internally as it does externally. With the customer in mind a Marketing Director of course has to be instinctively aware of the latest buying habits and trends of many demographics. But inside the organisation and down the supply chain, your market leader now has to master being a communication chameleon. From dealing with digital natives, analysts, PRs and hacks through to sales, designers and brands strategists they have to be able to switch wavelengths between creative and analytical at the turn of a head.
In the Boardroom they must again adjust their style to communicate at another level, translating everything into meaningful and digestible language – weaving together a feast of multigenerational language by cutting through the noise and latest buzzwords to simply illustrate what the customer needs. They often will have to strike a careful balance between delivering visionary high impact marketing whilst subtly herding others away from the latest fads.
In this area of communication – bridging the gap between generations – we typically see marketing heads excel more than any other functional head. It’s also why it’s common to see marketing departments being a driver for changing dated working habits in many organisations – with the Marketing Directors ability to decipher when to champion positive change or when to manage counter productive behaviour.
- Talent magnets
The final habit of the best marketing leaders is their ability to hire and nurture great talent and become a magnet for rising stars.
Early in their tenure they set high expectations for fresh and existing talent. Typically, they are open-minded about where this talent may come from and welcome experience and insight from other sectors, valiantly avoiding the comfort of recruiting like-for-like.
They create an academy like culture in the marketing department where there is a thirst for people to learn, excel and develop. Coaching is inherent in the team and top talent will always have a clear path ahead. Rather than spending years in the same role, the best marketing heads encourage change and move talent around – often ensuring people aren’t in the same role for more than two years.
They develop and diversify the skills of their successors to ensure they have the range of tools and managerial bandwidth they’ll need. And whilst this is great for retention and optimising longevity of service, they respect when the time comes for some of their top talent to go on to bigger opportunities.
So across sectors these are the habits we consistently see in the success stories and certainly what aspiring CMOs and Marketing Directors should look to emulate.
The final ingredient for great marketing leaders to flourish is simply ‘time’ – all the above points take time to identify and implement. Any organisation with a high turnover of Marketing Directors cannot have positive outcomes. It takes time for a marketing leader to understand the needs of the Board and their department before they can effectively contribute to business success.
Whilst companies must always invest in recruiting the right marketing leaders, it is also marketing leaders that need to spend more time taking the right job and doing it right. Then we will see more success stories and more Board level marketing appointments to ensure marketing gets the attention it deserves at the highest levels.
Simon Bassett is the Managing Director of tml Partners.
tml Partners specialise in placing CMOs, Marketing Directors and their management team.
