As a CMO, how to build a sustainable growth cycle
You would like to grow your revenue. That’s a no-brainer.
But, how to increase the number of leads without increasing the cost per lead? And how to start building a sustainable growth model i.s.o. the day to day pressure on more leads?
It’s an issue many CMO’s struggle with.
In many companies, the reality is a high monthly or even weekly pressure on sales whilst CMO’s rather focus on a 6-12 months time span. The classic balance between the short and the long term. In addition, marketing leaders would like to invest at least a part of their budget in their brand and organic growth rather than bring more money to Google and Meta. How to break through this gridlock and start building your brand?
There’s been written a lot about this topic in books by Byron Sharp, Les Binet & Peter Field and this article by Tom Roach. They state that you need to invest in your brand (60%) and thus the long term or at least find an equilibrium between the short & long term.
One quote of Peter Drucker on this I especially like; “Long-term results can’t be achieved by piling short-term results on short-term results”
So, with this background let me share how I put this in practice.
In my experience it’s about getting the story straight, creating room to maneuver and just start small and use tools to prove you’re on the right track.
Get the story straight
Create a clear understanding that achieving your marketing goals will make sure that the company will achieve their business goals.
This will create evidence for the CFO and CEO that the marketing euros are spent wisely and will drive the attention more to the long term. Your goals, acquiring more customers and improving the customer lifetime value in an efficient way (read: less money), should be easy to align with the business strategy. If not, then they’re not in it for the long run.
We have developed a simple, real time dashboard based on this theory in order to prove and predict brand awareness. This could also be used to prove that competition is investing more brand marketing euros and is gaining share or that you are ahead of competition and should continue to invest in order to keep up.
Ga hiermee experimenteren door je biedingen te verhogen op basis van devices of dag / tijd van de week. Zo kan je precies inspelen op het gedrag van jouw klanten. Ook hier geldt, experimenteer en ga door met wat werkt.
Create room to maneuver
Since we’re talking about the mid term, the new strategic approach will not have an effect overnight. But, I used a couple of ways to create some space. Of course, in consultation with the CFO/ CEO.
a. Share your plan and be realistic on the timelines when it will have an impact. The effect of branding will take some time. However, re-aligning your paid campaigns to the strategy should show result in weeks rather than months
b. ‘Lock’ the Cost per Order or Lead at a certain level and allocate the savings you get with the optimisation on performance to investing in your brand. I worked for a high volume sales company and every saved dime made a big difference that after a couple of months could be invested in higher up in the funnel.
c. Agree on a percentage of the total revenue that could be used for marketing. Play the game of revenue management (A/ B tests with pricing, packages or other ways of upsell) and every plus is for the brand.
Don’t forget to create more and more room by telling the team’s successes! Als deze statistieken slechter presteren dan je organische verkeer, betekent het dat je advertenties en landingspagina niet goed overeenkomen. Mensen zijn bereid om op je advertentie te klikken, maar de landingspagina kan ze niet vasthouden. Een aanpassing op de landingspagina of de ad kan dan uitkomst bieden.
Tools to prove
Use the ‘start small, learn fast, dream big’ approach. Luckily there’s an abundance of tools to prove you’re on the right track and can easily be aligned with your metrics.
Look at the full funnel, campaigns and website/ app, and create a cadence with the team on analysis – test – scale. E.g. analyze which customers have a high customer lifetime value and build specific acquisition campaigns on that.
As a bonus, try to automate something every week. This way, your marketers will have more time to steer more strategically, improving your results exponentially.
CMO’s can break out of the short-term focused gridlock and start building on growth that can drive short- and long-term business performance. Create a solid story in line with the business strategy, create some room to maneuver and start small with clear metrics to prove you’re on the right track.
Thoughts? Questions? More insights needed on your analysis or strategy?
Feel free to contact me!
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