Mark Donnigan - growth stage marketing



Mark Donnigan builds disruptive ingenious start-ups. Mark's superpower is architecting go-to-market plans and marketing motions that drive real service outcomes for technical and product-centric creators. Mark's growth and market development experience spans twenty years as a transformative B2B marketing and company leader, driving demand, brand name development, and strategy for start-up and growth-stage companies.

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

FIND OUT MORE: https://growthstage.marketing

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

As a start-up marketing specialist, Mark Donnigan's inbound and outbound marketing experience consist of structure and mentoring high-performance groups that execute on need generation, brand name and product marketing, PR, digital, and occasions where he establishes and implements high-impact programs that drive revenue, produce ROI, trigger the marketplace, and provides company results.

Mark Donnigan believes that the finest marketing experts and marketing leaders are doers. Mark's marketing experience includes all aspects of requirement generation, ABM, SEO, e-mail marketing, paid marketing, events, PR (internal & agency), 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 proven success, structure, leading, and mentoring marketing, sales, and organization development groups that have in fact produced more than $500mm in revenue/shareholder worth.

Mark has actually found that constructing a category should be the top goal for every marketing leader and it is the foundation of his approach and approach. Mark Donnigan has comprehensive B2B marketing experience that consists of structure and mentoring high-performance teams.

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

Development Phase Marketing exists to provide entrepreneurs and founders services for:

Architecting the market category that is finest matched to the distinct worth proposition of your innovation.
High effect marketing support so that you can reach your income goals and scale sustainably.
Achieving go-to-market alignment across the sales and marketing organizations.
Drawing out the greatest worth from every marketing dollar.
Insider understanding and insights about the B2B purchasing journey and how to browse an increasingly fragmented client decision hierarchy.
Operationalizing marketing, from system and process development to making the 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 service, you are not alone. A study completed by the marketing consultancy Fournaise found that 80% of President are not happy with the work their top Marketing leader is doing. Evaluating what the present business reality suggests for marketing leaders, I kept in mind the principle of a Peacetime leader and a Wartime leader from Ben Horowitz's book "The Hard Thing About Hard Things."

Horowitz explained the concept in an article where he composed that the Peacetime CEO "concentrates on the huge image and empowers her individuals to make in-depth choices." The Wartime CEO, on the other hand, "values a speck of dust on a gnat's ass if it interfered with the prime instruction."

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

Peacetime in company is when a business has the capability to grow in its core market due to a significant benefit vs. the competitors. In times of peace, business focuses on broadening the market and boosting business's strengths. For CMO's, Peacetime is when we are absolutely free to be imaginative with our brand name structure by going to each exhibition with an even larger cubicle than last year's and investing exorbitantly on sponsorships, all under the guise of building the brand.

Wartime is a various thing totally because, in Wartime, the life and death of our business may be on the line.
As I write this post, the whole world is fighting an undetectable opponent called COVID-19, which has let loose a discouraging dose of organization unpredictability internationally. 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 being in an area with the light on, and suddenly you find yourself in pitch-black darkness, so you stroll tepidly, continuing in the same guidelines understanding that you were heading towards the door prior to the lights got turned 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 devoid of light in the room, can not be seen. Nevertheless we must prevent at all expenditures falling under the crater.

Nobody wish for war, but a Wartime leader does not shrink from the battle, rather, they acknowledge that Wartime is the single finest chance to leapfrog sidetracked rivals and take ground away. What follows is a set of pointers and concepts to help you find your "Wartime CMO combat strategy."

How to serve as a Wartime CMO.

During Wartime, everybody is in uncharted waters, however this is where the opportunity is for many business who previously had a difficult time to complete versus larger competitors and dominant market forces. Now, for the really first time, you might be on comparable footing as your more powerful competitors. It's the best chance to specify your future.

In an international decrease like what COVID-19 has actually activated, absolutely nothing makes sense. And yet, a few of your rivals will continue to perform their normal "attempted and real" marketing playback, presuming that building the trademark name with business interactions messages from the CEO is going to contribute to their service goals. Now is the perfect opportunity for the Wartime CMO to take ground in the market.

Take strong action.

Creative marketing is needed in Wartime more than ever. Now is the time to inspect your essential presumptions. As the around the world organization environment has actually changed, and the stability of the core company brought into question, CMO's should be all set to reassess their preliminary plan.
Believe about that less consumers will equate to lowered requirement. And minimized need suggests markets will not respond as they did prior to the crisis.

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

Investment bank Cowen and Business analyzed the last 6 financial downturns offered that 1950 and found that costs on direct marketing grew during the previous economic downturns. Significance, you will want to consider your mix of brand marketing thoroughly compared to sales activation marketing. It's not time to stop marketing. Keep in mind, there will be deals throughout the board as media outlets see companies cut their advertising and marketing invests. Press marketing and branding drops in a slowdown, but sales activation marketing constantly increases.

Shift spending to more measurable channels so that you can adapt rapidly. Speed is everything. Marketing initiatives able to be tracked with uniqueness will be a lot more valuable than broad mass-market projects. Downturns accelerate the decline of interruption-based mass marketing. In its place will be an increased concentrate on quantifiable and relationship-based methods.

Downturns create a chance for business that are more effective at turning marketing financial investments into profits. In the middle of a sluggish down when marketers are cutting their costs is a fun time to take advantage of low CPMs and Qualified public accountants.

The Institute of Practitioners in Marketing completed a study in 2008 that found, "Following a budget cut, a brand name will continue to get from the marketing investment made over the previous few years. This will decrease any short-term business effects, and will lead to a precariously deceptive increase in short-term success. The longer-term business harm will be more significant, however will not be seen in the start."

Millward Brown reported in their research study "Marketing During Economic Downturn: To Invest or Not to Invest?" that 60% of brand name names that went 'dark' during a financial recession by cutting their TELEVISION marketing invest for 6 months experienced a decrease in Brand Usage by 24% with a 28% decrease in Brand name Image. Brands that cut their advertisement budget plan at a greater rate relative to their competitors were at an even greater threat of share loss.
There are an amazing number of marketing studies that verify in a decline, brand name names that continue marketing and advertising efforts recover much faster. It takes strong action to invest when the information suggests that ROI is not possible. A Wartime CMO battles to keep the budget 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 uses similarly to B2B and B2C buyers. When you initially recognize 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 should make sure not to move a prospect through the funnel too rapidly. Keep in mind, the possibility's professional life has been turned on its head. What was an issue just a couple of weeks or months earlier, is likely not top of mind today.

It's appealing in a slow down to tighten your grip on leads given that the reasoning is that now more than ever, all leads are essential. Here is where lead scoring can be an important tool to recognize highly engaged prospects from those who are not most 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 them off to sales as a SQL.

Without lead scoring and an ideal prospect tracking system throughout your digital channels, as many as 9 out of ten MQL's who are not yet sales-ready may be lost. They will purchase, simply not now. You don't wish to miss out on the future sale considering that you didn't keep in contact and include worth though the journey. In a "Wartime" economy, you ought to do everything possible to enhance the worth of your MQL's.

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

Focus on your present customers.

It's more affordable to grow incomes with your existing customers. Think of whether now is the time to scale back your mass list building programs and focus on structure deeper relationships with those who already understand your service. This does not imply to stop your requirement gen efforts, but it does indicate that you might 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 business that has obtained traction on their method to becoming a classification king or queen, this method, though expensive feels good given that of the exceptional volume of activity that is being produced. However, without cautious analysis, the high degree of activity fools many CMO's and management groups into thinking that their requirement generation engine is carefully tuned when, in reality, it's releasing massive contamination, i.e. exceedingly high CAC, higher 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 substantial titles with big business. There was a time when the marketing group may handle all corporate and product information and messaging with the marketplace. If a buyer wanted to discover out about a brand-new item or check out whether a solution might meet their requirement, they had no alternative however to call the company.

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

We understand that online marketers are no longer in control of the purchaser's journey. It is essential to define a funnel that details expulsions a possibility need to hand down the way to doing company with business. Buyers can get in touch with us on the platform of their choosing. As the buying group has expanded to as lots of as 2 lots individuals, the idea that they will follow our procedure as we have in fact recommended is hardly ever genuine.

You need a value designer CMO who is revenue-focused.

A revenue-focused CMO will handle the engine behind a CEO's advancement plan. The shift from companies being physical item designers or service business, to digital development companies where the product is dispersed as software application or software application as a service through the Web, has 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 business need today.

Today, marketing requires higher levels of technical capability as an outcome of the surge of digital media and the marketing technologies that are associated with online marketing. This improvement has been highlighted by Forrester, mentioning a 20-year-old shift to digital as the driving force behind CMOs moving from being brand-builders to earnings chauffeurs. Forrester goes on to report that a worth designer, revenue-driven Online marketer, need to be a story maker and not just a writer.

The CMO today ought to be a specialist at developing and leading imaginative engagement and organization technique to establish a category for the business to control.

Here are a couple of methods that a revenue-driven CMO requirement to operate:

They will work carefully with the sales group to find and map the purchaser's journey. Where presumptions do not match what is taking place in the market, a value designer CMO will leave the workplace and hang out in the field. This leader comprehends that you can not drive revenue if you aren't close to where the sale occurs.

A revenue-focused CMO produces content targeted at each stage of the buyer's journey. Consider the purchaser's journey as a set of gates where the content responds to the main issues a buyer 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 evaluating the success of the end-to-end marketing cycle to deliver the most timely and qualified leads to their sellers. A value developer CMO sees marketing as close allies to the sales group.

The revenue-centered CMO is always discovering from and fine-tuning the procedure so that they can enhance the amount and quality of leads that contributed to the pipeline and closed business.
Earnings attribution and marketing ROI designs will reflect real results, not extrapolated or "presumed" requirements. This details is important for the revenue-focused CMO to resolve considering that they appreciate marketing's influence on service.

A revenue-focused CMO will focus on how their marketing efforts map to closed/won deals that drive the profits and service goals of the company. Vanity metrics like traffic, click-thru rates, CPM, and CTA conversions tell simply a piece of the story.

What to look for in your next CMO.

In the dynamic state of company today, dealing with an efficient CMO is amongst the most difficult things to do. Every market, service, and market section is numerous. Even where you can recognize prospects from the exact same service community or environment, it's insufficient to merely take a look at years of experience or education. You need to examine the motivations and thought patterns of the individual. Ask:
Is the CMO a problem solver?

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

Are they a doer?
In many marketing groups, there will be specific professionals who can operate at the greatest level throughout the series of abilities needed. It's incumbent for a marketing leader to command consider a doer. The CMO, who can demonstrate practical capability in the core locations that the group operates, will be more reliable than a manager just.

Has the CMO held cross-functional positions?

The finest way to ensure that you draw in a CMO who is profits and not brand-driven is to employ somebody who has actually come up through product, sales, and corporate approach. Having direct exposure to the inner functions of product and sales is specifically advantageous as organization technique is ending up being a more significant part of the CMO's series of obligations.

Do they believe in systems or approach service in a structured manner?

As digital has actually exploded the number of marketing interface points, allowing purchasers to disaggregate the organization from the buying journey, a CMO must have the ability to consider systems and structures rather of securely specified marketing lanes. It is no longer appropriate to plan in regards to the social task, material marketing task, occasions, and PR, all as different activities. The successful CMO will start with organization objective they are serving and be prepared to question whatever.

Can they interact outside the walls of business to the marketplace?

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

As the CMO will need to work cross-functionally to make sure that they have positioning with item and sales, the marketing head need to be an incentive. To develop a classification requires discussion, negotiation, 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 have a hard time to accomplish organization objectives of the company. Marketing groups today ought to work as engineering groups operate in an agile style. Instead of perfectly organized 90-day task cadences, an agile marketing group carries out a constant flow of efforts while preserving the flexibility to change as the market or organization requirements figure out.

Does the CMO comprehend category design?

I have really composed about classification design and why every organization requires to own a classification to accomplish its ideal potential. There is a structure for carrying out category style. Still, whether a Marketer follows the summary or methods category style another way, a CMO needs to be putting routine thought and preparation into how they specify the category they indicate to dominate. Without input from the CEO and other members of the executive group, there is no other way to finish a proper category style.

The Wartime CMO will require to increase the responsibility of marketing by showing the result of each marketing activity on the pipeline as figured out by profits contribution.
In a slow down, marketing needs to move the understanding of being an expenditure center to an income motorist. Reporting beyond the variety of marketing qualified leads produced to include the general chance worth for each lead source is an excellent method to represent the function marketing is playing to drive the economic objectives of business.

Studies have actually exposed that a correctly created landing page can double your conversion rate over sending traffic to your home page, which tends to do not have the correct call to action that matches the ad. Due to the fact that of this, checking landing pages can increase conversions as much as 50% or more. Together, these strategies can supply a 2.5 X increase for every single single dollar you purchase marketing. Yes, conversion rate optimization makes a difference.

During Wartime, every marketing dollar is GET MORE INFO important, and a Wartime CMO understands that winning will not boil down to a single strategy or "silver bullet" approach. Instead, many small things executed well. The CMO, who can not understand the interaction of copy, messaging, creative style, and innovation, will have a hard time to discover and recognize rapidly where little modifications can provide better conversions.

This content approach worked, for a season, sort-of. However with the increase of Google RankBrain, the approach has actually not worked for several 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 way that we do content marketing requires to be updated.

Now, the content that we create requirements to interest someone searching for our service, and it must include buyer intent activates like keywords and expressions that a buyer would utilize as they get near acquiring decision. A Havas Group research study revealed that 84% of individuals prepare for brand names to produce material, yet 60% of the material produced is of bad quality or unimportant, stopping working to fulfill the requirements of the audience. Regardless of a 71% connection in between content efficiency and a brand name's influence on individual health, simply 40% of the world's leading 1,500 brand name names produce content that meets this requirement. Brand name's are failing to produce significant material.

Stop producing assembly line content that is simply implied to establish the trademark name or present the item. Instead, content needs to target particular personas to fix any holdups preventing the possibility from proceeding. This material will take longer to produce and require a higher neighborhood and item knowledge level.

CMO's in Wartime must have an excellent understanding of the purchaser psyche and their mental needs so that they can create content that eliminates worry and addresses the sincere issues 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 choice, putting them in the enviable position to take as much as 76% of the economics from the whole classification.

Learn more about Category Design.

The B2B sales procedure today is fragmented and complicated, with lots of stakeholders requiring to verify a purchase decision. This renders standard marketing ROI and attribution strategies less helpful for anything besides scholastic research study.

The marketing function today breaks down into three practical pillars comprising Item, Requirement Generation, and Category Design. Due to the fact that numerous marketing leaders have actually not totally embraced category design, it's a surprisingly easy method to beat an incumbent during a crisis. As quickly as the sector starts to go over the category as you have really defined it, your service will end up being the classification and the apparent option.

To do Category Style needs a various working cadence. Wartime is the ideal time to embark on Classification Style given that definitely nothing is "typical" during a crisis.
To deal with the challenge of building a Category King organization requires a lot of grit, determination, and a steadfast 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 find out all about category design.

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