growth stage marketing consultant Mark Donnigan

Mark Donnigan constructs disruptive innovative start-ups. Mark's superpower is architecting go-to-market strategies and marketing motions that drive genuine organization results for technical and product-centric founders. Mark's growth and market advancement experience spans 20 years as a transformative B2B marketing and magnate, driving need, brand advancement, and technique for start-up 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 innovation technology companies to help them develop, bootstrap, and scale their marketing and go-to-market actions.

FIND OUT MORE: https://growthstage.marketing

Mark Donnigan has handled groups as large as 25, comprising SDRs, AEs, and marketing, producing $29mm/year. Mark brought budget 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 startup marketing expert, Mark Donnigan's incoming and outbound marketing experience include building and mentoring high-performance teams that perform on demand generation, brand and item marketing, PR, digital, and events where he develops and carries out high-impact programs that drive profits, produce ROI, activate the marketplace, and delivers business outcomes.

Mark Donnigan believes that the very best marketing consultants and marketing leaders are doers. Mark's marketing experience consists of all elements of need generation, ABM, SEO, e-mail marketing, paid marketing, occasions, PR (internal & agency), and product marketing.

Mark is a problem solver and a first-principles thinker who is creative and analytical. Mark constantly works cross-functionally and has actually shown success, structure, leading, and mentoring marketing, sales, and organization advancement groups that have in fact produced more than $500mm in revenue/shareholder worth.

Mark has actually discovered that constructing a classification should be the top goal for every single marketing leader and it is the structure of his method and technique. Mark Donnigan has substantial B2B marketing experience that includes building and mentoring high-performance teams.

Mark Donnigan is a systems thinker, and he places a high worth on team effort. Mark has substantial experience working alongside sales, item, operations, and finance to make sure that the business and profits goals of the company are constantly gone beyond.

Growth Stage Marketing exists to supply business owners and founders services for:

Architecting the market classification that is best suited to the special value proposition of your innovation.
High impact marketing assistance so that you can reach your profits objectives and scale sustainably.
Attaining go-to-market alignment throughout the sales and marketing companies.
Extracting the greatest value from every marketing dollar.
Insider understanding and insights about the B2B buying journey and how to browse a progressively fragmented customer decision hierarchy.
Operationalizing marketing, from system and procedure advancement to making the very first hires.

Ideas on what it requires an effective online 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 research study finished by the marketing consultancy Fournaise discovered that 80% of President are not pleased with the work their top Marketing leader is doing. Evaluating what today service truth indicates for marketing leaders, I remembered 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 a post where he composed that the Peacetime CEO "concentrates on the big image and empowers her people to make comprehensive choices." 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 "comprehends what to do with a substantial advantage," while the Wartime CEO "is paranoid." Peacetime CEO "works to decrease conflict," and Wartime CEO "increases the contradictions."

Peacetime in business is when a service has the capability to grow in its core market due to a considerable benefit vs. the competitors. In times of peace, business focuses on widening the marketplace and boosting business's strengths. For CMO's, Peacetime is when we are totally free to be imaginative with our brand building by attending each exhibition with an even bigger cubicle than last year's and investing exorbitantly on sponsorships, all under the guise of constructing the brand name.

Wartime is a various thing entirely because, in Wartime, the life and death of our organization may be on the line.
As I compose this post, the whole world is combating an undetectable opponent called COVID-19, which has let loose a discouraging dosage of organization unpredictability internationally. 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 remaining 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 shut off. No, not just has the pandemic turned the lights out, its blown a massive crater in our path that was not there prior to, and lacking light in the room, can not be seen. Nevertheless we should prevent at all expenditures falling under the crater.

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

How to serve as a Wartime CMO.

During Wartime, everyone remains in uncharted waters, however this is where the chance is for lots of business who previously had a difficult time to complete against bigger competitors and dominant market forces. Now, for the really very first time, you may be on comparable footing as your more powerful rivals. It's the best opportunity to define your future.

In an international decrease like what COVID-19 has activated, absolutely nothing makes sense. And yet, a few of your rivals will continue to perform their normal "tried and genuine" marketing playback, presuming that constructing the brand name with business interactions messages from the CEO is going to contribute to their organization objectives. Now is the ideal opportunity for the Wartime CMO to take ground in the market.

Take strong action.

Imaginative marketing is needed in Wartime more than ever. Now is the time to inspect your vital assumptions. As the worldwide organization environment has actually modified, and the stability of the core service called into concern, CMO's must be ready to reassess their initial strategy.
Consider that less customers will relate to reduced need. And minimized requirement suggests markets will not react as they did prior to the crisis.

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

Financial investment bank Cowen and Company evaluated the last 6 financial downturns 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 brand marketing carefully compared to sales activation marketing. It's not time to stop marketing. Keep in mind, there will be offers throughout the board as media outlets see business cut their marketing and advertising spends. Push marketing and branding drops in a slowdown, however sales activation marketing constantly increases.

Shift costs to more measurable channels so that you can adapt rapidly. Speed is everything. Marketing initiatives able to be tracked with specificity will be a lot more important than broad mass-market tasks. Slowdowns accelerate the decline of interruption-based mass marketing. In its place will be an increased focus on quantifiable and relationship-based strategies.

Declines develop a chance for companies that are more effective at turning marketing monetary investments into earnings. In the middle of a decrease when marketers are cutting their costs is an enjoyable time to gain from low CPMs and Qualified public accounting professionals.

The Institute of Practitioners in Marketing ended up a research study in 2008 that found, "Following a budget cut, a brand name will continue to gain from the marketing investment made over the previous couple of years. This will reduce any short-term organization effects, and will lead to a dangerously deceptive increase in short-term success. The longer-term service harm will be more substantial, but will not be noticed in the start."

Millward Brown reported in their research study "Marketing During Economic Slump: To Invest or Not to Invest?" that 60% of brand name names that went 'dark' throughout an economic recession by cutting their TV marketing invest for 6 months experienced a decrease in Brand Usage by 24% with a 28% decrease in Brand Image. Brands that cut their advertisement budget plan at a higher rate relative to their rivals were at an even higher danger of share loss.
There are an amazing variety of marketing research studies that verify in a decrease, brand names that continue advertising and marketing efforts recuperate faster. It takes strong action to invest when the data suggests that ROI is not possible. A Wartime CMO fights to preserve the spending plan required to continue marketing.

Make the most of the worth of each lead produced.

In a downturn, risk-averse purchasers take even longer to research study purchases, and this uses equally to B2B and B2C buyers. When you first recognize a prospect, they will likely remain in the awareness stage of your funnel and will not be all set to engage with an SDR or BDR. Do not force this interaction. Marketing should take care not to move a prospect through the funnel too rapidly. Remember, the prospect's professional life has been switched on its head. What was a concern simply 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 since the reasoning is that now more than ever, all leads are essential. Here is where lead scoring can be a valuable tool to recognize extremely engaged prospects from those who are not most likely to become your clients. Now is the time for Online marketers to hang on to MQL's for an extended period so that you can groom the prospect to the maximum possible degree prior to handing them off to sales as a SQL.

Without lead scoring and a perfect possibility 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, just not now. You don't wish to lose out on the future sale since you didn't keep in contact and consist of worth though the journey. In a "Wartime" economy, you need to do everything possible to enhance the worth of your MQL's.

CMO's that do a much better task of dealing with leads and establishing early-stage prospects into sales-ready leads will stay in the finest position to win throughout the crisis and most certainly once it has passed.

Focus on your present consumers.

It's more affordable to grow incomes with your existing customers. Believe about whether now is the time to downsize your mass list building programs and focus on building much deeper relationships with those who already know your service. This does not indicate to stop your need gen efforts, but it does indicate that you might want to explore with product and sales how you can offer more Growth Stage Marketing to your existing customers.

In Peacetime, marketing groups are running on autopilot in pursuit of driving MQL's to please sales reps. For a company that has acquired traction on their way to becoming a category king or queen, this approach, though costly feels excellent given that of the remarkable volume of activity that is being produced. Nevertheless, without mindful analysis, the high degree of activity fools numerous CMO's and management groups into thinking that their need generation engine is carefully tuned when, in truth, it's producing massive contamination, i.e. exceptionally high CAC, greater than average churn for the classification, low CLTV, and so on.

Marketing must line up with sales.

A brand-focused Marketing leader worries business with an exceptional education and pedigree, having really held considerable titles with huge business. There was a time when the marketing group might handle all corporate and item information and messaging with the market. If a buyer wanted to discover a new product or explore whether a solution might fulfill their requirement, they had no alternative however to call the organization.

Reactions to concerns such as, Who's real and who isn't? - Who's product works, and whose does not? - What's coming? Now where offered with a single post on the appropriate online forum or LinkedIn group. As a result, the power shifted to the purchaser.

We understand that online marketers are no longer in control of the buyer's journey. It is very important to define a funnel that details expulsions a prospect need to hand down the method to doing organization with the service. Purchasers can connect with us on the platform of their choosing. As the buying group has broadened to as many as two lots individuals, the notion that they will follow our process as we have actually recommended is rarely real.

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

A revenue-focused CMO will manage the engine behind a CEO's advancement plan. The shift from business being physical product designers or service business, to digital development companies where the item is dispersed as software or software application as a service through the Internet, has reduced the function of marketing. And is the factor a revenue-focused CMO who is a value developer is what all start-ups and disruptive innovation companies need today.

Today, marketing needs higher levels of technical capability as a result of the surge of digital media and the marketing innovations that are connected with internet marketing. This transformation has been highlighted by Forrester, pointing out a 20-year-old shift to digital as the driving force behind CMOs moving from being brand-builders to revenue motorists. Forrester goes on to report that a worth designer, revenue-driven Online marketer, must be a story maker and not simply a writer.

The CMO today should be an expert at producing and leading creative engagement and service approach to establish a classification for the business to dominate.

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

They will work carefully with the sales group to discover and map the buyer's journey. Where presumptions do not match what is occurring in the market, a worth designer CMO will leave the office and hang out in the field. This leader understands that you can not drive profits if you aren't near to where the sale happens.

A revenue-focused CMO produces content targeted at each phase of the purchaser's journey. Think about the purchaser's journey as a set of gates where the material reacts to the primary concerns a purchaser 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 provide the most timely and licensed leads to their sellers. A worth designer CMO sees marketing as close allies to the sales group.

The revenue-centered CMO is constantly 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 organization.
Earnings attribution and marketing ROI designs will show genuine outcomes, not extrapolated or "presumed" requirements. This details is important for the revenue-focused CMO to solve because they care about marketing's impact on organization.

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

What to look for in your next CMO.

In the dynamic state of organization today, working with an effective CMO is amongst the most challenging things to do. Every market, organization, and market section is various. Even where you can recognize prospects from the exact same business community or environment, it's inadequate to simply take an appearance at years of experience or education. You require to examine the motivations and thought patterns of the individual. Ask:
Is the CMO an issue 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 deal with the fast-changing nature of the marketplace and community building.

Are they a doer?
In many marketing groups, there will be particular specialists who can operate at the highest level throughout the series of capabilities needed. It's incumbent for a marketing leader to command consider a doer. The CMO, who can demonstrate functional ability in the core locations that the group runs, will be more dependable than a supervisor simply.

Has the CMO held cross-functional positions?

The finest way to ensure that you bring in a CMO who is profits and not brand-driven is to hire someone who has come up through product, sales, and corporate approach. Having direct exposure to the inner functions of product and sales is particularly advantageous as business approach is becoming a more significant part of the CMO's series of obligations.

Do they think in systems or technique service in a structured way?

As digital has actually blown up the number of marketing interface points, making it possible for purchasers to disaggregate the business from the buying journey, a CMO needs to have the ability to consider systems and structures rather of firmly defined marketing lanes. It is no longer sufficient to prepare in concerns to the social project, content marketing task, events, and PR, all as separate activities. The successful CMO will begin with service objective they are serving and be all set to question everything.

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

To end up being a story-maker, you ought to deserve listening to. A CMO is in the perfect position to presume the evangelistic function for business. The most effective CMO's in any market are highly visible spokespeople for their business.
Are they a motivator?

As the CMO will require to work cross-functionally to make sure that they have placing with product and sales, the marketing head must be a motivator. To develop a category needs conversation, settlement, and the capability to search for and reach a contract.

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

A CMO who attempts to lead with ultimate authority will struggle to achieve company goals of business. Marketing groups today need to work as engineering groups operate in an agile fashion. Rather of nicely arranged 90-day job cadences, a nimble marketing group carries out a consistent blood circulation of initiatives while keeping the flexibility to alter as the market or business needs figure out.

Does the CMO comprehend classification style?

I have in fact composed about classification design and why every organization needs to own a classification to achieve its ideal capacity. There is a framework for performing category style. Still, whether a Marketer follows the summary or techniques category style another method, a CMO must be putting regular idea and preparation into how they define the classification they imply to control. Without input from the CEO and other members of the executive group, there is no other way to complete a correct classification style.

The Wartime CMO will require to increase the responsibility of marketing by revealing the effect of each marketing activity on the pipeline as identified by earnings contribution.
In a decrease, marketing must move the understanding of being an expenditure center to an earnings motorist. Reporting beyond the variety of marketing certified leads produced to include the general possibility worth for each lead source is an excellent way to represent the function marketing is playing to drive the economic objectives of organization.

Research studies have in fact exposed that a correctly designed landing page can double your conversion rate over sending traffic to your home page, which tends to do not have the appropriate call to action that matches the ad. Because of this, examining landing pages can increase conversions as much as 50% or more. Together, these methods can supply a 2.5 X boost for each single dollar you invest in marketing. Yes, conversion rate optimization makes a distinction.

Throughout Wartime, every marketing dollar is valuable, and a Wartime CMO comprehends that winning will not boil down to a single technique or "silver bullet" approach. Rather, many little things performed well. The CMO, who can not comprehend the interaction of copy, messaging, imaginative style, and development, will struggle to discover and recognize rapidly where small adjustments can offer much better conversions.

This content technique worked, for a season, sort-of. However with the increase of Google RankBrain, the approach has not worked for several years. Without being in the middle of a crisis, you require to stop this inefficient activity. Now as budget plans are under pressure and every marketing activity need to count, the way that we do content marketing requires to be upgraded.

Now, the content that we produce requirements to interest somebody attempting to find our option, and it must consist of buyer intent activates like keywords and expressions that a buyer would utilize as they get near purchasing decision. A Havas Group research study revealed that 84% of people expect brand name names to produce material, yet 60% of the material produced is of bad quality or unimportant, failing to satisfy the requirements of the audience. No matter a 71% correlation in between content effectiveness and a brand name's influence on personal health, just 40% of the world's leading 1,500 trademark name produce material that fulfills this requirement. Brand name's are stopping working to produce substantial material.

Stop producing assembly line content that is just meant to establish the brand name or present the product. Instead, material should target specific personalities to solve any setbacks preventing the possibility from moving on. This content will take longer to produce and need a greater community and item knowledge level.

CMO's in Wartime need to have an outstanding understanding of the purchaser psyche and their mental needs so that they can develop content that eases worry and addresses the sincere 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 option, putting them in the excellent position to take as much as 76% of the economics from the whole category.

Check out more about Classification Design.

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

The marketing function today breaks down into 3 functional pillars making up Product, Requirement Generation, and Classification Design. Since numerous marketing leaders have in fact not completely embraced category style, it's a remarkably simple way to beat an incumbent throughout a crisis. As soon as the sector starts to discuss the category as you have in fact defined it, your company will end up being the category and the apparent choice.

To do Category Style requires a different working cadence. Wartime is the ideal time to embark on Category Design considered that definitely nothing is "typical" during a crisis.
To manage the obstacle of constructing a Category King company requires a load of grit, determination, and a steadfast drive to win. For the Wartime CMO, who handles the obstacle, there can be no bigger pot-o-gold if effective.

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