mark donnigan marketing consultant

Mark Donnigan develops disruptive ingenious startups. Mark's superpower is architecting go-to-market plans and marketing motions that drive real business outcomes for technical and product-centric creators. Mark's growth and market advancement experience covers twenty years as a transformative B2B marketing and magnate, driving need, brand name development, and strategy for startup and growth-stage business.

As a specialist and virtual marketing leader (fractional-CMO), Mark Donnigan deals with start-up developers and CEOs from B2B disruptive development technology companies to assist them establish, bootstrap, and scale their marketing and go-to-market actions.

DISCOVER MORE: https://growthstage.marketing

Mark Donnigan has actually handled teams as large as 25, comprising SDRs, AEs, and marketing, producing $29mm/year. Mark brought budget plan obligations to $3mm/year for operations and $400k/year for marketing. Offer sizes differing from mid-five figures to mid-six figures every year.

As a startup marketing consultant, Mark Donnigan's incoming and outbound marketing experience include building and mentoring high-performance groups that perform on demand generation, brand name and product marketing, PR, digital, and events where he establishes and implements high-impact programs that drive earnings, produce ROI, trigger the marketplace, and delivers organization outcomes.

Mark Donnigan thinks that the best marketing consultants and marketing leaders are doers. Mark's marketing experience includes all elements of need generation, ABM, SEO, e-mail marketing, paid marketing, events, PR (internal & company), and item marketing.

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

Mark has actually discovered that building a classification needs to be the top goal for each marketing leader and it is the structure of his method and approach. Mark Donnigan has comprehensive B2B marketing experience that includes structure and mentoring high-performance teams.

Mark Donnigan is a systems thinker, and he positions a high worth on teamwork. Mark has comprehensive experience working together with sales, item, operations, and financing to ensure that business and revenue goals of the company are constantly gone beyond.

Growth Phase Marketing exists to provide entrepreneurs and creators services for:

Architecting the marketplace category that is best suited to the distinct worth proposition of your innovation.
High impact marketing support so that you can reach your revenue goals and scale sustainably.
Accomplishing go-to-market alignment across the sales and marketing organizations.
Extracting the greatest worth from every marketing dollar.
Expert knowledge and insights about the B2B buying journey and how to browse an increasingly fragmented customer choice hierarchy.
Operationalizing marketing, from system and procedure advancement to making the very first hires.

Ideas on what it requires a successful 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 completed by the marketing consultancy Fournaise found that 80% of Chief Executives are not pleased with the work their leading Marketing leader is doing. Assessing what today organization truth indicates for marketing leaders, I remembered the principle of a Peacetime leader and a Wartime leader from Ben Horowitz's book "The Hard Thing About Hard Things."

Horowitz explained the principle in an article where he composed that the Peacetime CEO "focuses on the big image and empowers her people to make detailed decisions." The Wartime CEO, on the other hand, "appreciates a speck of dust on a gnat's ass if it disrupted the prime instruction."

The Peacetime CEO "comprehends what to do with a big benefit," while the Wartime CEO "is paranoid." Peacetime CEO "works to reduce disagreement," and Wartime CEO "increases the contradictions."

Peacetime in organization is when a business has the ability to grow in its core market due to a considerable benefit vs. the competitors. In times of peace, business concentrates on expanding the marketplace and improving business's strengths. For CMO's, Peacetime is when we are absolutely complimentary to be creative with our brand building by participating in each exhibition with an even larger cubicle than last year's and investing exorbitantly on sponsorships, all under the guise of building the trademark name.

Wartime is a various thing totally because, in Wartime, the life and death of our service might be on the line.
As I compose this post, the entire world is battling an unnoticeable opponent called COVID-19, which has let loose a discouraging dose of service uncertainty worldwide. For CMO's, the COVID-19 pandemic is company equivalent of war. No longer do our 2020 marketing methods make great sense.

This is more than remaining in a space with the light on, and suddenly you find yourself in pitch-black darkness, so you stroll tepidly, continuing in the same directions understanding that you were heading toward the door prior to the lights got shut off. No, not simply has the pandemic turned the lights out, its blown an enormous crater in our path that was not there previous to, and without light in the room, can not be seen. However we must avoid at all costs falling under the crater.

No one 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 tips and ideas to help you discover your "Wartime CMO fight plan."

How to act as a Wartime CMO.

Throughout Wartime, everyone remains in uncharted waters, but this is where the chance is for lots of companies who previously had a hard time to compete against bigger rivals 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 ideal opportunity to define your future.

In a worldwide reduction like what COVID-19 has actually set off, absolutely nothing makes good sense. And yet, a few of your competitors will continue to perform their typical "tried and real" marketing playback, presuming that constructing the brand with business interactions messages from the CEO is going to add to their organization objectives. Now is the ideal 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 necessary presumptions. As the around the world service environment has changed, and the stability of the core company cast doubt on, CMO's must be all set to reassess their preliminary plan.
Consider that less customers will equate to reduced need. And lowered need suggests markets will not react as they did prior to the crisis.

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

Investment bank Cowen and Company analyzed the last 6 economic declines considered that 1950 and found that costs on direct marketing grew throughout the previous financial 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 advertising and marketing invests. Push marketing and branding drops in a slowdown, however sales activation marketing constantly increases.

Shift costs to more quantifiable channels so that you can adjust rapidly. Speed is whatever. Marketing initiatives able to be tracked with specificity will be a lot better than broad mass-market projects. Slowdowns speed up the decline of interruption-based mass marketing. In its place will be an increased concentrate on quantifiable and relationship-based methods.

Slumps produce a chance for companies that are more effective at turning marketing financial investments into earnings. In the middle of a decrease when marketers are cutting their spending is a fun time to take advantage of low CPMs and Certified public accountants.

The Institute of Practitioners in Marketing completed a research study in 2008 that discovered, "Following a budget plan cut, a brand name will continue to get from the marketing investment made over the previous couple of years. This will decrease any short-term organization impacts, and will lead to an alarmingly deceptive increase in short-term success. The longer-term business harm will be more substantial, but will not be observed in the beginning."

Millward Brown reported in their research study "Marketing Throughout Economic Downturn: To Invest or Not to Invest?" that 60% of brand that went 'dark' during an economic recession by cutting their TELEVISION marketing invest for 6 months experienced a decrease in Trademark name Use by 24% with a 28% decrease in Brand name Image. Brand names that cut their advertisement budget at a greater rate relative to their competitors were at an even greater danger of share loss.
There are an extraordinary number of marketing studies that verify in a decrease, brand that continue marketing and marketing efforts recuperate faster. It takes strong action to invest when the information suggests that ROI is not possible. A Wartime CMO fights to keep the budget plan required to continue marketing.

Take full benefit of the worth of each lead produced.

In a slowdown, risk-averse buyers take even longer to research study purchases, and this uses similarly to B2B and B2C buyers. When you first recognize a possibility, 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 possibility through the funnel too quickly. Keep in mind, the possibility's expert life has been turned on its head. What was an issue just a couple of weeks or months ago, is likely not top of mind today.

It's tempting in a decrease to tighten your grip on leads since the reasoning is that now more than ever, all leads are important. Here is where lead scoring can be a valuable tool to acknowledge highly engaged potential customers from those who are not most likely to become your customers. Now is the time for Marketers to hold on to MQL's for an extended period so that you can groom the prospect to the optimum possible extent prior to handing them off to sales as a SQL.

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

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

Concentrate on your present consumers.

It's more affordable to grow incomes with your existing clients. Consider whether now is the time to scale back your mass lead generation programs and focus on structure much deeper relationships with those who already understand your organization. This does not suggest to stop your need gen efforts, however it does imply that you might want to explore with item and sales how you can offer more to your existing consumers.

In Peacetime, marketing groups are running on auto-pilot in pursuit of driving MQL's to please sales reps. For an organization that has acquired traction on their method to ending up being a classification king or queen, this method, though pricey feels great since of the exceptional volume of activity that is being produced. However, without cautious analysis, the high degree of activity fools lots of CMO's and management groups into thinking that their requirement generation engine is finely tuned when, in reality, it's giving off huge contamination, i.e. extremely high CAC, greater than typical churn for the classification, low CLTV, and so on.

Marketing needs to line up with sales.

A brand-focused Marketing leader worries business with an exceptional education and pedigree, having actually held substantial titles with huge companies. There was a time when the marketing group may handle all corporate and item details and messaging with the marketplace. If a buyer preferred to discover out about a brand-new product or check out whether an option may satisfy their requirement, they had no option but to call business.

Responses to issues such as, Who's authentic and who isn't? - Who's product works, and whose does not? - What's coming? Now where readily available 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 purchaser's journey. It is necessary to specify a funnel that describes evictions a possibility ought to pass on the method to doing business with the business. Purchasers can link with us on the platform of their choosing. As the buying group has expanded to as lots of as 2 lots individuals, the concept that they will follow our process as we have really recommended is seldom real.

You require a worth developer CMO who is revenue-focused.

A revenue-focused click here CMO will handle the engine behind a CEO's advancement strategy. The shift from companies being physical item designers or service business, to digital innovation business where the product is dispersed as software or software application as a service through the Web, has actually reduced the function of marketing. And is the aspect a revenue-focused CMO who is a value developer is what all start-ups and disruptive innovation business require today.

Today, marketing requires higher levels of technical ability as an outcome of the explosion of digital media and the marketing technologies that are connected with internet marketing. This improvement 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 profits chauffeurs. Forrester goes on to report that a worth designer, revenue-driven Online marketer, should be a story maker and not simply a writer.

The CMO today need to be a professional at creating and leading creative engagement and company method to develop a classification for business to dominate.

Here are a couple of techniques that a revenue-driven CMO need to run:

They will work thoroughly with the sales group to discover and map the purchaser's journey. Where presumptions do not match what is occurring in the market, a value developer CMO will leave the office and hang out in the field. This leader understands that you can not drive earnings if you aren't near to where the sale occurs.

A revenue-focused CMO creates content targeted at each stage of the buyer's journey. Consider the purchaser's journey as a set of gates where the material reacts to the primary issues a purchaser has at each action so that they can finish the buying journey.
The 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 prompt and certified result in their sellers. A worth developer CMO sees marketing as close allies to the sales group.

The revenue-centered CMO is constantly discovering from and fine-tuning the process so that they can enhance the amount and quality of leads that contributed to the pipeline and closed organization.
Incomes attribution and marketing ROI styles will show genuine outcomes, not extrapolated or "presumed" requirements. This details is important for the revenue-focused CMO to solve because they appreciate 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 company goals of the service. 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 company today, working with an efficient CMO is among the most challenging things to do. Every market, service, and market section is various. Even where you can recognize potential customers from the same company community or environment, it's not sufficient to merely take a look at years of experience or education. You need to examine the inspirations and thought patterns of the individual. Ask:
Is the CMO an issue solver?

The most substantial threat today is on the marketplace side and not innovation. A marketing leader who isn't an issue solver will have a hard time to manage the fast-changing nature of the market and community building.

Are they a doer?
In lots of marketing groups, there will specify experts who can work at the greatest level throughout the series of capabilities required. It's incumbent for a marketing leader to command consider as a doer. The CMO, who can show practical ability in the core locations that the group runs, will be more dependable than a manager just.

Has the CMO held cross-functional positions?

The finest method to ensure that you draw in a CMO who is earnings and not brand-driven is to hire someone who has turned up through product, sales, and business approach. Having direct exposure to the inner operations of item and sales is specifically beneficial as company approach is ending up being a more considerable part of the CMO's series of commitments.

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

As digital has exploded the number of marketing user interface points, enabling purchasers to disaggregate the business from the purchasing journey, a CMO should have the ability to think about systems and structures instead of safely defined marketing lanes. It is no longer sufficient to prepare in regards to the social job, material marketing project, events, and PR, all as different activities. The successful CMO will begin with service objective they are serving and be ready to question everything.

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

To end up being a story-maker, you must deserve listening to. A CMO is in the ideal position to presume the evangelistic function for business. The most successful CMO's in any market are highly visible spokespeople for their organization.
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 must be an incentive. To establish a classification needs discussion, negotiation, and the capability to search for and reach an arrangement.

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

A CMO who attempts to lead with supreme authority will have a hard time to achieve service objectives of the service. Marketing groups today ought to work as engineering groups operate in an agile style. Instead of nicely arranged 90-day task cadences, an agile marketing group performs a constant circulation of efforts while maintaining the adaptability to alter as the market or service needs identify.

Does the CMO comprehend category style?

I have in fact made up about classification style and why every service needs to own a classification to accomplish its ideal capacity. There is a framework for carrying out category design. Still, whether a Marketer follows the summary or techniques category style another method, a CMO must be putting routine thought and preparation into how they define the category they suggest to dominate. Without input from the CEO and other members of the executive group, there is no method to finish a right category style.

The Wartime CMO will need to increase the accountability of marketing by showing the effect of each marketing activity on the pipeline as figured out by income contribution.
In a sluggish down, marketing needs to 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 outstanding way to represent the function marketing is playing to drive the financial goals of service.

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

Throughout Wartime, every marketing dollar is important, and a Wartime CMO comprehends that winning will not boil down to a single method or "silver bullet" approach. Instead, many little things executed well. The CMO, who can not understand the interplay of copy, messaging, creative style, and development, will struggle to discover and acknowledge quickly where little modifications can use better conversions.

This content approach worked, for a season, sort-of. However with the boost of Google RankBrain, the method has not worked for lots of years. Without being in the middle of a crisis, you need to stop this ineffective activity. Now as budget plans are under pressure and every marketing activity need to count, the manner in which we do content marketing needs to be updated.

Now, the material that we create needs to interest someone looking for our option, and it must include purchaser intent triggers 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 to produce material, yet 60% of the material produced is of bad quality or unimportant, stopping working to satisfy the requirements of the audience. No matter a 71% connection in between content performance and a brand name's impact on individual health, simply 40% of the world's leading 1,500 brand produce material that fulfills this requirement. Trademark name's are failing to produce significant material.

Stop producing assembly line material that is simply suggested to establish the brand or present the item. Rather, content needs to target particular personalities to fix any setbacks preventing the possibility from carrying on. This material will take longer to produce and require a higher neighborhood and item understanding level.

CMO's in Wartime should have an excellent understanding of the buyer mind and their psychological requirements so that they can produce content that alleviates fear and addresses the genuine concerns they have.

CMO's in Wartime double down on Category Style so that their organization will come out as the leader, making them the dominant choice, putting them in the excellent position to take as much as 76% of the economics from the entire category.

Find out more about Category Style.

The B2B sales procedure today is fragmented and complicated, with lots of stakeholders needing to validate a purchase decision. This renders standard marketing ROI and attribution methods less useful for anything besides academic research study.

The marketing function today breaks down into 3 functional pillars comprising Item, Requirement Generation, and Category Style. Due to the fact that numerous marketing leaders have in fact not completely welcomed classification design, it's a remarkably easy way to beat an incumbent throughout a crisis. As quickly as the sector starts to go over the classification as you have actually specified it, your organization will end up being the classification and the apparent option.

To do Classification Style requires a various working cadence. Wartime is the perfect time to embark on Category Design offered that absolutely nothing is "normal" during a crisis.
To deal with the obstacle of building a Classification King company requires a lots of grit, determination, and an unfaltering 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 everything about category design.