How to Retain Talent with High CMO Turnover | CMO Recruiters

      How to Retain Talent with High CMO Turnover

      A chief marketing officer (CMO) is the person responsible for managing the marketing side of your company. This C-suite position ensures your company mission and vision are being accurately conveyed to the public. They also keep the marketing strategy on track so your business continues to reach a larger audience. A successful CMO will ultimately have a big impact on your company’s revenue and overall profits. 

      On paper, these roles seem like a great opportunity for an experienced marketing manager to come into an organization and drive results. More often than not, however, a CMO is hired only to discover the role is not as described.

      The disconnect between CMO expectations and CMO role responsibilities is just one of the reasons why this position has one of the highest c-suit turnover rates. According to Forbes, the average tenure of a CMO is 44 months; that’s less than four years. Turnover isn’t good for any position but especially not at the c-suite level. 

      Why Do CMOs Leave Companies? 2 Most Common Reasons

      The first step to retaining your CMO long-term is understanding the main causes of turnover. Below are two of the main reasons CMOs do not stay long at a company. 

      Misunderstandings of Marketing Strategies & Metrics

      Prior to hiring a CMO, the CEO is often the one assisting with the marketing plans. When a CMO is brought on, it can be difficult for the CEO to relinquish this important responsibility to a new leader. A majority of CEOs also don’t fully grasp the intricacies of marketing and everything that goes into strategy development, yet they expect a CMO to generate revenue. The problem is, it’s incredibly difficult to translate a marketing campaign into dollars earned. 

      A marketing campaign increases brand awareness and gets people talking about your company’s services or products. This is known as demand generation.

      • In the long run, this can lead to a bigger profit as more people know about your brand and what you have to offer.
      • In the short term, there’s not a good way to show on paper how the marketing strategy is increasing sales.

      To some CEOs, the lack of revenue data can be misinterpreted as evidence that the marketing strategy is failing—when in fact, they’re measuring the wrong thing. Instead of profit, a CEO should be looking at engagement and brand awareness.

      Limited CMO Authority & Trust

      Many CMOs have faced limited authority within a company. Even though the position is at the c-suite level, CMOs find themselves micromanaged by the CEO or other leadership positions. Again, this goes back to trusting in the professional you hire for the role.

      A chief marketing officer is highly experienced with a solid background in marketing. Being micromanaged by the CEO or COO is a frustrating position for the CMO. Not only is it frustrating, but it also makes it hard for the marketing officer to do their job. When you’re constantly requesting approval to take a new step, it feels like your position is being undervalued.

      How to Retain CMO Leadership: 3 Key Tips

      Now that you understand what could be driving a CMO away, let’s look at what you can do to retain your CMO. 

      1. Know the Role

      What does a CMO do? The CMO role oversees demand generation—the use of targeted marketing campaigns to drive and grow interest in a company, its products, and/or its services. Marketing campaigns and advertisements require money to be successful, but you might not see this marketing money immediately or clearly translate into revenue. Keep this in mind and remember to pay attention to customer engagement and audience growth. 

      2. Encourage Sales Support

      Audience growth is good; however, most executive leaders want to see hard numbers. To this end, encourage the vice president of sales and the chief revenue officer to work with the CMO to support marketing efforts. The sales description of the company and services needs to mesh with the image marketing is putting out. That’s why it’s in everyone’s best interests to have these two departments work together. 

      3. Deliver What’s Offered

      Review the chief marketing officer job description. Is that really the role a new hire will be stepping into? If there is a disconnect between the CMO job description and the actual CMO role, the new chief marketing officer will likely be dissatisfied. That can mean not achieving the results you really want for your company. Don’t let this type of bait-and-switch drive highly qualified CMO talent away. Instead, when you hire a CMO, be prepared to relinquish marketing responsibility and strategy management to the role so your company can really expand. 

      How to Build a Successful Demand Generation Team | B2B Marketing

      Marketing is the lifeblood of every business. To get customers for your business, you have to first attract them to your business. The way to do that is through marketing. However, before you attract customers to your business through marketing, you have to first attract marketers to your business. 

      What better way to attract marketers to your business than by paying them the right price for their services? 

      If you’ve been looking to flesh out or revamp your marketing department, then this marketing executive salary guide is right for your business.  

      The following are the people who will fill C-level and senior executive positions in your marketing department: 

      • Chief Marketing Officer
      • Chief Sales Officer
      • Director of Marketing
      • Marketing Manager
      • Director of Brand Marketing
      • Director of Product Marketing
      • Social Media
      • SEO/ SEM/ PPC

      So, let’s discuss how much you would have to shell out to retain top talent for your marketing department. 

      Chief Marketing Officer  

      The Chief Marketing Officer is responsible for creating and executing the broad sales and marketing strategy for your company. Chief Marketing Officers are usually utilized in large corporations that are usually publicly listed. 

      Your Chief Marketing Officer is also responsible for managing the sales and marketing team for your company or organization. This means that he’s where the buck stops when it comes to hiring and firing members of these teams. He/she should be able to evaluate senior executives in the marketing and sales departments. 

      According to Payscale, the average salary of a Chief Marketing Officer is about $174,662 per year. When hiring a Chief Marketing Officer, ensure that he has had a minimum of between 6 to 8 years of experience. 

      Chief Sales Officer  

      B2B Sales & Marketing

      The Chief Sales Officer is a position that happens in companies that want to separate the marketing and the sales departments at the C-level. The Chief Sales Officer is the equivalent of the Chief Marketing Officer, but he is in charge of sales. 

      The Chief Sales Officer crafts the broad sales strategy for your company and would evaluate senior sales executives on their sales performance and metrics. He should also be able to evaluate prospective employees during interviews. 

      Themedian salary for a Chief Sales Officer is about $170,567 per year. This is just the average, as the salary ranges from a low of $97,000 to a high of about $250,000. Of course, if you’re the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, you should expect to shell out more money for the hiring of a Chief Sales Officer. 

      Director of Marketing  

      The Director of Marketing is the head of the marketing arm of the company. Small businesses, private and medium sized companies make use of a Director of Marketing. In larger companies that have a CMO, the Director of Marketing could be in charge of marketing for sub-sections of the company. This could be different regions, or different products. https://cowenpartners.com/marketing/embed/#?secret=S1QOW2pzxT

      The average salary for a Director of Marketing is usually around $107,332. When hiring a Director of Marketing, you should ensure the person has a minimum experience of 6 years.  

      Director of Brand Marketing   

      The Director of Brand Marketing is responsible for crafting the brand image for your company. This is something that requires subtlety and as such, you need to have someone who is refined enough to carry out a task like this. 

      The Director of Brand Marketing is usually in charge of ensuring that there are smooth brand to customer interactions, and oversees the success of brand campaigns. 

      The average salary for a Director of BrandMarketing is about $121,759 per year. This is a point from a low of $63,000 to a high of $156,000 per year. While you can always use the average salary as a benchmark, the realities of your industry and unique brand position would also play a huge role in determining how much you pay. 

      Director of Product Marketing 

      The Director of Product Marketing is the alternative to the Director of Brand Marketing. While the Director of Brand Marketing is focused on ensuring that the brand gets a good image, the Director of Product Marketing is more concerned with the marketing strategy for the goods and services of your company. 

      The Director of Product Marketing handles things like product pricing, product strategy and analysis, developing your sales messaging, and so on. In essence, your Director of Product Marketing handles the pricing , positioning and packaging experience for your product. 

      The average salary you can expect for a Director of Growth Marketing is about $144,097 per year. 

      Marketing Manager  

      The Marketing Manager is one or two steps below the director of marketing. The Marketing Manager is responsible for the narrow marketing strategy connected with specific products and campaigns. 

      This means that the marketing manager handles things like positioning, and selling a specific product in your product line. If you’re a company that offers one product or service, the marketing manager is usually the person in charge of different marketing campaigns for your company.  

      The Marketing Manager is usually broadly responsible for supervising employees handling: 

      • Website Management 
      • Social Media Management 
      • SEO 
      • Copywriting 

      The average salary for a Marketing Manager in the United States isabout $65,834 per year. Of course, how much this will finally be depends on your industry, location, and the specific needs of your business. 

      Social Media Marketer 

      Social Media Marketing should be a very important part of your marketing strategy. However, while it might seem straightforward, it isn’t. It goes beyond creating an account and asking your customers to follow you. 

      To truly harness the power of social media, you need to hire a Social Media Marketer. This would be the person responsible for crafting your social media campaigns. They would also be in charge of ensuring that you grow your social media following and engage your customers. 

      The average salary for a Social Media Marketer is 53,460 per year. 

      SEO/ SEM/ PPC Specialist 

      Search Engine Optimization is a way for your company to get free traffic from Google by providing great content for users. However, you can always up the game by paying for Google Ads. This is what your SEO/SEM/PPC specialist would be doing for your company.  

      This is a very sensitive part of your company’s operations. If your SEM/PPC Specialist isn’t skilled enough, you’ll essentially be throwing money at Google and Facebook. Well, with the right salary, you can be sure to get the right SEO/SEM/PPC specialist for your company. 

      Generally, the average salaryfor a SEO/SEM/PPC specialist is $49,202 per year.  

      Easily Get Top Talent 

      Trying to find the right talent to fill in the marketing roles at your company could be overwhelming. You can make things easy with Cowen Partners. At Cowen Partners, our skilled marketing and sales executive recruiters connect companies with top C-Level and Senior Executive talent who contribute their fair share to the growth of your company. 

      Leading Sales, Marketing & Demand Generation Recruiting Firm

      Check out our industry-leading resources, created by 5-star executive search consultants and top CMO recruiters, to see why Cowen Partners is a nationally ranked sales and marketing executive search firm in New York City, Anchorage, Nashville, Boise, Chicago, Portland, Seattle, Dallas, Los Angeles, and beyond:

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