Diary of a first-time CMO volume 2

You’ve reached the end of Alice’s diary of a first time CMO volume two, thank you so much for listening.

As the diary of a first-time CMO volume two comes to an end, Alice shares what she thinks will be important for her, the Cognism marketing team and B2B marketers in general over the coming year.

After sharing our content strategy in the previous entry, this entry dives into how we distribute the content we create throughout our various channels.

Our content framework revolves around ‘what we want to be known for’. Listen to Alice explain our ‘content roadmap’, which feeds our media machine content and big rock content campaigns.

One of the ways you can reduce the risk of failure before entering a new region is by doing some test marketing in that region first. You can gauge the interest, create some demand - and most importantly identify any blockers early on.

Working with SMEs is a huge part of the Cognism marketing strategy, and therefore we need to be able to identify and reach out to relevant SMEs in new regions when we have plans to expand there. This entry delves into how we manage this process.

This entry follows on from entry 37, discussing how Alice and the Cognism team applied the lessons learned from their DACH expansion, to their French expansion.

Not every venture is immediately successful. However, the lessons we learn from doing things the wrong way, teach us a lot about how to do things next time. This entry goes into details on what went wrong in our DACH expansion, and how we used this to launch effectively into France.

Alice and Cognism’s CEO are keen to be one of the first adopters of new AI tech that can help the company become more efficient in its processes. This entry delves into a few of the ways in which we are already utilising AI tools. 

Most people know Cognism for its sales use case, but internally, we drink our own champagne and utilise the Cognism product for our own marketing. This entry shares how.

How do you apply the Cognism demand generation approach in a smaller company? This entry deep dives how Alice adjusted the Kaspr set up to incorporate demand generation.

Cognism and Kaspr are two very similar products, but two very different audiences. When bringing Kaspr into the Cognism family, we had to think carefully about how we position each in a way that helps both companies to thrive next to one another. This entry explains that positioning. 

One of the biggest investments you make as a marketing leader is who you hire. How do you make sure each hire is just as strong as the last? This entry dives into the key values Alice looks for when hiring for the marketing team at Cognism.

This entry is part three of Cognism’s ABM strategy, specifically looking at how we build towards identifying our 1:1 targets and then how we try to reach said target accounts.

This entry is part two of Cognism’s ABM strategy, plus some of the results we’ve managed to achieve from our ABM activity so far.

Cognism has gone from zero ABM strategy to an ABM strategy pulling in 300k opps in a matter of weeks. Listen to Alice deep dive what we do for ABM.

Separate to OKR reporting, how do you track BAU targets? Especially as you grow and have a lot more to have oversight on as a marketing leader… This is how we manage reporting at Cognism.

Which roles should you have in house, and which can you outsource to someone external? This entry explains Alice’s strategy and philosophy for freelancers and agencies.

When others zig, you should zag. Cognism’s SEO strategy has always looked at the long game, focusing on quality - and not on programmatic SEO. Despite a lot of advisors telling us otherwise. This approach has resulted in a website that competes along with the likes of Hubspot.

When expanding into new regions, when can you translate existing content - and when should you create something new? Listen to find out how we balance the low hanging fruit content translation opportunities, versus creating dedicated regional content.

What happens in PMM when a new product is brought to market? This entry offers you an insight into the behind the scenes activity which took place for Cognism’s Enrich launch.

As the Cognism marketing team - and entire organisation - grew larger, we needed a system to hold us accountable to company goals. This entry explains what system we landed on.

Alice’s swings back and forth on in-person events and how to run them. But this year, we’ve landed on an in-person events strategy we’re happy with - and is working.

Listen to Alice’s take on our new VP of Paid Acquisition’s post about his quick wins from his early days in seat at Cognism.

It’s much easier to teach someone a new skill, than it is to teach them a new way of thinking… That’s why Alice prefers to bring people in who are already bought into the demand generation mindset.

How do we run demand generation content campaigns ‘the cognism way’? This entry runs through a real life campaign example from Fix Your Funnel, a huge campaign that was launched in a matter of weeks.

This entry details three ways in which we have optimised our internal processes to become more efficient during an efficiency phase of Cognism’s growth.

Cognism’s team setup might be a little unusual… Listen to Alice explain why she wants Cognism’s marketing team to work together as agencies.

Working with your CEO is a very important aspect of being a marketing leader. And so knowing what they care about and how to best present information to them is a crucial thing to understand.

What is our DG content set up? How do we decide what content we’re going to work on next? And how do we make sure we are always outputting, even when working on ‘big rocks’?

Downloading content doesn’t equal intent to buy. Which is why we don’t create gated content anymore. That doesn’t mean we don’t create long form content, however. Listen to find out how we put out long form content, without gates.

Historically, Alice has been a very operational marketer. She likes being able to get into the weeds and do things for herself. However, as a CMO, her biggest role is as a strategic thinker. Click to listen to how Alice has found the balance.

Enrichment has a wide variety of benefits, which is why we use it a lot at Cognism to reduce the amount of data we need prospects to give us, and to keep the data up to date.

Everyone's an expert when it comes to two things… marketing, and parenthood. Listen to Alice’s experiences learning to ‘nod along’ to advice from either kind of ‘expert’.

Misalignment between demand gen and paid teams can cause chaos. If DG managers are creating ads that are then being applied in a way they didn’t intend, or vice versa, DG managers aren’t creating what paid needs to get results… well it’s all a mess. Click to hear how our DG and paid teams are structured, and how they work together.

What did our new VP of Paid Acquisition get done in his first 160 days of being in seat at Cognism? Click to find out.

What should you do when trying to attract enterprise targets with content? We assumed that we’d have to create dedicated content just for them. Turns out we were wrong. Listen to hear where we landed with enterprise content.

What does the C-suite team day-to-day look like? How do they make sure they’re aligned? How often do they get together to make decisions? Listen as Alice breaks it down.

Behind the scenes of creating the most complete demand generation course to teach marketers about how to do demand gen like we do.

What’s it like being a female leader of marketing in a very fast moving organisation - especially when you take a step away to become a mother? Click to here Alice’s account.

Done is better than perfect! Listen to find out Alice’s philosophy on how to validate ideas before you’ve spent any time or money on projects.

If only there was a silver bullet when it comes to marketing playbooks. But that just isn’t the case. Listen to Alice’s advice on building a process around finding the right playbook for any situation.

The original CMO diary campaign plan is not actually what any one externally would have ended up seeing… listen to find out what happened, and how we pivoted quickly.

On one episode of The Loop podcast, Antonia Wade, CMO of PwC joined Alice to discuss their various solutions to the evolved buyer journey. In this episode, Alice breaks down Antonia’s approach.

There’s no point filling a bucket that has holes in it. And rather than trying to patch the holes - only to see another spring up… Alice and the team instead chose to apply their knowledge from the CHASM project to reinforce GTM motions and fix leaks at the source.

If you don’t have your ICP right, everything else is going to fall like dominos. That’s why Cognism undertook the CHASM project. To check in on our ICP and ensure our GTM motions fit.

What’s the point in spending ages crafting a marketing campaign, only for it to be forgotten in a matter of seconds… that’s not going to drive any lasting results. Which is why being memorable is one of the most important things you can do as a marketer.

Alignment with sales, easier budget conversions, and much easier decision making on where to focus. These are just some of the benefits Alice’s discusses that resulted from tying herself to a revenue number.

No matter the type of content, our content strategy is about quality, rather than quantity. We don’t want to cut corners, as that only goes against you in the long run.

Having already covered Alice’s favourite tools in entry 3, this time, it’s the teams turn to give their top tech recommendations.