Thursday, November 21, 2019
4 Things You Need to Go from Marketing Director to Marketing Executive
4 Things You Need to Go from Marketing Director to Marketing Executive4 Things You Need to Go from Marketing Director to Marketing ExecutiveIf youre a Director of Marketing (or in a similar mid-level absatzwirtschaft role) the chances are that youre looking for a way to take the next step in your career and move up to a marketing leadership positionsuch as Vice President of Marketing or Chief Marketing Officer.While hard work and experience will go a long way toward helping you advance in your career, and are necessary ingredients, youll likely have to build upon your current skill set and expand your professional network before youll be considered a marketing executive position.I recently spoke with two of my venture capitalist connections that are well-versed in building marketing teams, and are often asked to help hire the right marketing executive to lead their portfolio companies. Id like to highlight four key traits that any marketing executive needs. While this isnt an exhaust ive list of what you need, these are amongst the most important attributes.1. Hone Your Quantitative SkillsToday, every marketing executive needs to be comfortable dealing with marketing metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs). In a conversation with Greg Goldfarb, Managing Director at Summit Partners, Goldfarb told me that he always scans a resume to look at the ratio of numbers to text to get an anfangsbuchstabe sense of how comfortable a candidate is reporting on marketing metrics. A few metrics he looks for are things like the campaign conversion rates, conversion to lead rate, growth in number of marketing qualified leads, etc. Since, as Amanda Augustine pointed out in her recent post, the average recruiter only spends six seconds reviewing your resume, its important to convey this right up front.Phil Dur, Managing Director at Investor Growth Capital says he wants to see executive-level marketing candidates be able to say, I grew marketing-qualified leads from 2,000 per y ear to 7,000 per year and reduced the cost per lead from $60 to $35. So in order to be considered for the position, you need to be in tune with these KPIs and have the acumen to report them in a meaningful way.2. Expand Industry ConnectionsOf course, another critical attribute of a quality marketing executive is that theyre well-connected in their industry. This goes beyond simply being well-connected with individuals in your industry. To be truly valuable as a marketing executive, you need analyst and press connections as well. This means that while youre still at the Director of Marketing level you should be actively seeking to make connections with industry influencers and analyst firms.In my industry, enterprise software, this would mean developing relationships with analysts at firms like Gartner and Forrester and tech publications such as TechCrunch. Look at your industry and decide which are the most important analyst and press publications to seek out. As youre expanding you r network, however, its important to be intentional about who youre connecting with. You should act in your self-interest when networking and ask yourself how building a relationship with that person will further your marketing career. If you cant quickly come up with an answer to that, they might not be the best connection.3. Learn verwesen Marketing TechnologiesIn addition to expanding your network, its important to grow your familiarity with the technologies that run modern marketing campaigns and departments. At the director level, youre likely well-acquainted with customer relationship management (CRM) software and some marketing analytics programs such as Google Analytics, Google AdWords as well as email marketing programs.At the executive level, its important to understand these technologies and then some. At the moment, one particularly important technology to familiarize yourself with is marketing automation. Why? As Phil Dur says, experience with marketing automation syste ms signals that a marketer is used to tying marketing investment to a discrete return, which is important for any marketing executive. If youre not familiar with marketing automation, a great place to take courses and become certified in the needed skills is the Marketing Automation Institutewhich holds marketing events and offers tutorials.4. Obtain C-Suite ReferenceTo round out your skills and expanded network, its important to have C-level approval of your work. As a marketing executive, youll like report directly to the CEO so its necessary to have CEOs from your prior companies vouch for your work and your ability to deliver results. Goldfarb says that he wants to hear from CEOs and VPs of Marketing that the candidate has a track record of driving top-line growth or adding geschftlicher umgang value. These references are important because these individuals are the best able to judge the candidates contribute to incremental revenue and overall health of the business.Have you mad e the jump from mid-level marketing employee to marketing executive? Share your tips for success in the comments section below.
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