Mark Donnigan Consultant

Mark Donnigan builds disruptive innovative start-ups. Mark's superpower is architecting go-to-market plans and marketing movements that drive genuine organization results for technical and product-centric creators. Mark's growth and market advancement experience spans 20 years as a transformative B2B marketing and magnate, driving demand, brand development, and method for startup and growth-stage business.

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

FIND OUT MORE: https://growthstage.marketing

Mark Donnigan has actually managed groups as big as 25, making up SDRs, AEs, and marketing, producing $29mm/year. Mark brought budget commitments to $3mm/year for operations and $400k/year for marketing. Deal sizes varying from mid-five figures to mid-six figures every year.

As a startup marketing specialist, Mark Donnigan's inbound and outbound marketing experience include structure and mentoring high-performance groups that carry out as needed generation, brand and product marketing, PR, digital, and events where he establishes and implements high-impact programs that drive profits, produce ROI, trigger the market, and provides company results.

Mark Donnigan thinks that the best marketing consultants and marketing leaders are doers. Mark's marketing experience includes all aspects of need generation, ABM, SEO, email marketing, paid marketing, occasions, PR (internal & company), and product marketing.

Mark is an issue solver and a first-principles thinker who is imaginative and analytical. Mark always works cross-functionally and has shown success, building, leading, and mentoring marketing, sales, and business advancement groups that have actually produced more than $500mm in revenue/shareholder worth.

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

Mark Donnigan is a systems thinker, and he places a high value on team effort. Mark has substantial experience working along with sales, item, operations, and finance to ensure that the company and profits goals of the company are constantly gone beyond.

Development Phase Marketing exists to supply business owners and creators services for:

Architecting the marketplace category that is best fit to the unique worth proposal of your innovation.
High effect marketing support so that you can reach your income goals and scale sustainably.
Achieving go-to-market alignment across the sales and marketing companies.
Extracting the greatest value from every marketing dollar.
Insider knowledge and insights about the B2B buying journey and how to browse a significantly fragmented consumer choice hierarchy.
Operationalizing marketing, from system and process advancement to making the first hires.

Ideas on what it takes to be an effective marketer and CMO today.

If you are a CEO who feels your B2B marketing does not have a clear connection to business, you are not alone. A study finished by the marketing consultancy Fournaise discovered that 80% of Chief Executives are not delighted with the work their leading Marketing leader is doing. Assessing what the present company fact suggests for marketing leaders, I remembered the principle of a Peacetime leader and a Wartime leader from Ben Horowitz's book "The Hard Aspect Of Hard Things."

Horowitz explained the principle in a post where he composed that the Peacetime CEO "concentrates on the big image and empowers her individuals to make comprehensive decisions." The Wartime CEO, on the other hand, "values a speck of dust on a gnat's ass if it interfered with the prime regulation."

The Peacetime CEO "comprehends what to do with a big advantage," while the Wartime CEO "is paranoid." Peacetime CEO "works to lower conflict," 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 significant advantage vs. the competitors. In times of peace, business focuses on broadening the market and boosting business's strengths. For CMO's, Peacetime is when we are totally free to be creative with our trademark name building by attending each exhibition with an even bigger cubicle than in 2015'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 may be on the line.
As I write this post, the entire world is fighting an undetectable enemy called COVID-19, which has let loose a discouraging dosage of organization unpredictability globally. For CMO's, the COVID-19 pandemic is company equivalent of war. No longer do our 2020 marketing strategies make good sense.

This is more than remaining in an area with the light on, and all of a sudden you find yourself in pitch-black darkness, so you walk tepidly, continuing in the very same directions knowing that you were heading towards the door prior to the lights got turned off. No, not just has the pandemic turned the lights out, its blown a huge crater in our path that was not there prior to, and lacking light in the room, can not be seen. Nevertheless we must avoid at all costs falling under the crater.

No one wish for war, however a Wartime leader does not avoid 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 ideas and concepts to help you discover your "Wartime CMO fight strategy."

How to serve as a Wartime CMO.

Throughout Wartime, everyone is in uncharted waters, however this is where the opportunity is for many companies who formerly had a difficult time to compete against larger rivals and dominant market forces. Now, for the very first time, you may be on comparable footing as your more powerful rivals. It's the ideal chance to define your future.

In a global decrease like what COVID-19 has triggered, absolutely nothing makes sense. And yet, a few of your rivals will continue to perform their typical "attempted and genuine" marketing playback, assuming that constructing the brand with business interactions messages from the CEO is going to contribute to their company objectives. Now is the perfect opportunity for the Wartime CMO to take ground in the market.

Take strong action.

Creative marketing is required in Wartime more than ever. Now is the time to inspect your necessary assumptions. As the worldwide service environment has modified, and the stability of the core business called into concern, CMO's must be ready to reassess their preliminary plan.
Think of that less consumers will equate to reduced requirement. And decreased need suggests markets will not respond as they did prior to the crisis.

Believe about it in this manner, when individuals buy less, advertisers invest less. However prior to you follow a slash and burn the marketing invest playbook, here are a couple of things to be experienced about:

Investment bank Cowen and Business analyzed the last 6 financial downturns given that 1950 and found that costs 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 deals throughout the board as media outlets see companies cut their marketing and advertising invests. Push marketing and branding drops in a slowdown, but sales activation marketing always increases.

Shift spending to more measurable channels so that you can adjust quickly. Speed is whatever. Marketing initiatives able to be tracked with specificity will be a lot better than broad mass-market jobs. Downturns accelerate the reduction of interruption-based mass marketing. In its place will be an increased concentrate on measurable and relationship-based strategies.

Recessions create a chance for business that are more effective at turning marketing monetary investments into profits. In the middle of a decrease when marketers are cutting their spending is an enjoyable time to gain from low CPMs and Licensed public accountants.

The Institute of Practitioners in Marketing completed a study in 2008 that found, "Following a spending plan cut, a brand will continue to gain from the marketing investment made over the previous few years. This will lower any short-term company effects, and will lead to a precariously misleading increase in short-term success. The longer-term company harm will be more significant, however will not be noticed in the start."

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 Brand Usage by 24% with a 28% reduction in Brand Image. Brands that cut their ad budget at a greater rate relative to their rivals were at an even greater risk of share loss.
There are an unbelievable variety of marketing research studies that validate in a decrease, brand that continue marketing and marketing efforts recover much faster. It takes strong action to invest when the information suggests that ROI is not possible. A Wartime CMO battles to keep the budget plan required to continue marketing.

Make the most of the worth of each lead produced.

In a slowdown, risk-averse purchasers take even longer to research study purchases, and this applies equally to B2B and B2C purchasers. When you initially 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 require this interaction. Marketing must make sure not to move a prospect through the funnel too rapidly. Keep in mind, the possibility's skilled life has been turned on its head. What was a concern just a number of weeks or months back, is likely not top of mind today.

It's tempting in a slow down to tighten your grip on leads since the rationale is that now more than ever, all leads are essential. Here is where lead scoring can be a valuable tool to acknowledge extremely engaged prospects from those who are not likely to become your consumers. Now is the time for Online marketers to hold on to MQL's for a prolonged duration so that you can startup marketing groom the possibility to the optimum possible degree prior info 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 do not 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 must do whatever 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 remain in the finest position to win during the crisis and most definitely once it has actually passed.

Concentrate on your present clients.

It's cheaper to grow incomes with your existing consumers. Consider whether now is the time to downsize your mass lead generation programs and focus on building much deeper relationships with those who currently know your organization. This does not suggest to stop your need gen efforts, however it does suggest that you might want to explore with product and sales how you can sell 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 a business that has acquired traction on their way to ending up being a category king or queen, this technique, though expensive feels excellent because of the impressive volume of activity that is being produced. Nevertheless, without cautious analysis, the high degree of activity fools lots of CMO's and management groups into believing that their need generation engine is finely tuned when, in truth, it's discharging enormous contamination, i.e. exceedingly high CAC, greater than average churn for the category, low CLTV, and so on.

Marketing needs to line up with sales.

A brand-focused Marketing leader concerns business with a remarkable education and pedigree, having actually held considerable titles with big companies. There was a time when the marketing group may handle all business and item details and messaging with the marketplace. If a buyer desired to discover a new product or explore whether a solution might meet their requirement, they had no option however to call the organization.

Responses to concerns such as, Who's genuine 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 correct online forum or LinkedIn group. As an outcome, the power shifted to the buyer.

We understand that online marketers are no longer in control of the purchaser's journey. It is crucial to define a funnel that details evictions a possibility must pass on the method to doing business with the business. Purchasers can connect with us on the platform of their picking. As the buying group has actually broadened to as many as 2 lots people, the idea that they will follow our procedure as we have actually recommended is seldom real.

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

A revenue-focused CMO will manage the engine behind a CEO's development strategy. The shift from companies being physical item developers or service companies, to digital development companies where the product is distributed as software application or software as a service through the Internet, has reduced the function of marketing. And is the element a revenue-focused CMO who is a value developer is what all start-ups and disruptive development 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 related to internet marketing. This improvement has actually been highlighted by Forrester, mentioning a 20-year-old shift to digital as the driving force behind CMOs moving from being brand-builders to earnings motorists. Forrester goes on to report that a worth designer, revenue-driven Online marketer, need to be a story maker and not just a storyteller.

The CMO today need to be a specialist at developing and leading creative engagement and organization approach to establish a category for the organization to dominate.

Here are a number of methods that a revenue-driven CMO requirement to run:

They will work thoroughly with the sales group to discover and map the buyer's journey. Where presumptions do not match what is happening in the market, a value designer CMO will leave the workplace and hang out in the field. This leader comprehends that you can not drive revenue if you aren't close to where the sale occurs.

A revenue-focused CMO creates content targeted at each stage of the buyer's journey. Think about the purchaser's journey as a set of gates where the content reacts to the primary concerns a purchaser has at each action so that they can finish the buying journey.
The brand-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 qualified result in their sellers. A worth designer CMO sees marketing as close allies to the sales group.

The revenue-centered CMO is always discovering from and fine-tuning the process so that they can improve the quantity and quality of leads that contributed to the pipeline and closed company.
Earnings attribution and marketing ROI designs will show genuine results, not theorized or "presumed" requirements. This information is crucial for the revenue-focused CMO to solve considering that they care about marketing's impact on company.

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

What to search for in your next CMO.

In the dynamic state of organization today, dealing with a reliable CMO is amongst the most hard things to do. Every market, company, and market section is different. Even where you can acknowledge prospects from the very same business community or environment, it's insufficient to merely have a look at years of experience or education. You need to take a look at the inspirations and believed patterns of the person. Ask:
Is the CMO an issue solver?

The most substantial danger today is on the marketplace side and not development. A marketing leader who isn't a concern solver will struggle to deal with the fast-changing nature of the marketplace and neighborhood structure.

Are they a doer?
In many marketing groups, there will be specific professionals who can work at the greatest level throughout the series of capabilities needed. It's incumbent for a marketing leader to command regard as a doer. The CMO, who can demonstrate functional capability in the core locations that the group runs, will be more reputable than a manager just.

Has the CMO held cross-functional positions?

The finest method to ensure that you attract a CMO who is revenue and not brand-driven is to hire somebody who has actually come up through product, sales, and corporate approach. Having direct exposure to the inner functions of product and sales is especially advantageous as service method is ending up being a more substantial part of the CMO's series of commitments.

Do they believe in systems or approach company in a structured manner?

As digital has actually blown up the number of marketing user interface points, allowing purchasers to disaggregate business from the purchasing journey, a CMO needs to have the capability to think about systems and structures rather of safely specified marketing lanes. It is no longer appropriate to plan in regards to the social task, material marketing task, occasions, GET MORE INFO and PR, all as different activities. The successful CMO will start with company objective they are serving and be prepared to question everything.

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

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

As the CMO will need to work cross-functionally to guarantee that they have positioning with product and sales, the marketing head ought to be a motivator. To develop a category requires conversation, negotiation, and the capability to look for and reach an agreement.

Do they allow their group, or operate by command and growth stage marketing control?

A CMO who attempts to lead with ultimate authority will have a hard time to achieve organization goals of business. Marketing groups today need to work as engineering groups work in a nimble fashion. Instead of perfectly organized 90-day task cadences, an agile marketing group carries out a consistent flow of efforts while maintaining the adaptability to change as the market or organization requirements figure out.

Does the CMO comprehend classification design?

I have in fact composed about category design and why every business requires to own a classification to accomplish its ideal capacity. There is a structure for executing category design. Still, whether an Online marketer follows the summary or techniques category design another method, a CMO must be putting regular idea and preparation into how they define the classification they imply to dominate. Without input from the CEO and other members of the executive group, there is no way to complete a proper category style.

The Wartime CMO will require to increase the accountability of marketing by revealing the effect of each marketing activity on the pipeline as identified by profits contribution.
In a decrease, marketing ought to move the understanding of being an expense center to an income driver. Reporting beyond the variety of marketing certified leads produced to include the total chance worth for each lead source is an outstanding method to represent the function marketing is playing to drive the economic goals of business.

Studies have in fact exposed that an effectively created landing page can double your conversion rate over sending traffic to your home page, which tends to do not have the proper call to action that matches the advertisement. Since 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 invest in marketing. Yes, conversion rate optimization makes a distinction.

Throughout Wartime, every marketing dollar is important, and a Wartime CMO understands that winning will not boil down to a single method or "silver bullet" technique. Rather, numerous small things carried out well. The CMO, who can not comprehend the interplay of copy, messaging, creative design, and development, will struggle to find and recognize quickly where little modifications can offer much better conversions.

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

Now, the content that we create requirements to interest someone trying to find our option, and it needs to consist of purchaser intent activates like keywords and expressions that a buyer would use as they get close to purchasing decision. A Havas Group research study revealed that 84% of individuals prepare for brand names to produce content, yet 60% of the material produced is of bad quality or unimportant, failing to fulfill the requirements of the audience. Despite a 71% correlation in between content efficiency and a brand name's influence on personal wellness, simply 40% of the world's leading 1,500 brand names produce material that satisfies this requirement. Brand name's are stopping working to produce substantial content.

Stop producing assembly line material that is just suggested to develop the brand name or present the product. Instead, material must target particular personas to fix any holdups avoiding the prospect from carrying on. This content will take longer to produce and need a greater community and product knowledge level.

CMO's in Wartime should have an exceptional understanding of the purchaser mind and their mental needs so that they can produce material that alleviates worry and addresses the sincere concerns 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 choice, putting them in the enviable position to take as much as 76% of the economics from the whole category.

Find out more about Category Design.

The B2B sales procedure today is fragmented and intricate, with lots of stakeholders needing to confirm a purchase decision. This renders basic marketing ROI and attribution strategies less helpful for anything besides scholastic research study.

The marketing function today breaks down into three practical pillars making up Item, Requirement Generation, and Category Style. Because numerous marketing leaders have really not entirely accepted classification style, it's a remarkably easy way to beat an incumbent during a crisis. As quickly as the sector begins to go over the category as you have actually specified it, your business will wind up being the classification and the obvious option.

To do Category Design needs a various working cadence. Wartime is the ideal time to start Category Design considered that absolutely nothing is "regular" throughout a crisis.
To manage the obstacle of building a Classification King organization requires a heap of grit, decision, and a steadfast drive to win. For the Wartime CMO, who takes on the obstacle, there can be no bigger pot-o-gold if successful.

Read the book Play Larger to discover out everything about category design.