The Revenue CMO – Leading the Data Driven Marketing

Among the most interesting trends shaping the modern marketing function is the rise of a new breed of the CMOs called the “Revenue CMO”. The role of the CMO has undergone a radical shift especially in B2B technology companies, which are driving the revolution of this new breed of the CMOs.

Revenue CMOs are growth marketers who are going beyond the traditional marketing execution role.

They are leveraging data and analytics to continuously optimize execution and demonstrate measurable results. They actively engage with the sales and finance teams to sign-up for driving top-line revenue for their organizations.

The Revenue CMOs are relentless when it comes to leveraging analytics to validate their plans and demonstrate with numbers the impact their work is making across the organization.

Unprecedented advances in marketing technology and marketing analytics have resulted in growing scrutiny and re-evaluation of the CMO’s role. The CEO needs to be able to turn to a marketing leader that can deliver tangible results in terms of what matters to the CEO most: revenue. These are the kind of marketers CEOs are beginning to rely on for driving growth across the organizations and run marketing as a revenue-generating function. This expectation from the c-suite has been the most important factor that has led to the emergence of the Revenue CMOs.

I have been working with the CMOs from some of the most innovative companies for over a decade now. I have experienced this transition happening first hand and it has been a fascinating ride. There were times when marketing leaders were all about shaping the brand of the company, driving the brand awareness to promote the value proposition but

now marketing leaders are laser-focused on marketing analytics

tracking MQLs, how are their organizations trending against the quarterly pipeline goals, marketing attribution methodologies to demand waterfall conversions. These data focused conversations were un-imaginable in traditional marketing just a few years ago.

The most common ask from the Revenue CMOs is to demonstrate the quantifiable impact that their organizations are making on the pipeline.

Given the growing scrutiny around marketing budgets and the asks for returns from the marketing spend, marketing performance insights and marketing analytics not only empower marketing leaders to have data-driven conversations with the c-suite, inspire/reward their teams based on performance but also optimize the execution of their strategy. Key questions that are top of mind for the Revenue CMOs:

a) Did we meet our goals both for volume and conversions?

We have been using demand waterfall performance to help answer this question. With our marketing analytics frameworks, we enable real-time visibility into the health of the funnel so that marketing teams can track inquiries, mqls, sqls, sals, and wins across different sales segments, product lines, by different channels, tactics, and campaigns. Cohort based funnel conversions are a key part of evaluating the health of the funnel to get a good read into the quality of the leads flowing into the funnel and discover what kinds of leads are moving faster through the funnel, what the velocity looks like.

b) How much did we invest and what is the pipeline impact?

Marketing ROI is the most important metric for the Revenue CMO. Finance and sales organizations expect marketing leaders to make smart decisions when it comes to budget allocation and more importantly within the marketing organizations, the leaders increasingly want to feel confident about these decisions because it is these decisions that will help them meet their pipeline goals. This is where multi-touch campaign attribution comes into play and it is the most valuable of all the KPIs as it powers the marketing investment decision making which in turn drives the results for the marketing organization.

c) What is working in terms of driving the pipeline?

Driving a new pipeline has always been the most important KPI for any marketing organization. The importance of demonstrating how marketing is impacting the pipeline has grown manifolds in the charter of Revenue CMOs. The 2 commonly used metrics that demonstrate the impact of marketing are Marketing Pipeline Acceleration/Influence and New Pipeline Sourcing. With these 2 metrics, organizations can quantify marketing-driven engagement across the accounts and relate them to the impact on pipeline. These pipeline correlations of the marketing activities provide valuable insights when it comes to understanding “when” the new opportunities were created in marketing engaged accounts and for the accounts with existing opportunities, how marketing was able to influence deal expansions and accelerate deal closures.

We are always on the lookout for inputs and examples from the marketing community to keep adding value for our customers. Revenue CMO is still an evolving concept for most of the marketing organizations and especially for the CMOs who have to successfully manage the delicate balance between the traditional CMO role and at the same time lead the culture of data-driven marketing within their organizations.

We welcome the inputs from other marketing leaders and practitioners around how the concept of Revenue CMO is evolving within their organizations. What metrics are top of the mind for the CMOs? How are the Revenue CMOs defining the metrics for tracking marketing’s impact on pipeline and revenue?