Three Keys to Hiring Your Next VP of Marketing

The Chief Digital Officer (CDO) drives digital transformation and optimizes an organization’s internal processes. Though the role is a relatively novel one, the strategic leadership of the Chief Digital Officer is critically important in driving growth and connecting companies to tech-savvy consumers.

Digitalization has drastically changed the role of the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). Many organizations are now focused on accelerating their digital transformation, but the unpredictability of marketing efforts and the need to drive profits still lead to a very short tenure for most CMOs.

The Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) leverages knowledge of sales and marketing in order to manage (and drive growth of) an organization’s revenue streams. The Chief Revenue Officer is responsible for developing strategic partnerships and aligning all of the organization’s revenue-generating departments.

In a digitally-driven global marketplace, organizational growth isn’t achieved without deliberate, strategic effort. The role of the Chief Growth Officer (CGO) discovers, develops, and implements novel engines of growth which aim to maintain organizational success.

Albert Einstein once said, “In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.” An agency can be an exciting place, but many find it scary and overwhelming. It just isn’t the right fit for most people. As a result, it can be difficult to find people who can be successful in an agency setting.

As a hiring agency, we place candidates in CRO roles, inside sales roles, and every role in between. We mainly focus on placing people within emerging tech and digital transformation teams. Regardless of what your focus is, follow these six tips to hire your next sales rep.

Hiring the right people to fulfill your vision is essential, but assembling a great team for your organization is a difficult task. Finding the right person to fill each role is time-consuming. Something equally important—and equally tricky—is building and maintaining a healthy organizational culture.

Social strategists develop and implement social media strategy in order to support a company’s digital marketing efforts.

It’s a hiring manager’s nightmare. Someone on your team alerts you to a new review on an employer review website. You cautiously click, and it’s an all-out roast of the organization, its people, and its culture.

Julius Caesar once said, “No one is so brave that they are not disturbed by unexpected change.” Every experienced hiring manager has been through it. You get the team running like a well-oiled machine and then one of your top-performers puts in their notice. Ouch.

Steve Easterbrook once said, “When you get things right, good things happen.” It seems simple enough, but hiring your next Art Director can present significant challenge.

“Success comes not from having certainty, but being able to live with uncertainty.”
― Jeffrey Fry

As an analytics professional, you know there are myriad tools and methods that enable businesses to make informed decisions. But you, the analytics expert, play a crucial role in transforming raw data into information and insights, which in turn are used by your team members to make the decisions that drive the business forward.

With the right people and the right tools, data analytics turns data into information and information into actionable insights which further your organization’s goals. How do you hire qualified people who can help you make informed decisions? Ask these six questions in order to hire the right people to manage analytics for your organization:

When you buy an assemble-it-yourself piece of furniture, it’s a given that you’re going to need a tool that isn’t included in the box. Whether it’s a hammer or a flathead screwdriver, you need the exact right tool to get the job done. It’s simple: nothing else is going to work.

Picture this: you go to the store to get ice cream, only to find they’re out of the flavor you want. Then you go to every other store in the neighborhood, just to end up empty-handed.  You know the next city over may carry what you’re looking for. But instead, you go home empty-handed or with something that you aren’t super excited about. You encounter a similar dilemma when you try to find your ideal candidate within a defined geographic area. Avoid this frustration. Broaden your search and be open to relocating new team members. Keep these two keys in mind when you begin this process:

It can be difficult to hire the right sales leader for your high-growth emerging company. Answer one question in order to simplify this process and elevate the likelihood of hiring the right person for this important role.

Oscar Wilde once said, “Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.” Additionally, Albert Einstein once said, “The only source of knowledge is experience.” We treat mistakes as a great source of learning. User experience is a relatively new undertaking in our clients’ typical foci of websites, apps, and Saas offerings. Thus, we learn a lot from early mistakes.

User experience isn’t a quantifiable product or outcome as much as it is a feeling. It’s the feeling a user has as a result of experiencing a product. In our clients’ case, this product is most often a website, app, or a SaaS offering. A UX professional enables the experience and feelings the user wants to have.

Mark Twain once said, “The secret to getting ahead is getting started.” Picture a horse race: there’s an all-out battle to the finish line, which ends mere minutes after the start of the race. Generally, competitors who leave the gate well also finish well.

In boxing, we hear the phrase “punching above their weight” in reference to a fighter who hits harder than others in their weight class.

Stellar media content and strategy converts strangers into fans and fans into customers. Social media professionals require different skills depending on the role, organization, and project.

Welcome to our discussion on building and staffing your digital transformation team. Let’s start by aligning on a common definition of digital transformation. Being simple people, we like to define things simply. For the purposes of this post, we will simply define digital transformation as the application of current technologies to improve relationships with organizational stakeholders.

The record player was once the foremost way of consuming music. The record was removed from its sleeve, placed in the record player, and the needle was set just right. Records were awesome in their day. But skip a few tracks into the future and they’re antiquated. Now, we search and download music with just a few clicks. We create our own playlists with ease and we carry them everywhere. Music has advanced.

Former NFL Head Coach Chuck NollM once said, “If you want to win, do the ordinary things better than anyone else does them, day in and day out.” Most organizations struggle with the question of how to best leverage the web in their business. In order to leverage the web, your organization’s digital marketing efforts need to be optimally staffed.

One of my hobbies is mixed martial arts. My friends and family think I’m a little crazy, but I can’t help enjoy the training, and of course, the fighting. One thing I’ve learned is that fighting a smaller, faster guy can be very frustrating. They can be hard to hit, they strike quickly, and they’re gone before you can return fire.

Owning, building, and selling a successful digital marketing company taught us a host of valuable lessons. Subsequently going through a merger and acquisition, as a result of selling a digital marketing firm, taught us even more. We’ve had the privilege of helping dozens of organizations properly build and staff their digital and integrated teams.

As an emerging company, it can be tempting to hire someone from a mature, established competitor or to recruit someone with a big title from a big company. However, recruits from mature, slow moving, well-established enterprises often do not survive at faster, more agile, more adaptable emerging technology companies.