mark donnigan

Mark Donnigan builds disruptive ingenious startups. Mark's superpower is architecting go-to-market strategies and marketing motions that drive genuine service outcomes for technical and product-centric creators. Mark's development and market development experience covers 20 years as a transformative B2B marketing and magnate, driving demand, brand advancement, and strategy for start-up and growth-stage companies.

As a specialist and virtual marketing leader (fractional-CMO), Mark Donnigan deals with start-up developers and CEOs from B2B disruptive innovation technology business to help them develop, bootstrap, and scale their marketing and go-to-market actions.

LEARN MORE: https://growthstage.marketing

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

As a start-up marketing expert, Mark Donnigan's incoming and outgoing marketing experience consist of structure and mentoring high-performance groups that execute on demand generation, brand name and item marketing, PR, digital, and occasions where he develops and implements high-impact programs that drive profits, produce ROI, activate the market, and delivers organization outcomes.

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

Mark is a problem solver and a first-principles thinker who is imaginative and analytical. Mark constantly works cross-functionally and has actually proven success, structure, leading, and mentoring marketing, sales, and organization advancement groups that have actually produced more than $500mm in revenue/shareholder worth.

Mark has actually discovered that constructing a category ought to be the leading goal for every single marketing leader and it is the foundation of his method and method. Mark Donnigan has extensive B2B marketing experience that includes structure and mentoring high-performance teams.

Mark Donnigan is a systems thinker, and he places a high value on teamwork. Mark has comprehensive experience working alongside sales, product, operations, and financing to ensure that business and earnings goals of the business are constantly gone beyond.

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

Architecting the marketplace category that is best fit to the distinct worth proposal of your innovation.
High impact marketing assistance so that you can reach your income objectives and scale sustainably.
Accomplishing go-to-market positioning across the sales and marketing organizations.
Extracting the greatest value from every marketing dollar.
Expert understanding and insights about the B2B buying journey and how to navigate a significantly fragmented client choice hierarchy.
Operationalizing marketing, from system and process development to making the first hires.

Thoughts 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 completed by the marketing consultancy Fournaise discovered that 80% of President are not pleased with the work their top Marketing leader is doing. Assessing what today business fact suggests for marketing leaders, I kept in mind the principle of a Peacetime leader and a Wartime leader from Ben Horowitz's book "The Hard Thing About Hard Things."

Horowitz explained the principle in a post where he made up that the Peacetime CEO "concentrates on the big image and empowers her people to make detailed choices." The Wartime CEO, on the other hand, "appreciates a speck of dust on a gnat's ass if it interfered with the prime instruction."

The Peacetime CEO "comprehends what to do with a huge benefit," while the Wartime CEO "is paranoid." Peacetime CEO "works to lower dispute," and Wartime CEO "heightens the contradictions."

Peacetime in company is when a business has the capability to grow in its core market due to a significant advantage vs. the competitors. In times of peace, the company concentrates on expanding the market and boosting business's strengths. For CMO's, Peacetime is when we are completely free to be imaginative with our brand name structure 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 different thing completely because, in Wartime, the life and death of our company may be on the line.
As I compose this post, the whole world is combating an invisible enemy called COVID-19, which has actually let loose an aggravating dosage of organization uncertainty internationally. For CMO's, the COVID-19 pandemic is business equivalent of war. No longer do our 2020 marketing techniques make great sense.

This is more than being in an area with the light on, and unexpectedly you find yourself in pitch-black darkness, so you stroll tepidly, continuing in the exact same instructions understanding that you were heading toward the door prior to the lights got switched off. No, not simply has the pandemic turned the lights out, its blown a massive crater in our course that was not there prior to, and devoid of light in the room, can not be seen. Nevertheless we should prevent at all costs falling into the crater.

Nobody longs for war, but a Wartime leader does not shrink from the fight, rather, they acknowledge that Wartime is the single finest chance to leapfrog sidetracked rivals and take ground away. What follows is a set of ideas and ideas to assist you discover your "Wartime CMO combat strategy."

How to act as a Wartime CMO.

During Wartime, everybody is in uncharted waters, but this is where the possibility is for lots of business who previously had a difficult time to contend versus larger rivals and dominant market forces. Now, for the extremely first time, you may be on equivalent footing as your more powerful rivals. It's the ideal opportunity to define your future.

In a worldwide decrease like what COVID-19 has actually activated, definitely nothing makes sense. And yet, a few of your rivals will continue to perform their usual "attempted and real" marketing playback, assuming that constructing the brand with business interactions messages from the CEO is going to contribute to their company goals. Now is the perfect chance 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 examine your essential presumptions. As the around the world company environment has actually modified, and the stability of the core organization called into concern, CMO's needs to be all set to reassess their preliminary strategy.
Believe about that less consumers will equate to lowered need. And minimized need means markets will not respond as they did prior to the crisis.

Think about it in this way, when individuals buy less, marketers invest less. However prior to you follow a slash and burn the marketing invest playbook, here are a number of things to be educated about:

Investment bank Cowen and Business examined the last 6 economic declines provided that 1950 and found that costs on direct marketing grew during the previous financial slumps. Significance, you will want to consider your mix of brand name marketing carefully compared to sales activation marketing. It's not time to stop marketing. Remember, 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 costs to more quantifiable channels so that you can adapt rapidly. Speed is whatever. Marketing initiatives able to be tracked with specificity will be a lot better than broad mass-market tasks. Downturns accelerate the reduction of interruption-based mass marketing. In its place will be an increased focus on quantifiable and relationship-based techniques.

Recessions create an opportunity for business that are more efficient at turning marketing monetary investments into earnings. In the middle of a sluggish down when advertisers are cutting their costs is a fun time to gain from low CPMs and Licensed public accountants.

The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising completed a study in 2008 that discovered, "Following a budget cut, a brand name will continue to gain from the marketing financial investment made over the previous few years. This will lower any short-term business impacts, and will lead to a precariously misleading boost in short-term success. The longer-term business damage will be more substantial, however will not be noticed in the beginning."

Millward Brown reported in their research study "Marketing During Economic Downturn: To Invest or Not to Invest?" that 60% of trademark name that went 'dark' during a financial recession by cutting their TELEVISION marketing invest for 6 months experienced a decline in Brand Usage by 24% with a 28% reduction in Brand name Image. Brands that cut their ad budget plan at a higher rate relative to their competitors were at an even higher risk of share loss.
There are an unbelievable variety of marketing studies that validate in a decline, trademark name that continue marketing and advertising efforts recuperate faster. It takes strong action to invest when the data advises that ROI is not possible. A Wartime CMO fights to maintain the spending plan needed to continue marketing.

Maximize the worth of each lead produced.

In a downturn, risk-averse buyers take even longer to research study purchases, and this applies similarly to B2B and B2C purchasers. When you initially recognize a possibility, 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 needs to make sure not to move a possibility through the funnel too quickly. Remember, the prospect's expert life has actually been turned on its head. What was a concern simply a number of weeks or months back, is most likely not top of mind today.

It's tempting in a sluggish down to tighten your grip on leads since the reasoning is that now more than ever, all leads are important. Here is where lead scoring can be an important tool to acknowledge highly engaged potential customers from those who are not likely to become your customers. Now is the time for Online marketers to hold on to MQL's for an extended duration so that you can groom the prospect to the optimum possible extent prior to handing them off to sales as a SQL.

Without lead scoring and a perfect prospect 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 buy, simply not now. You don't want to miss out on the future sale considering that you didn't keep in contact and include worth though the journey. In a "Wartime" economy, you need to do whatever possible to optimize the worth of your MQL's.

CMO's that do a better job of dealing with leads and establishing early-stage prospects into sales-ready leads will stay in the finest position to win during the crisis and most absolutely once it has actually passed.

Focus on your present consumers.

It's cheaper to grow incomes with your existing consumers. Think about whether now is the time to scale back your mass lead generation programs and focus on building much deeper relationships with those who currently understand your business. This does not suggest to stop your requirement gen efforts, but it does imply that you may wish to explore with item and sales how you can offer more to your existing customers.

In Peacetime, marketing groups are working on auto-pilot in pursuit of driving MQL's to please sales reps. For a service that has actually acquired traction on their method to ending up being a classification king or queen, this approach, though costly feels excellent given that of the exceptional volume of activity that is being produced. However, without cautious analysis, the high degree of activity fools many CMO's and management groups into thinking that their requirement generation engine is carefully tuned when, in truth, it's producing huge contamination, i.e. extremely high CAC, higher than typical churn for the category, low CLTV, and so on.

Marketing needs to line up with sales.

A brand-focused Marketing leader worries the business with an impressive education and pedigree, having in fact held significant titles with huge companies. There was a time when the marketing group may manage all corporate and item details and messaging with the marketplace. If a buyer wanted to learn about a brand-new item or check out whether a solution may fulfill their requirement, they had no alternative but to call the company.

Responses to issues such as, Who's real and who isn't? - Who's item works, and whose does not? - What's coming? Now where offered with a single post on the correct online forum or LinkedIn group. As a result, the power moved to the buyer.

We understand that online marketers are no longer in control of the buyer's journey. It is essential to define a funnel that lays out expulsions a possibility ought to hand down the way to doing organization with business. Purchasers can link with us on the platform of their choosing. As the purchasing group has actually expanded to as lots of as 2 lots people, the idea that they will follow our process as we have really prescribed is seldom genuine.

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

A revenue-focused CMO will handle the engine behind a CEO's development strategy. The shift from business being physical item designers or service companies, to digital development companies where the product is dispersed as software application or software application as a service through the Internet, has decreased the function of marketing. And is the factor a revenue-focused CMO who is a value developer is what all start-ups and disruptive innovation companies need today.

Today, marketing requires greater levels of technical ability as an outcome of the explosion of digital media and the marketing innovations that are related to internet marketing. This improvement has been highlighted by Forrester, mentioning a 20-year-old transition to digital as the driving force behind CMOs moving from being brand-builders to income motorists. Forrester goes on to report that a value designer, revenue-driven Online marketer, need to be a story maker and not just a storyteller.

The CMO today ought to be an expert at creating and leading imaginative engagement and business technique to establish a category for business to control.

Here are a number of approaches that a revenue-driven CMO requirement to operate:

They will work thoroughly with the sales group to find and map the purchaser's journey. Where presumptions do not match what is occurring in the market, a worth designer CMO will leave the office and hang out in the field. This leader comprehends that you can not drive earnings if you aren't near where the sale occurs.

A revenue-focused CMO produces content targeted at each stage of the buyer's journey. Believe about the purchaser's journey as a set of gates where the material reacts to the primary concerns a purchaser has at each action so that they can complete the buying journey.
The new generation CMO will collect engagement metrics for each gate while examining the success of the end-to-end marketing cycle to provide the most timely and certified cause their sellers. A value developer CMO sees marketing as close allies to the sales group.

The revenue-centered CMO is constantly finding from and fine-tuning the procedure so that they can improve the amount and quality of leads that contributed to the pipeline and closed organization.
Incomes attribution and marketing ROI styles will reflect genuine results, not extrapolated or "presumed" requirements. This details is vital for the revenue-focused CMO to resolve because they appreciate marketing's influence on service.

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

What to look for in your next CMO.

In the dynamic state of organization today, working with an effective CMO is among the most tough things to do. Every market, organization, and market section is various. Even where you can recognize prospects from the exact same service neighborhood or environment, it's not adequate to merely have a look at years of experience or education. You require to examine the inspirations and believed patterns of the person. Ask:
Is the CMO an issue solver?

The most substantial threat today is on the marketplace side and not development. A marketing leader who isn't a concern solver will have a hard time to manage the fast-changing nature of the marketplace and community building.

Are they a doer?
In many marketing groups, there will be particular specialists who can operate at the greatest level throughout the series of capabilities required. It's incumbent for a marketing leader to command regard as a doer. The CMO, who can show practical capability in the core locations that the group operates, will be more reputable than a supervisor just.

Has the CMO held cross-functional positions?

The finest way to ensure that you attract a CMO who is earnings and not brand-driven is to employ somebody who has actually turned up through item, sales, and corporate technique. Having direct exposure to the inner operations of product and sales is specifically advantageous as service method is becoming a more substantial part of the CMO's series of commitments.

Do they believe in systems or method service in a structured way?

As digital has blown up the number of marketing user interface points, enabling buyers to disaggregate business from the purchasing journey, a CMO ought to have the ability to think about systems and structures instead of firmly specified marketing lanes. It is no longer sufficient to prepare in regards to the social task, content marketing task, events, and PR, all as separate activities. The successful CMO will begin with service objective they are serving and be prepared to question everything.

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

To wind up being a story-maker, you ought to deserve listening to. A CMO remains in the perfect position to presume the evangelistic function for business. The most successful 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 make sure that they have placing with product and sales, the marketing head should be a motivator. To establish a category needs conversation, settlement, and the capability to search for and reach an arrangement.

Do they enable their group, or run by command and control?

A CMO who tries to lead with ultimate authority will struggle 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, a nimble marketing group carries out a consistent flow of efforts while preserving the flexibility to alter as the market or business needs determine.

Does the CMO comprehend classification style?

I have really composed about classification style and why every business needs to own a category to accomplish its ideal potential. There is a framework for carrying out classification design. Still, whether an Online marketer follows the summary or approaches category design another method, a CMO must be putting routine thought and preparation into how they specify the category they indicate to dominate. Without input from the CEO and other members of the executive group, there is no other way to finish an appropriate category style.

The Wartime CMO will require to increase the accountability of marketing by showing the impact of each marketing activity on the pipeline as determined by revenue contribution.
In a slow down, marketing needs to move the understanding of being a cost center to an earnings vehicle driver. Reporting beyond the number of marketing qualified leads produced to include the overall chance worth for each lead source is an exceptional method to represent the function marketing is playing to drive the financial goals of business.

Research studies have in fact revealed that a correctly created landing page can double your conversion rate over sending traffic to the home page, which tends to do not have the correct call to action that matches the advertisement. Since of this, inspecting landing pages can increase conversions as much as 50% or more. Together, these techniques can offer a 2.5 X boost for every single dollar you invest in marketing. Yes, conversion rate optimization makes a difference.

During Wartime, more info every marketing dollar is valuable, and a Wartime CMO understands that winning will not come down to a single strategy or "silver bullet" approach. Instead, lots of little things executed well. The CMO, who can not comprehend the interaction of copy, messaging, creative style, and innovation, will have a hard time to discover and acknowledge quickly where little adjustments can offer much better conversions.

This content approach worked, for a season, sort-of. However with the boost of Google RankBrain, the technique has actually not worked for several years. Without being in the middle of a crisis, you require to stop this inefficient activity. Now as budget plans are under pressure and every marketing activity need to count, the way that we do content marketing needs to be updated.

Now, the content that we create requirements to interest somebody looking for our option, and it needs to consist of purchaser intent activates like keywords and expressions that a purchaser would use as they get near buying choice. A Havas Group research study exposed that 84% of people expect brand names to produce material, yet 60% of the material produced is of bad quality or unimportant, failing to satisfy the needs of the audience. No matter a 71% correlation in between content efficiency and a brand name's impact on personal wellness, simply 40% of the world's leading 1,500 brand produce content that fulfills this requirement. Trademark name's are failing to produce significant material.

Stop producing assembly line material that is just indicated to develop the brand or introduce the product. Rather, content must target particular personas to resolve any setbacks preventing the prospect from carrying on. This content will take longer to produce and require a greater community and item understanding level.

CMO's in Wartime must have an outstanding understanding of the buyer psyche and their mental needs so that they can develop content that eases fear and addresses the genuine 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 option, putting them in the excellent position to take as much as 76% of the economics from the whole category.

Find out more about Classification Design.

The B2B sales process today is fragmented and complicated, with great deals of stakeholders needing to verify a purchase decision. This renders standard marketing ROI and attribution methods less beneficial for anything besides scholastic research study.

The marketing function today breaks down into three practical pillars making up Product, Need Generation, and Classification Design. Because many marketing leaders have actually not entirely accepted category style, it's a surprisingly simple method to beat an incumbent throughout a crisis. As soon as the sector begins to discuss the classification as you have in fact defined it, your organization will wind up being the classification and the apparent option.

To do Classification Design requires a various working cadence. Wartime is the ideal time to embark on Classification Design offered that absolutely nothing is "normal" during a crisis.
To manage the challenge of building a Category King service needs a ton of grit, determination, and a steadfast drive to win. For the Wartime CMO, who takes on the obstacle, there can be no bigger pot-o-gold if effective.

Check out the book Play Bigger to discover everything about category design.