Startup demand for CMOs is higher than ever – but how do you find the right one?
As any startup founder knows, there’s an ongoing battle that you wage with yourself to do with staffing. More specifically, whether and when to staff up – or to keep trying to spin all the plates yourself. When you’ve grown a business from the ground up, it’s hard to pass responsibility to other people. In fact, I’d liken it to a kind of bittersweet grief; I’m happy things are going so well but it is hard to take a step back and hand the reins over to someone else.
Like many start up founders, I’ve found myself in this scenario a number of times. I’m fortunate to have an excellent team around me who have helped propel my business – Juggle Jobs – onwards and I’m truly grateful for them, but finding the right people to grow your start up can be incredibly tough.
Recently, Juggle Jobs conducted an analysis of the roles most frequently sought by start ups in the UK. Interestingly, we found that demand for CMOs is higher than ever, with the need strongest in companies of around 20-50 employees. But why are Chief Marketing Officers so in demand?
CMOs add huge value to start ups. Marketing is a key growth channel once start ups are out of their initial launch phases and ready to attract business from outside of their existing contact network. However the role of a CMO is multifaceted and for many start ups, the temptation to bundle a variety of skills under the marketing banner could actually be hampering progress.
There’s often a discrepancy between what start up founders want from a CMO and what they actually need. A role that’s marketed as CMO might actually be more beneficial as a Head of Growth, Head of Performance Marketing or Brand Manager. Marketing is complex and it’s up to the start up to establish which discipline is going to pay the most dividends. When stretched too thinly, marketing won’t have enough cut through.
We’ve come across this issue so frequently (and not just with marketing roles!) that we created a tool to help founders establish what area they need to be focusing on so that they can find the right person for the role. What this is showing us is that for many start up founders, marketing is viewed as a catch-all – and when this approach is altered to focus more cleanly on specific sectors of marketing, the results are better.
Getting the right person in your marketing role is essential for business growth and there are a number of key attributes that are generally present in a successful start up marketer: they’re entrepreneurial, self-starting and have a keen understanding of the business case as much as the product. But marketers can also teach founders a thing or two. Your head of marketing should have a very clear idea of how your business is truly viewed from the outside. They can also advise of trends and wider market pressures that can benefit your business.
The CMO is a vital position within a start up; it’s imperative that you find the right one for your business. But interestingly, while around half of CMO positions advertised as remote, only two per cent are part time roles. This excludes an enormous portion of the talent pool and vastly limits the scope of expertise that start ups can access.
We’re now in the era of the ‘flexpert’. The pandemic altered working patterns for many people and, at a senior level, one of the lasting impacts has been the emergence of flexible experts - people at the top of their game who want to offer their expertise on a flexible and part time basis. Flexperts are incredibly beneficial for startups, as they allow access to the highest quality talent without an expensive ongoing commitment. Indeed, operating this kind of model would also allow a start up to pursue multiple marketing disciplines simultaneously - again without outlying three or four senior salaries.
Startup founders are used to working in a fast moving, exciting sphere. This change in the way senior roles are operating is really exciting - it gives start ups the chance to supercharge their teams, harnessing amazing talent when they need it and in such a way that suits the dynamic nature of start up business management.
