Why an independent marketing advisor is important for your company.

The Visten Creative team recently signed up for Drift Insider, a collection of educational content geared toward helping marketer’s succeed. We’ve enjoyed learning from the experts and wanted to share some insights with you. Today’s post draws heavily on “An Interview With 3 World-Class CMOs” that was held at the Hypergrowth Conference in 2019. With experience working at big name companies such as Domo, Pluralsight, Scient, Vantive, and Demand Base.

1. Independent Marketing Advisors Make Great Partners

A key takeaway from the panel was the emphasis that independent advisors can make a huge impact on your company. Heather Zynczak’s big advice was to bring in independent advisors early on so you can begin to make your company look and feel more mature. She encouraged startups and “early stage” companies to “add independent directors with expertise that your company is going to need for the next few years.” When you do this, as the moderator pointed out, your business advisors become “partners that will help you grow your business, not just investors.”

2. Marketing Advisors Build Category Leaders

What’s our category strategy? Having a plan to take on the other players in your category is important. Knowing how to define who you are is even more important.

“[A]s CMOs...Job one is ‘I have to be able to design the category.’ And then job two is that, ‘I need to be able to be the company that dominates the category and takes 2/3rds of the economics.’” -Christopher Lochhead, CMO

Bringing a marketing advisor on to your team early can help you capture the market for your product or solution. This happens in a variety of ways including: creating a common language around your brand, building consistent customer experiences, and developing systems for future growth.

3. Marketing Advisors Can Help You Present “You”

“There is still a lot of people... that believe the best product wins, and it doesn’t.”

Just because your product works well and you believe it is the best on the market doesn’t mean that others perceive it that way. As former CMO and author Christopher Loched states, “There is still a lot of people... that believe the best product wins, and it doesn’t.”

What that means is that you need to bring someone on to your team that will both work to understand your product and present it to others in a way that they will create the desired perception around your brand. This happens through many different avenues including: visual design, content development, video production, and in-person interactions.

4. Marketing Advisors Ask Good Questions

One thing that we love here at Visten Creative is developing questions that impact project results. Listening to the CMO panel it was great to hear them controlling the conversation by changing the questions or providing answers that controlled the narrative.

Perhaps the best examples of this was when each panelist was asked about their dream job. The panel members very quickly flipped this question into “What do you want to achieve?” With this simple re-phrasing they were able to move the discussion from areas where they might express dissatisfaction with their current work to focus on areas of desired growth. The result was an open discussion on the possibilities of change and each panelist’s personal goals.

Asking questions even when not all the answers are known is a great way to craft stories and figure out where an organization wants to go. If you are interested in discussing some hard-hitting questions or want to craft responses that have impact the Visten Team is ready to come alongside you.

5. Marketing Advisors Bring an Attitude of “Never Settle”

Throughout the panel discussion it was great to see both the similarities and differences between the members of the panel. Near the end of the session each member was asked to define what adjectives they look for in great team members. 

Christopher Lochhead declared that he looked for his team to be “legendary,” to be more than others. He believes strongly in this; he even asks interview candidates “What makes you legendary?” Peter Isaacson focused in on the need for team members to have an “innate sense of curiosity,” while Heather Zynczak emphasized a belief in the “learner mindset” and the need to be “mission driven”. To summarize it all the moderator chimed in to say it all comes down to a “never settle” attitude.

These are the same words we use to describe our team members here at Visten Creative. Our curiosity and desire to learn new things drives us to tell stories with impact. We hope that on most days this mission allows us to be legendary for our clients.

Interested in Learning More About the Panelists?

Don’t just take our word for it. Check out the content on Drift Insider and be sure to learn more about the panelists.

Christopher Lochhead, CMO

Lochhead has been busy with his latest project helping people “follow your different”. He also wrote a book about several books on the process including Play Bigger and Niche Down.

Peter Isaacson, CMO Demand Base

Isaacson leads the marketing team at demand base and provides key thought leadership in the area of Account Based Marketing. You can check out one of his interviews with Martech Series.

Heather Zynczak, CMO Pluralsight

A prolific leader in the industry who worked at SAP and Domo before joining Pluralsight.  Watch 30 minutes of Heather’s thoughts on Youtube.

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