Marketing Freaks Podcast

I appeared on the Marketing Freaks Podcast by the smart people over at Overdrive Digital.

Jump to the most relevant points for you:

• Listen To The Podcast

• The Answers & More Detail To Help You Progress Your Career

• The Mentioned Free Frameworks

• My Top Tips

• Or Watch The Summarised Video

Why Marketing Leadership Coaching? What Do You Feel Is Needed In This Area?

• The marketing leader role has never been so challenging

• No one is ever taught to be a manager, let alone a leader. Being a manager is incredibly hard work and you end up copying old managers. Leadership is an evolution and a deliberate act of improving

• I love helping people grow and hopefully reach their full potential

• Coaching is where I get my energy from

• Leadership is a particular set of skills, no one is ever born a department lead but can step up to be a leader. Many huge company CEOs are coached and trained to become a company executive and a leader.

• It is lonely as a marketing & Growth leader - I remember feeling completely alone and feeling like I had no support. Speaking to CMOs and VPs etc it is so common, especially now. Often this has a knock-on effect and creates imposture syndrome and burnout.

• No one ever puts themselves first, people make the wrong decisions in buying a conference ticket and most don’t attend or sit through cohort-based training that’s not applicable to them or for them - coaching is an affordable way to grow you and your business

• The C-suite is a competitive place. It’s rare a CMO is promoted to CEO and that’s down to impact, executive presence and knowing how to drive the business forward. Long-term strategy is often guided by product and operations or controlled by finance so the CPO, CFO & COO are natural replacements - the CMO has a ceiling and helps Marketing leaders diversify and grow as execs

• Most marketing leaders don’t seek out exec coaching and it’s hindering their development as a company leader and executive - there is being the department leader and being a business leader alongside an executive

• Marketing leaders are either specialists or generalists and then build their teams accordingly most never thinking about development and building the connection and cross-team training (so understanding CRM, Social Media, SEO, Paid Media - all tightly connected from filtering of your content, weaker reach, evolving algorithmic changes)

• Better goal setting and building the goals into the company plan - many set themselves up with unrealistic goals and not align the goals and KPIs to the company-wide strategy and numbers. COOs, CFOs and CEOs won’t tolerate underperformance

• Companies’ environments aren’t set up for everyone. Very often you won’t be a good fit. It’s important to know this and take the right steps to address this for you and the team. Sometimes some people are just in the wrong roles or is a wrong company mix

• Marketing leaders need to set the beat with communications and responsiveness. They often don’t and it causes a real issue within the team or department as they are either waiting for a response or copying the department head’s comms cadence…learn to help those around you with responsiveness and being able to communicate even with you’re faced with impossible questions or options.

• As marketing leaders, we context switch constantly (for every switch it takes between 20-45 minutes to recover) no one really helps you with this. We have a volume and velocity problem - many people need help. Slack/teams, email (internal and external), WhatsApp, notifications, in-person chats, meetings, 1-2-1s etc

• The best marketing people know the power of joined-up marketing and working cross-functionally (with the reliance on product and dev) - unfortunately so many don’t really understand it and to a point get too caught up in the tactical marketing day-to-day and battling colleagues

• I have created a method that blends sports coaching, therapy and exec coaching to help the different leads understand how they are motivated and how they grow

  • If you think marketing is as close to MMA as any other discipline or sport - they have a strength and conditioning coach, striking coach, wrestling coach, and jujitsu coach - marketing has so many disciplines and channels you need a coach to help bring them closer together or how to package the multi-disciplines together

• There is a big difference between a Coach — Mentor — Sponsors (read my full blog post here).

  • A coach develops your skills with a deadline and helps you get there.

  • A mentor is someone you talk through issues and problems and they give advice with no hard deadline and rarely any follow-up, mentors are brilliant but can be too informal for many

  • A sponsor is someone who goes out of their way

  • I recommend to CEOs, COOs, CMOs and everyone I have matching calls with to think about the mix and work out if you have the time and energy to invest in a coach - I set homework and deadlines and hold you accountable to ensure you are developing, whereas other forms of coaching or mentorship won’t and many then struggle to feel like or know they have improved

• Many people don’t know when or how to play to strengths or develop, then specifically versus trying too much or going too broadly. Leaders have a limited capacity and it gets squeezed. Help to unlock this and know what your strengths are and what your critical weaknesses are.

What Were Some Of The Lessons You've Carried Over From Working Client Side?

• Understand the business and how it actually operates - so many people don’t know the margins, don’t understand the budget requirements or the process we go through to know how the business will thrive or try to survive

• Learn who makes the decisions, and how they are made and when they are communicated

• Know the customer - get close to them and ask for actionable feedback, not opinions!

• Ask the hard questions if you can’t answer them, you have to ensure you get to the answers

• This is an evolution on something I was taught by someone super smart - never ask for opinions, ask for feedback, I actually say as for someone's analysis as opinions are not thought through, feedback can be broad and not tailored for the leadership room, and analysis is ensuring you have had time to think it through and structure a true actionable response

• Fluffy metrics = fluffy results

• Know the business, and understand the actual business model. Once you know it teach it across the department from top to bottom.

  • Gone are days of fluffy metrics for most businesses

• Deep dive into the numbers - know them, analyse them and be prepared to push them harder

• Know the company-wide strategy - without this how are you building success and how can you then build your departmental plan

• Org design is critical! Whereas Agency side it’s more hierarchical - designing your department and teams to succeed is the important battle

• Succession planning is critical (this should tie into org design)

• Know if you need a think for me agency or a deliver for me agency - agencies need accounts managed to be successful

How is marketing leadership changing?

• Marketing as a discipline evolves constantly. As does leadership one of the core issues is that many managers don’t prepare themselves to step as a leader and evolve themselves and their skills. So when marketing evolves basically daily you are fighting against so much you forget how to empower your team to work and keep you up to date of big changes

• Marketing is constantly changing. It’s imperative to know this is always the case and you can’t be across everything and every channel but knowing the fundamentals and breaking down what’s going to work and why these will work

• Growth (holistic growth more like Silicon Valley) is falling under marketing or product

• The smarter move for larger marketing leaders is moving towards the Chief customer officer - taking back the ownership of the customer and learning from customer interactions and engagement

• More channels = more noise - you have to be able to cut through this and concentrate

• Spray and pray just does not work and never has but many can’t get to the answer quickly enough and waste resources (time, energy, money)

• Many C-suites are not including marketing leaders in the most important meetings

  • Reporting lines have changed, many reporting through another layer in the C-suite and not to the founder or CEO - often through the CRO or COO. This means the most important decisions aren’t being communicated with the right lens on

• Understanding how to collaborate - especially cross-functionally, this is not new but the demands from the business world is either to have a leader on the board to own this or become chief collaboration officer to align everyone and make important work streams work

• Often it is now pay to play and you need to know this and what is organic and free and what is pay to play - it’s likely to be pay to play more and more. Learn to cut through, amplify and distribute more effectively

What in your mind makes a great leader in marketing?

• Communicate up, around and those who work in your department (and teams)

• Develops your people

• Develops your business and the teams business acumen

• Takes ownership of mistakes - gives praise to the team versus taking the praise

• People who know they’re not going to be the expert at everything. Understands how to bring in the right partner - whether that’s an agency, a consultant, a full time person

• Knows when to step in and help or step out and get out of the way

• Knows when to work IN the business or work ON the business

• Removes doubts, pushes do’s & and helps with don’ts

• Someone who has a growth mindset and doesn’t shy away from new channels, new techniques and actively listens

• Understands how to communicate to executives and then communicate the most important information to their department and teams

How should people look at leadership / how should they be planning their progression?

• Have a plan - know where you want to go and find out the steps to get there

• Ask for internal help, seek external help (mentors and sponsors will love to help here)

• Never stop learning, many do but actively look to learn and keep note of your lessons and learnings

• Ask for lunch and learns, ask for captain (help to share experience and leadership in meetings and on projects) and champions (those who champion channels and disciplines and coach those around them and share essential updates)

• Know deep down if you’re going to be a specialist or a generalist - the best generalists tend to win the long game

  • If you want to stay a specialist - learn the basics of the other important channels - otherwise there is often a ceiling

• Learn the business, learn the business rules (they can be broken) — learn business models

• Build out what you are and what you are not - this is how you are going to build out your profile and story-tell about yourself, your journey and standout versus others who struggle to

• Learn what Strategy is and know the difference between Strategy, plans, tactics

• Become an expert - sounds obvious but many don’t exercise their expertise enough - this will often get you in leadership meetings and invitations to present

11 Tips To Take Away

1. Never stop learning - keep evolving as a Marketer - this will be your competitive edge

2. My motto is — Always be auditing - always be marketing - this will set you in good stead with reviewing your campaigns and ensure you market them well enough externally and internally

3. Truly know the difference between noise and signal. Get to the bottom of what’s making actual significant impact and then create change

4. Know that platforms are building out their ecosystems and you’re paying for that privilege (they are not your friend, they just want your transactions) - you are part of their paid and organic products and they’ll always charge you to play

5. Know PQ: Political Intelligence - The game plays on whether you play the game or don’t. Know others around you are playing and that you’re going to be a pawn on their journey (rightly or wrongly)

6. If you’re a specialist learn about other channels and how you can help them and support - don’t silo yourself (almost every channel complements each other) as often in promotions those who understand the wider business and knows how each discipline works together and drives the business wins

7. Leadership isn’t just a title - leadership can be actions and making core recommendations and bring people on the journey

   1. But if you want to be a CMO or equivalent you need to know how to be an executive, how to play an executive & the games that come with it and how to pass on power and empower others

8. Don’t be afraid to ask for skip meetings and improve relationships within your business - get in front of your bosses boss, ask smart questions, offer insights and your (teams) analysis. Networking is great but if your work isn’t shining through you will struggle to build your internal profile

9. Keep

   1. Hype File (screenshots, copy and pastes of positive feedback, successes and positive comments)

   2. Swipe File (a database of ideas and inspiration from other businesses. You can almost always apply other elements)

10. Get out of your niche and filter bubbles - too many stay in the niche and only consume what they are being served in their algorithmic feeds

11. Learn how to master time management & associated outputs - These are true superpowers for anyone wanting to be around or at that boardroom table and progress their careers. Those who struggle with keeping on top of their team and deadlines are often poor time keepers and bad communicators - often out of touch with their team and how they are doing