Mark Donnigan Startup Marketing Consultant

Mark Donnigan builds disruptive ingenious startups. Mark's superpower is architecting go-to-market plans and marketing movements that drive real company outcomes for technical and product-centric creators. Mark's growth and market advancement experience covers twenty years as a transformative B2B marketing and magnate, driving need, brand development, and technique for start-up and growth-stage companies.

As an expert and virtual marketing leader (fractional-CMO), Mark Donnigan handles start-up developers and CEOs from B2B disruptive innovation technology business to assist them establish, bootstrap, and scale their marketing and go-to-market actions.

DISCOVER MORE: https://growthstage.marketing

Mark Donnigan has handled groups as big as 25, comprising SDRs, AEs, and marketing, producing $29mm/year. Mark carried budget obligations to $3mm/year for operations and $400k/year for marketing. Deal sizes differing from mid-five figures to mid-six figures every year.

As a startup marketing specialist, Mark Donnigan's incoming and outgoing marketing experience include building and mentoring high-performance teams that carry out on demand generation, brand and item marketing, PR, digital, and events where he develops and implements high-impact programs that drive earnings, produce ROI, activate the market, and delivers service outcomes.

Mark Donnigan believes that the finest marketing consultants and marketing leaders are doers. Mark's marketing experience consists of all aspects of requirement generation, ABM, SEO, e-mail marketing, paid marketing, events, PR (internal & agency), and product marketing.

Mark is a problem solver and a first-principles thinker who is imaginative and analytical. Mark always works cross-functionally and has shown success, structure, leading, and mentoring marketing, sales, and organization development groups that have really produced more than $500mm in revenue/shareholder value.

Mark has discovered that constructing a classification needs to be the leading objective for every marketing leader and it is the foundation of his approach and technique. Mark Donnigan has substantial B2B marketing experience that consists of structure and mentoring high-performance teams.

Mark Donnigan is a systems thinker, and he places a high worth on teamwork. Mark has comprehensive experience working alongside sales, product, operations, and financing to guarantee that the organization and profits goals of the business are always gone beyond.

Growth Stage Marketing exists to offer business owners and founders services for:

Architecting the marketplace category that is finest fit to the unique worth proposal of your technology.
High impact marketing assistance so that you can reach your income objectives and scale sustainably.
Achieving go-to-market positioning throughout the sales and marketing companies.
Extracting the highest worth from every marketing dollar.
Expert knowledge and insights about the B2B buying journey and how to browse an increasingly fragmented client choice hierarchy.
Operationalizing marketing, from system and process development to making the very first hires.

Ideas on what it takes to be a successful online 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 research study finished by the marketing consultancy Fournaise found that 80% of President are not delighted with the work their leading Marketing leader is doing. Evaluating what today service reality means for marketing leaders, I remembered the concept of a Peacetime leader and a Wartime leader from Ben Horowitz's book "The Hard Feature Of Hard Things."

Horowitz described the principle in a post where he made up that the Peacetime CEO "concentrates on the huge image and empowers her individuals to make comprehensive decisions." The Wartime CEO, on the other hand, "values a speck of dust on a gnat's ass if it interrupted the prime instruction."

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

Peacetime in service is when a service has the capability to grow in its core market due to a significant advantage vs. the competitors. In times of peace, the company focuses on broadening the market and enhancing the business's strengths. For CMO's, Peacetime is when we are completely complimentary to be creative with our brand building by participating in each exhibition with an even larger cubicle than last year's and investing exorbitantly on sponsorships, all under the guise of building the trademark name.

Wartime is a various thing totally because, in Wartime, the life and death of our organization might be on the line.
As I write this post, the entire world is fighting an undetectable opponent called COVID-19, which has actually let loose a frustrating dosage of company unpredictability worldwide. For CMO's, the COVID-19 pandemic is organization equivalent of war. No longer do our 2020 marketing techniques make great sense.

This is more than remaining in a space with the light on, and suddenly you discover yourself in pitch-black darkness, so you walk tepidly, continuing in the very same guidelines knowing that you were heading toward the door prior to the lights got switched off. No, not just has the pandemic turned the lights out, its blown a huge crater in our path that was not there prior to, and lacking light in the room, can not be seen. However we should prevent at all costs falling under the crater.

No one longs for war, but a Wartime leader does not shrink from the battle, rather, they recognize that Wartime is the single finest opportunity to leapfrog sidetracked competitors and take ground away. What follows is a set of suggestions and concepts to help you find your "Wartime CMO combat plan."

How to function as a Wartime CMO.

Throughout Wartime, everyone remains in uncharted waters, however this is where the possibility is for many business who formerly had a difficult time to complete versus bigger competitors and dominant market forces. Now, for the really first time, you might be on comparable footing as your more powerful rivals. It's the ideal chance to define your future.

In a worldwide decline like what COVID-19 has set off, definitely nothing makes good sense. And yet, a few of your competitors will continue to perform their typical "tried and real" marketing playback, assuming that building the brand with business interactions messages from the CEO is going to contribute to their company goals. Now is the ideal opportunity for the Wartime CMO to take ground in the market.

Take strong action.

Imaginative marketing is required in Wartime more than ever. Now is the time to examine your vital presumptions. As the worldwide company environment has altered, and the stability of the core company called into concern, CMO's needs to be all set to reassess their initial strategy.
Think about that less consumers will equate to decreased need. And minimized need means markets will not react as they did prior to the crisis.

Believe about it in this manner, when individuals purchase 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:

Financial investment bank Cowen and Company evaluated the last 6 economic declines given that 1950 and found that costs on direct marketing grew throughout the previous financial recessions. Significance, you will wish to consider your mix of trademark name marketing carefully compared to sales activation marketing. It's not time to stop marketing. Keep in mind, there will be offers throughout the board as media outlets see companies cut their marketing and marketing spends. Press marketing and branding drops in a slowdown, but sales activation marketing constantly increases.

Shift costs to more quantifiable channels so that you can adjust rapidly. Speed is everything. Marketing initiatives able to be tracked with specificity will be a lot better than broad mass-market projects. Slowdowns accelerate the decline of interruption-based mass marketing. In its location will be an increased concentrate on quantifiable and relationship-based methods.

Downturns create an opportunity for business that are more effective at turning marketing monetary investments into revenue. In the middle of a decrease when advertisers are cutting their costs is an enjoyable time to benefit from low CPMs and Certified public accountants.

The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising finished a study in 2008 that found, "Following a budget plan cut, a brand will continue to acquire from the marketing investment made over the previous few years. This will minimize any short-term service impacts, and will result in an alarmingly misleading increase in short-term success. The longer-term service damage will be more considerable, however will not be observed in the beginning."

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

Take full advantage of the worth of each lead produced.

In a downturn, risk-averse buyers take even longer to research purchases, and this uses similarly to B2B and B2C buyers. When you first 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 ought to make sure not to move a prospect through the funnel too quickly. Remember, the possibility's professional life has been switched on its head. What was a concern simply a couple of weeks or months earlier, is most likely not top of mind today.

It's tempting in a sluggish down to tighten your grip on leads given that the reasoning is that now more than ever, all leads are important. Here is where lead scoring can be an important tool to recognize extremely engaged prospects from those who are not most likely to become your customers. Now is the time for Online marketers to hang on to MQL's for an extended duration so that you can groom the possibility to the maximum possible degree prior to handing them off to sales as a SQL.

Without lead scoring and an ideal possibility tracking system throughout your digital channels, as numerous as 9 out of 10 MQL's who are not yet sales-ready might be lost. They will purchase, simply not now. You don't want to lose out on the future sale considering that you didn't keep in contact and include worth though the journey. In a "Wartime" economy, you must do everything possible to enhance the worth of your MQL's.

CMO's that do a much better job of handling leads and establishing early-stage potential customers into sales-ready leads will stay in the finest position to win throughout the crisis and most absolutely once it has actually passed.

Concentrate on your present clients.

It's less expensive to grow incomes with your existing clients. Believe about whether now is the time to downsize your mass lead generation programs and focus on structure much deeper relationships with those who already know your service. This does not indicate to stop your need gen efforts, but it does suggest that you may wish to explore with product and sales how you can offer more to your existing consumers.

In Peacetime, marketing groups are running on autopilot in pursuit of driving MQL's to satisfy sales reps. For an organization that has obtained traction on their way to ending up being a category king or queen, this method, though expensive feels great since of the impressive volume of activity that is being produced. Nevertheless, without cautious analysis, the high degree of activity fools numerous CMO's and management groups into believing that their need generation engine is finely tuned when, in reality, it's discharging massive contamination, i.e. exceedingly 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 concerns the business with a remarkable education and pedigree, having really held substantial titles with big business. There was a time when the marketing group might manage all business and product information and messaging with the marketplace. If a buyer desired to learn about a brand-new product or check out whether an option might satisfy their requirement, they had no option however to call the business.

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

We understand that online marketers are no longer in control of the buyer's journey. It is necessary to specify a funnel that outlines expulsions a prospect should pass on the way to doing business with the company. Buyers can link with us on the platform of their picking. As the buying group has expanded to as many as two lots people, the concept that they will follow our process as we have really recommended is seldom real.

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 item is dispersed as software or software as a service through the Web, 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 development business require today.

Today, marketing requires higher levels of technical ability as an outcome of the explosion of digital media and the marketing technologies that are associated with internet marketing. This improvement has actually been highlighted by Forrester, pointing out a 20-year-old transition to digital as the driving force behind CMOs moving from being brand-builders to income drivers. Forrester goes on to report that a value developer, revenue-driven Online marketer, ought to be a story maker and not simply a writer.

The CMO today must be an expert at developing and leading imaginative engagement and business technique to develop a classification for the business to control.

Here are a number of techniques that a revenue-driven CMO need to run:

They will work carefully with the sales group to discover and map the buyer's journey. Where presumptions do not match what is occurring in the market, a value designer CMO will leave the office and hang out in the field. This leader understands that you can not drive revenue if you aren't near where the sale occurs.

A revenue-focused CMO creates content targeted at each stage of the purchaser's journey. Consider the purchaser's journey as a set of gates where the material reacts to the main concerns a purchaser has at each action so that they can complete the purchasing 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 licensed result in their sellers. A worth designer CMO sees marketing as close allies to the sales group.

The revenue-centered CMO is constantly discovering from and tweak the process so that they can improve the amount and quality of leads that contributed to the pipeline and closed organization.
Revenues attribution and marketing ROI designs will show real results, not extrapolated or "presumed" requirements. This information is important for the revenue-focused CMO to fix considering that they appreciate marketing's influence on organization.

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

What to attempt to find in your next CMO.

In the dynamic state of service today, working with an efficient CMO is amongst the most difficult things to do. Every market, organization, and market section is different. Even where you can acknowledge potential customers from the very same service community or environment, it's inadequate to simply have a look at years of experience or education. You require to analyze the inspirations and thought patterns of the individual. Ask:
Is the CMO an issue click here solver?

The most substantial risk today is on the market side and not development. A marketing leader who isn't a concern solver will have a hard time to handle the fast-changing nature of the market and neighborhood structure.

Are they a doer?
In many marketing groups, there will be specific experts who can operate at the greatest level throughout the series of capabilities needed. It's incumbent for a marketing leader to command consider as a doer. The CMO, who can show practical ability in the core locations that the group runs, will be more trustworthy than a manager simply.

Has the CMO held cross-functional positions?

The finest method to make sure that you bring in a CMO who is earnings and not brand-driven is to employ somebody who has come up through product, sales, and corporate technique. Having direct exposure to the inner functions of item and sales is especially advantageous as company method is becoming a more considerable part of the CMO's series of obligations.

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

As digital has blown up the variety of marketing interface points, allowing buyers to disaggregate the organization from the purchasing journey, a CMO ought to have the capability to think about systems and structures instead of firmly specified marketing lanes. It is no longer adequate to plan in regards to the social task, content marketing task, events, and PR, all as different activities. The effective CMO will begin with organization goal they are serving and be all set to question everything.

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

To wind up being a story-maker, you should be worthy of listening to. A CMO is in the ideal position to presume the evangelistic function for the business. The most effective CMO's in any market are extremely noticeable spokespeople for their business.
Are they a motivator?

As the CMO will require to work cross-functionally to make sure that they have placing with item and sales, the marketing head must be an incentive. To develop a category requires conversation, negotiation, and the capability to try to find and reach an agreement.

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

A CMO who tries to lead with ultimate authority will have a hard time to achieve business goals of business. Marketing groups today ought to work as engineering groups operate in a nimble fashion. Rather of perfectly arranged 90-day task cadences, a nimble marketing group carries out a constant blood circulation of efforts while maintaining the versatility to change as the market or company needs determine.

Does the CMO comprehend classification style?

I have really composed about classification design and why every organization requires to own a classification to accomplish its optimal potential. There is a structure for carrying out category design. Still, whether an Online marketer follows the summary or techniques classification design another method, a CMO should be putting regular idea and preparation into how they define the category they suggest to dominate. Without input from the CEO and other members of the executive group, there is no chance to finish a proper category style.

The Wartime CMO will require to increase the responsibility of marketing by showing the impact of each marketing activity on the pipeline as identified by revenue contribution.
In a slow down, marketing needs to move the understanding of being a cost center to an income motorist. Reporting beyond the variety of marketing qualified leads produced to include the general chance worth for each lead source is an excellent method to represent the function marketing is playing to drive the economic objectives of company.

Studies have really revealed that a properly developed landing page can double your conversion rate over sending out traffic to your home page, which tends to do not have the proper call to action that matches the ad. Due to the fact that of this, checking landing pages can increase conversions as much as 50% or more. Together, these strategies can provide a 2.5 X increase for every single single dollar you purchase marketing. Yes, conversion rate optimization makes a difference.

During Wartime, every marketing dollar is valuable, and a Wartime CMO understands that winning will not come down to a single technique or "silver bullet" method. Rather, numerous little things performed well. The CMO, who can not understand the interplay of copy, messaging, imaginative design, and development, will struggle to find and acknowledge rapidly where small adjustments can offer better conversions.

This content approach worked, for a season, sort-of. Nevertheless with the increase of Google RankBrain, the method has not worked for several years. Without remaining in the middle of a crisis, you require to stop this ineffective activity. Now as budgets are under pressure and every marketing activity ought to count, the manner in which we do content marketing needs to be upgraded.

Now, the content that we create needs to interest somebody trying to discover our solution, and it should consist of buyer intent activates like keywords and expressions that a purchaser would use as they get close to purchasing decision. A Havas Group research study revealed that 84% of individuals prepare for brand name names to produce content, yet 60% of the content produced is of bad quality or unimportant, failing to meet the requirements of the audience. Despite a 71% correlation in between content efficiency and a brand name's impact on personal wellness, just 40% of the world's leading 1,500 brand produce material that satisfies this requirement. Brand name's are stopping working to produce substantial content.

Stop producing assembly line material that is simply implied to establish the brand or introduce the item. Instead, material needs to target particular personas to solve any holdups preventing the possibility from carrying on. This content will take longer to produce and require a greater neighborhood and item knowledge level.

CMO's in Wartime should have an outstanding understanding of the purchaser mind and their psychological requirements so that they can produce material that alleviates worry and addresses the sincere issues they have.

CMO's in Wartime double down on Category Style so that their company will come out as the leader, making them the dominant option, putting them in the enviable position to take as much as 76% of the economics from the entire classification.

Check out more about Classification Style.

The B2B sales procedure today is fragmented and complex, with lots of stakeholders needing to confirm a purchase decision. This renders standard marketing ROI and attribution techniques less useful for anything besides academic research study.

The marketing function today breaks down into 3 functional pillars comprising Product, Need Generation, and Classification Design. Since numerous marketing leaders have in fact not completely welcomed classification style, it's a surprisingly easy method to beat an incumbent throughout a crisis. As quickly as the sector begins to go over the category as you have really defined it, your company will end up being the category and the obvious option.

To do Category Style needs a various working cadence. Wartime is the best time to start Classification Design considered that absolutely nothing is "regular" throughout a crisis.
To handle the challenge of building a Classification King business requires a lot of grit, decision, and an unfaltering drive to win. For the Wartime CMO, who handles the difficulty, there can be no larger pot-o-gold if effective.

Read the book Play Larger to discover out everything about category design.