Mark Donnigan Startup Marketing Consultant

Mark Donnigan builds disruptive innovative start-ups. Mark's superpower is architecting go-to-market strategies and marketing movements that drive genuine company outcomes for technical and product-centric founders. Mark's growth and market development experience covers 20 years as a transformative B2B marketing and service leader, driving demand, brand development, and method for startup and growth-stage business.

As a professional and virtual marketing leader (fractional-CMO), Mark Donnigan handles startup creators and CEOs from B2B disruptive innovation technology business to help them establish, bootstrap, and scale their marketing and go-to-market actions.

LEARN MORE: https://growthstage.marketing

Mark Donnigan has handled teams as big as 25, comprising SDRs, AEs, and marketing, producing $29mm/year. Mark brought spending plan commitments 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 start-up marketing consultant, Mark Donnigan's incoming and outbound marketing experience include building and mentoring high-performance groups that perform on need generation, brand name and product marketing, PR, digital, and occasions where he develops and carries out high-impact programs that drive earnings, produce ROI, activate the marketplace, and delivers organization results.

Mark Donnigan thinks 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 item marketing.

Mark is an issue solver and a first-principles thinker who is creative and analytical. Mark constantly works cross-functionally and has actually shown success, building, leading, and mentoring marketing, sales, and service advancement groups that have in fact produced more than $500mm in revenue/shareholder worth.

Mark has actually discovered that building a category ought to be the top objective for each marketing leader and it is the foundation of his method and technique. Mark Donnigan has comprehensive B2B marketing experience that includes structure and mentoring high-performance groups.

Mark Donnigan is a systems thinker, and he puts a high value on teamwork. Mark has extensive experience working alongside sales, item, operations, and finance to guarantee that business and revenue goals of the business are always surpassed.

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

Architecting the marketplace classification that is best suited to the special value proposal of your technology.
High effect marketing support so that you can reach your profits objectives and scale sustainably.
Accomplishing go-to-market positioning throughout the sales and marketing companies.
Drawing out the highest worth from every marketing dollar.
Insider understanding and insights about the B2B purchasing journey and how to navigate an increasingly fragmented consumer decision hierarchy.
Operationalizing marketing, from system and procedure advancement to making the first hires.

Thoughts 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 the service, you are not alone. A research study completed by the marketing consultancy Fournaise discovered that 80% of President are not delighted with the work their top Marketing leader is doing. Evaluating what today company fact suggests for marketing leaders, I remembered 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 composed that the Peacetime CEO "concentrates on the big image and empowers her individuals to make in-depth choices." The Wartime CEO, on the other hand, "appreciates a speck of dust on a gnat's ass if it disrupted the prime instruction."

The Peacetime CEO "understands what to do with a big benefit," while the Wartime CEO "is paranoid." Peacetime CEO "works to reduce dispute," and Wartime CEO "heightens the contradictions."

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

Wartime is a different thing completely because, in Wartime, the life and death of our organization might be on the line.
As I write this post, the whole world is battling an undetectable opponent called COVID-19, which has let loose a frustrating dose of company unpredictability globally. For CMO's, the COVID-19 pandemic is company equivalent of war. No longer do our 2020 marketing strategies make great sense.

This is more than being in an area with the light on, and all of a sudden you discover yourself in pitch-black darkness, so you walk tepidly, continuing in the same directions knowing that you were heading towards the door prior to the lights got turned off. No, not just has the pandemic turned the lights out, its blown an enormous crater in our course that was not there prior to, and lacking light in the space, can not be seen. However we need to avoid at all expenditures falling into the crater.

No one wish for war, but a Wartime leader does not avoid the fight, instead, they acknowledge that Wartime is the single finest chance to leapfrog sidetracked rivals and take ground away. What follows is a set of tips and ideas to help you discover your "Wartime CMO fight strategy."

How to function as a Wartime CMO.

During Wartime, everybody remains in uncharted waters, but this is where the possibility is for lots of companies who previously had a difficult time to compete against bigger rivals and dominant market forces. Now, for the really first time, you might be on comparable footing as your more effective rivals. It's the perfect possibility to define your future.

In a global decrease like what COVID-19 has set off, definitely nothing makes good sense. And yet, a few of your competitors will continue to perform their usual "attempted and real" marketing playback, presuming that building the trademark name with corporate interactions messages from the CEO is going to contribute to their service objectives. Now is the perfect possibility 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 inspect your vital presumptions. As the around the world organization environment has changed, and the stability of the core service brought into question, CMO's should be ready to reassess their preliminary strategy.
Think of that less consumers will equate to lowered need. And lowered requirement indicates markets will not respond as they did prior to the crisis.

Think about it in this manner, when people purchase less, marketers invest less. However prior to you follow a slash and burn the marketing invest playbook, here are a couple of things to be well-informed about:

Investment bank Cowen and Company analyzed the last 6 financial declines considered that 1950 and found that spending on direct marketing grew throughout the previous financial slumps. 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. Remember, there will be deals throughout the board as media outlets see business cut their marketing and advertising invests. Press marketing and branding drops in a downturn, but sales activation marketing always increases.

Shift costs to more measurable channels so that you can adapt quickly. Speed is whatever. Marketing initiatives able to be tracked with specificity will be a lot more important than broad mass-market jobs. Slowdowns speed up the reduction of interruption-based mass marketing. In its place will be an increased focus on quantifiable and relationship-based techniques.

Declines produce a chance for companies that are more effective at turning marketing financial investments into revenue. In the middle of a sluggish down when advertisers are cutting their costs is a fun time to benefit from low CPMs and Qualified public accounting professionals.

The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising finished a research study in 2008 that discovered, "Following a spending plan cut, a brand will continue to gain from the marketing financial investment made over the previous few years. This will reduce any short-term service impacts, and will result in a dangerously misleading increase in short-term success. The longer-term organization harm will be more significant, however will not be noticed in the start."

Millward Brown reported in their research study "Marketing Throughout Economic Recession: To Invest or Not to Invest?" that 60% of brand that went 'dark' throughout a financial recession by cutting their TELEVISION marketing invest for 6 months experienced a decrease in Trademark name Use by 24% with a 28% reduction in Brand Image. Brand names that cut their advertisement spending plan at a greater rate relative to their competitors were at an even higher risk of share loss.
There are an extraordinary variety of marketing studies that verify in a decline, trademark name that continue marketing and marketing 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 budget plan needed to continue marketing.

Make the most of the worth of each lead produced.

In a downturn, risk-averse purchasers take even longer to research purchases, and this applies equally to B2B and B2C purchasers. When you first acknowledge a possibility, they will likely stay 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 should take care not to move a prospect through the funnel too quickly. Keep in mind, the possibility's professional life has actually been switched on its head. What was an issue simply a couple of weeks or months ago, is likely not top of mind today.

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

Without lead scoring and an ideal prospect tracking system throughout your digital channels, as many as 9 out of 10 MQL's who are not yet sales-ready may be lost. They will purchase, just 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 ought to do everything possible to enhance the worth of your MQL's.

CMO's that do a better task of handling leads and establishing early-stage potential customers into sales-ready leads will remain in the finest position to win during the crisis and most definitely once it has actually passed.

Focus on your present customers.

It's more affordable to grow earnings with your existing customers. Believe about whether now is the time to downsize your mass lead generation programs and focus on structure deeper relationships with those who currently understand your business. This does not indicate to stop your requirement gen efforts, but it does indicate that you might want to check out with product and sales how you can sell more to your existing consumers.

In Peacetime, marketing groups are running on auto-pilot in pursuit of driving MQL's to satisfy sales startup marketing consultant reps. For a service that has obtained traction on their method to becoming a classification king or queen, this method, though expensive feels good given that of the amazing volume of activity that is being produced. Nevertheless, without cautious analysis, the high degree of activity fools lots of CMO's and management groups into thinking that their requirement generation engine is finely tuned when, in truth, it's producing enormous contamination, i.e. exceedingly high CAC, greater than typical churn for the classification, low CLTV, and so on.

Marketing should line up with sales.

A brand-focused Marketing leader concerns the organization with an amazing education and pedigree, having in fact held considerable titles with big business. There was a time when the marketing group may manage all corporate and product information and messaging with the market. If a purchaser wanted to learn about a brand-new product or check out whether a solution may meet their requirement, they had no option but to call business.

Actions to issues such as, Who's genuine 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 shifted to the purchaser.

We know that online marketers are no longer in control of the buyer's journey. It is necessary to define a funnel that outlines evictions a prospect must hand down the method to doing organization with the business. Buyers can connect with us on the platform of their choosing. As the buying group has expanded to as many as two lots people, the notion that they will follow our process as we have actually prescribed is rarely real.

You need a value designer CMO who is revenue-focused.

A revenue-focused CMO will handle the engine behind a CEO's advancement strategy. The shift from business being physical product designers or service business, to digital innovation companies where the item is distributed as software or software as a service through the Web, has actually reduced the function of marketing. And is GET MORE INFO the aspect a revenue-focused CMO who is a worth developer is what all start-ups and disruptive innovation companies require today.

Today, get more information marketing requires greater levels of technical ability as an outcome of the explosion of digital media and the marketing technologies that are associated with online marketing. This change 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 earnings motorists. Forrester goes on to report that a worth developer, revenue-driven Online online marketer, need to be a story maker and not just a storyteller.

The CMO today need to be a specialist at producing and leading imaginative engagement and organization technique to develop a classification for the service to dominate.

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

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

A revenue-focused CMO produces 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 primary concerns a buyer has at each action so that they can complete the buying journey.
The new generation CMO will gather engagement metrics for each gate while examining the success of the end-to-end marketing cycle to deliver the most prompt and licensed cause their sellers. A value designer CMO sees marketing as close allies to the sales group.

The revenue-centered CMO is always discovering from and tweak the process so that they can enhance the amount and quality of leads that added to the pipeline and closed service.
Earnings attribution and marketing ROI styles will show real results, not theorized or "presumed" requirements. This information is vital for the revenue-focused CMO to resolve since they care about marketing's impact on organization.

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

What to look for in your next CMO.

In the vibrant 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 very same organization neighborhood or environment, it's insufficient to simply have a look at years of experience or education. You require to examine the inspirations and thought patterns of the individual. Ask:
Is the CMO an issue solver?

The most significant 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 neighborhood structure.

Are they a doer?
In lots of marketing groups, there will specify 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 demonstrate functional ability in the core locations that the group runs, will be more reliable than a supervisor simply.

Has the CMO held cross-functional positions?

The finest method to guarantee that you draw in a CMO who is income and not brand-driven is to hire somebody who has actually shown up through product, sales, and corporate method. Having direct exposure to the inner operations of product and sales is particularly advantageous as company method is ending up being a more substantial part of the CMO's series of commitments.

Do they think in systems or method business in a structured way?

As digital has blown up the variety of marketing user interface points, enabling buyers to disaggregate business from the buying journey, a CMO should have the capability to consider systems and structures rather of safely defined marketing lanes. It is no longer appropriate to plan in concerns to the social job, material marketing job, events, and PR, all as different activities. The successful CMO will start with service goal they are serving and be all set to question everything.

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

To end up being a story-maker, you must deserve listening to. A CMO remains in the ideal position to presume the evangelistic function for the service. The most successful CMO's in any market are extremely noticeable spokespeople for their company.
Are they an incentive?

As the CMO will need to work cross-functionally to make sure that they have positioning with item and sales, the marketing head need to be an incentive. To develop a category requires discussion, negotiation, and the ability to look for and reach an arrangement.

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

A CMO who attempts to lead with supreme authority will struggle to accomplish service objectives of the company. Marketing groups today need to work as engineering groups work in an agile fashion. Rather of perfectly organized 90-day job cadences, a nimble marketing group carries out a constant circulation of initiatives while keeping the flexibility to alter as the marketplace or business needs identify.

Does the CMO comprehend category design?

I have in fact made up about category style and why every business needs to own a category to accomplish its ideal capacity. There is a structure for performing category design. Still, whether an Online marketer follows the summary or approaches category style another way, a CMO should be putting routine thought and preparation into how they define the classification they mean to dominate. Without input from the CEO and other members of the executive group, there is no other way to finish a proper classification design.

The Wartime CMO will need to increase the accountability of marketing by revealing the effect of each marketing activity on the pipeline as figured out by earnings contribution.
In a slow down, marketing needs to move the understanding of being an expenditure center to an income vehicle driver. Reporting beyond the variety of marketing qualified leads produced to include the overall possibility worth for each lead source is an excellent way to represent the function marketing is playing to drive the financial objectives of service.

Research studies have in fact exposed that a properly designed landing page can double your conversion rate over sending out traffic to your house page, which tends to do not have the correct call to action that matches the ad. Due to the fact that of this, examining landing pages can increase conversions as much as 50% or more. Together, these methods can supply a 2.5 X boost for every single dollar you invest in marketing. Yes, conversion rate optimization makes a difference.

Throughout Wartime, every marketing dollar is valuable, and a Wartime CMO comprehends that winning will not boil down to a single strategy or "silver bullet" technique. Rather, numerous little things performed well. The CMO, who can not understand the interaction of copy, messaging, creative style, and development, will have a hard time to discover and recognize rapidly where little modifications can use better conversions.

This content method worked, for a season, sort-of. Nevertheless with the boost of Google RankBrain, the technique has not worked for numerous years. Without remaining in the middle of a crisis, you need to stop this ineffective 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 material that we develop requirements to interest someone looking for our solution, and it needs to consist of buyer intent activates like keywords and expressions that a buyer would utilize as they get close to purchasing choice. A Havas Group research study exposed that 84% of individuals anticipate trademark name to produce material, yet 60% of the content produced is of bad quality or unimportant, failing to satisfy the needs of the audience. Despite a 71% correlation in between content effectiveness and a brand name's influence on individual health, simply 40% of the world's leading 1,500 trademark name produce material that fulfills this requirement. Brand's are stopping working to produce substantial material.

Stop producing assembly line content that is just implied to establish the trademark name or introduce the product. Instead, content should target specific personas to solve any setbacks avoiding the possibility from moving on. This material will take longer to produce and need a greater neighborhood and item knowledge level.

CMO's in Wartime ought to have an marketing consulting excellent understanding of the buyer psyche and their psychological requirements so that they can create content that eases fear and addresses the genuine issues they have.

CMO's in Wartime double down on Classification Style so that their organization 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 process today is fragmented and intricate, with great deals of stakeholders requiring to verify a purchase choice. This renders basic marketing ROI and attribution strategies less useful for anything besides academic research study.

The marketing function today breaks down into 3 practical pillars making up Item, Need Generation, and Classification Design. Because numerous marketing leaders have in fact not entirely embraced classification style, it's a remarkably easy way to beat an incumbent during a crisis. As soon as the sector starts to discuss the classification as you have actually defined it, your service will wind up being the category and the obvious choice.

To do Classification Design requires a different working cadence. Wartime is the perfect time to start Category Design provided that absolutely nothing is "normal" throughout a crisis.
To deal with the obstacle of building a Category King company requires a lot of grit, determination, and an unfaltering drive to win. For the Wartime CMO, who handles the obstacle, there can be no larger pot-o-gold if effective.

Check out the book Play Larger to learn all about category design.