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The CMO Dilemma: Surviving & Thriving in a High-Stakes Marketing World with Jenny Sagstrom
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CMOs are under immense pressure to deliver fast results, prove ROI, and navigate an increasingly complex marketing landscape. In this episode of Marketing Spark, Mark Evans sits down with Jenny Sagstrom, founder and CEO of B2B creative agency Skona, to discuss the evolving role of the CMO, the rising importance of brand marketing, and how marketing leaders can stay relevant in a world obsessed with data-driven results. Jenny shares insights on breaking down silos between marketing and sales, leveraging creativity to differentiate, and why bravery is a crucial skill for modern marketing leaders.
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Transcript
Introduction to Marketing Spark
00:00:16
Speaker
It's Mark Evans, and you're listening to Marketing Spark.
Challenges Facing Modern CMOs
00:00:20
Speaker
It's a particularly tough time to be a CMO. As competitive pressures rise, CEOs are demanding faster results and clear demonstration of um ROI, even as attribution becomes more complicated by the day.
00:00:34
Speaker
No matter how smart or creative you are, it's challenging to prove the direct impact of marketing efforts when the customer journey twists and turns across multiple channels and platforms. At the same time, many organizations are rethinking or even doing away with the CMO role, reflecting the struggle market leaders face in this high-stakes environment.
00:00:54
Speaker
Today, I'm delighted to speak with Jenny Sagstrom, the founder and CEO of B2B creative agency SCONA. Jenny is someone who deeply understands how CMOs can navigate these shifting expectations while still pushing forward with ambitious and creative marketing strategies.
00:01:11
Speaker
With the right mix of strategic perspective and tactical know-how, marketing leaders can continue to deliver tangible results, proving their worth, and securing their place at the executive table. I'm really looking forward to hearing Jenny's insights on how marketers can power through these challenges and keep driving growth for their organizations. Welcome to Marketing Spark.
00:01:31
Speaker
Thanks. Great to be here. Thanks for having me.
Jenny Sagstrom's Journey into B2B Marketing
00:01:33
Speaker
Jenny, can you start by telling us about your background and how you came to found Scona and share how those early experiences shaped your perspective on the B2B marketing world?
00:01:45
Speaker
I'm originally born in Sweden, Stockholm, and I studied economy economics and international relations in college. And I fell into an ad agency, as so many of us have done. And within a couple of days, realized that this is where i want to be. People get paid to do this for a living. It's can fantastic.
00:02:06
Speaker
yeah Why has no one told me? ah So i started working there and never left. In those early days, actually back in Sweden, and this is in the late 90s, one of my first clients was actually Atlas Copco. They made ergonomic jackhammers. as weird as that sounds, it was interesting to me.
00:02:26
Speaker
to really get to go deep on something that I knew nothing about. And I think that's probably why I've come to love B2B so much, because you get this opportunity to really learn something that you normally wouldn't.
00:02:40
Speaker
A lot of people will say, well, advertising is always like that. It doesn't matter what it is. But i think the difference is like most of us know what milk is. We know what shampoo is. We don't have to necessarily use that much analytical firepower.
00:02:53
Speaker
to understand it. So what I love is that challenge, really kind of getting to the bottom oh of what a client does and and understanding it. That's how I ended up in B2B and how I ended up loving it.
00:03:05
Speaker
But fast forward a couple of years, i moved to San Francisco, working in an ad agency there. The dot-com bust and boom happened. 2004, the stars aligned and I was able to start my own shop, which became Skona.
00:03:22
Speaker
Nod to my heritage from Sweden. The word actually means beautiful, comfortable, glorious, which is all the things i feel about marketing and advertising when done right.
00:03:33
Speaker
Since 2004, we've been running Skona in San Francisco. With regards to how i can say ah when it comes to the B2B experience we had there is we didn't start out as a B2B shop.
00:03:45
Speaker
Our first clients were the San Francisco Examiner. We worked with the Palace Hotel. we did a lot of regional restaurants and and those types of businesses. And then in 2005, we started working with VMware.
00:03:59
Speaker
And at the time, they were only about... I think two, 300 people. And we stayed with them for more than 10 years. During that process and during that time, we met a lot of great marketeers who moved on to other high tech, specifically companies in Silicon Valley. And without really knowing how we found ourselves, oh, wow, we're, you know, really steep. in this B2B tech world. And wow, we're really good at it And we really enjoy it.
00:04:26
Speaker
Since probably, I want to say like 2016 or something like that, I wouldn't say we pivoted, but we definitely leaned into working solely with B2B. And that's, apart from our pro bono clients, that's all we do today.
00:04:39
Speaker
It's interesting that you mentioned working for a pneumatic manufacturer. Recently started, probably the last six months, started working for a company that makes equipment for the oil and gas industry. Totally different from the work I do with BB SaaS companies that came out of the blue. It was an opportunity that was interesting. And like your experience, I am delving into a new and interesting world. I never thought I would work in the oil and gas industry.
00:05:05
Speaker
never thought I'd work for an equipment maker and walk around the factory floor learning about how to drive sales and marketing. That's one of the wonderful things about working in B2B. It's always something new, always something interesting and exciting.
The Evolving Role of CMOs
00:05:18
Speaker
I wanted to dive into this world of CMO. It seems a very volatile. It's exciting and terrifying at the same time because the customer journey, it zigzag, that's it's not linear. Attribution is increasingly difficult, if not impossible.
00:05:38
Speaker
for From your perspective, why do you think the CMO role has come under such scrutiny? Why are some organizations moving to the extreme, moving away from it? Is this a short-term reaction or maybe the sign of deeper structural changes within the industry?
00:05:57
Speaker
It's an interesting question and full disclosures. I've never been a CMO myself, but I obviously know a ton of them having sat on my side of the fence, so to speak. Thought through this a lot and think, firstly, why if we start with why they are being so scrutinized right now, ah think it comes down to the thing that always drives business, which is money and how to make money.
00:06:23
Speaker
The last few years increased interest rates and everything that went on as money became more expensive. The pressure of delivering was much higher on CMOs in that chair and role that they sit in.
00:06:36
Speaker
If I roll back the tape a little bit, and I think about 25, 30 years ago when I first started working, when I came, when I started working, we didn't have CMOs.
00:06:48
Speaker
I think back and we had SVPs of sales and marketing. That was a combined title back then. The CMO title is only something we've seen the last probably 10, 15 years.
00:07:00
Speaker
The CRO role is even newer than that. What I've seen lately is, yes, there's been some elimination of the CMO roles, but they're still marketing people. They tend to roll up to sometimes it's been a CRO.
00:07:14
Speaker
But I've also seen now lately, actually, that some companies have started, have have come with a chief strategy officer role, which sounds super cool. I don't actually do, but that sounds like a job I'd want. Oh, I'd want it too.
00:07:29
Speaker
And I've also seen chief design officers, which I think is actually putting more and more emphasis on the creative aspect. So perhaps it's not eliminating it. Part of it could be systematic that something is changing in the business, but it's a cyclical then. and And there's also, if the trend is that sales and marketing are coming closer, I wouldn't necessarily say that's a bad thing. I think in order, especially the type of marketing we do nowadays, it's really key that sales and marketing are speaking together. To some extent, there's something good that is coming from it.
00:08:06
Speaker
You read things like like the Spencer Stewart report, which shows that the average tenure a CMO is shrinking. It's probably around three years now, which doesn't seem to be a long time for a senior position.
00:08:19
Speaker
It's even shorter in B2B. It's like professional sports coaches. If you're not happy with the performance, you can't fire the team, you have to fire the coach and can the CMO sends to you the, to get the brunt of it.
B2B vs. B2C Marketing Challenges
00:08:30
Speaker
What do you see as the biggest challenges facing CMOs right now particularly in B2B marketing? How do think these challenges differ from those facing more traditional consumer face marketers?
00:08:41
Speaker
What you're actually hitting on is perhaps that CEOs, perhaps even more CFOs, don't actually understand marketing, especially, and I think maybe here's the difference between B2B and B2C.
00:08:55
Speaker
I think in B2C companies, and I don't have quite the statistics to back this up, but I will actually go look into it after we're done here today. But it seems to me that there's a better or more widespread understanding um of marketing at the top brass, i.e. CEO, CFO, the people holding the money and in the B2C world.
00:09:17
Speaker
Probably, and here's a guess, that many of those people are traditional MBAs. have gone through that more traditional training. While in a B2B company, many of the top leaders, the CEOs at least, are more product or engineering focused in their background with the limited exposure to traditional marketing thinking.
00:09:40
Speaker
Perhaps that's one of the reasons that it's really hard for CMOs is that there's such a discrepancy in understanding what what what the role is for, which then I assume and and i I see FHIRS's lack of understanding for why the results aren't being delivered and so forth.
00:10:00
Speaker
So I think that maybe
The Rise of Brand Marketing
00:10:01
Speaker
there's something in that. I don't know. i i have a sense that that's where it's a big problem. I also think that ah if if I look at 2025 and what we have ahead of us, to me, and believe, and what I hear when I talk to partners and clients and people in the industry, is that the focus for 2025 is mostly for from most marketeers back to brand.
00:10:26
Speaker
Everybody is talking about the fact that we must do brand marketing again. We're talking about top of the funnel. We're talking about bringing new people into the ecosystem. We're talking a lot about the 95-5 rule. And I think most of us in marketing have talked about that for a long time.
00:10:43
Speaker
but it's finally gaining traction. I think the CMOs in turn have a hard time or a bit of an uphill climb getting more traditionally engineering, technology-driven CEOs and founders to comprehend the fact that perhaps the biggest ah ROI isn't necessarily marketing to people who are going to buy you anyway, but to marketing to people who have never heard of you.
00:11:09
Speaker
What you're saying reflects my experience. I mean, I think what happens is that you have people, senior leaders in B2B companies that have no marketing experience.
00:11:21
Speaker
They're great engineers. They're great computer science people, but they're also the smartest people in the in the room, or they think they're the smartest people in the room. It often means they think they're great at sales and marketing.
00:11:34
Speaker
What happens when they eventually hire a marketing leader is that it's a turf battle. The CEO says that he wants marketing help or she wants marketing help, but at the same time, they want to be in control.
00:11:47
Speaker
Eventually you get the two sides at at war versus working together. And one of the things that I raise in a regular basis is how do you get alignment?
00:11:59
Speaker
If you're CMO, you've just been hired to leverage marketing to drive growth. How do you make sure that it's a one plus one equals three proposition that the CEO is clear about expectations?
00:12:14
Speaker
Some of our marketing is going to be quantifiable. Some isn't. Some of our marketing is going to be experiments because we always have to be you looking at different channels and approaches.
00:12:26
Speaker
Part of the marketing mix is going to be success and failure. That's a very different proposition when you're dealing with engineering, for example, and it's just a matter of linear improvements.
00:12:39
Speaker
But if you are a CMO, how do you establish a partnership as opposed to entering relationship, which can become apremonious and confrontational eventually see the CMO leave the scene because the CEO gets frustrated?
00:12:57
Speaker
I was at an event this week. I ran a round table of CMOs and were discussing some of these challenges that they're up against. This was definitely top of mind. And the advice that came, which in hindsight sounds very luxurious, is for the CMO to really do their due diligence before they take the gig.
00:13:19
Speaker
You've got to interview your CEO and and the rest of the leadership to make sure that they're aligned with your vision and that they have marketing back.
00:13:30
Speaker
They need to be thinking marketing first or you won't be able to do your job well. However, I realize, I don't know if you agree with me here, that this sounds like a luxurious position to be in. It's not, not everybody has that luxury to, to enter you for the best job. But I think that's really first and foremost, the way to approach it.
00:13:50
Speaker
What's your reaction to that? It sounds like fantasy should be honest with you, the idea that a CMO can be interviewing the CEO to make sure it's the right fit. I mean, marketing leadership positions are tough to get these days as marketing budgets get better and the demands on marketers to perform increase, there must be a huge competition for CMO positions.
00:14:17
Speaker
And I don't know, unless you're really, really good, you just don't get the luxury of picking and choosing. It's usually, if I can get a job, let's just make this, that's a good thing. In an ideal world, that's great, but the real world doesn't work that way.
Measuring Marketing Impact in Long Sales Cycles
00:14:30
Speaker
The other angle that I wanted to ask you about when it comes to that that dynamic, that relationship, is alignment on our quantifying the impact that marketing has on the business, which is something that is immensely challenging right now because it used to be that If we did A and B happen, there was a direct correlation between the two, but that doesn't work anymore, especially in B2B where sales cycles may be really long, where there's multiple channels at play, where attribution becomes increasingly difficult if not impossible.
00:15:10
Speaker
As a marketer, you have this budget, you do ah all this activity, and the CEO can't really tell what's working and what's not. How do they handle that? What's the recipe for success? All that they care at the end of the day, if you're a CEO, am I getting enough leads? Am I getting enough sales?
00:15:26
Speaker
Should they care where and how it happens other than the fact that marketing is doing what they're supposed to be doing? It's just a holy grail question. I think there's two things i want to bring in. And the first one is someone much smarter than me.
00:15:38
Speaker
I listened to him speak the other day. His name is Paul Worthington. And he spoke about exactly this, the intangible things that you can't measure and how they are the most important things in marketing, especially when it comes to brand building. He used the quote that things like, what is it? Things that are measured. And get managed or something like that.
00:15:59
Speaker
We've all heard the quote, but he pointed to the fact that this quote actually initially made meant something different. It came from a scientific paper and it pointed to two the fact that people start over measuring things and that we shouldn't do that.
00:16:14
Speaker
That the the a lot of the more important things in life can't be measured. That's exactly the point with marketing, but it doesn't help our CMOs who are fighting for budget. So that's the one aspect of that thing.
00:16:27
Speaker
That goes hand in hand with this advice that all CMOs get. And that ah you need to learn to speak business. You need to learn to speak speak the language of the CFO.
00:16:38
Speaker
i think that is happening. A lot of our CFOs are pointing to, or CMOs are using that type of language that are getting them more and more at table at that space at the table and being able to argue for the budget they need. So I think that is underway.
00:16:55
Speaker
But I think the third thing and that might be that we sometimes don't even think about as much as we should, which is the beauty of marketing is that we get to build the black box any way we want to.
00:17:07
Speaker
And we get, yes, we should be measuring what we do. But if we we, it's up to us to decide what we're going to be measured. And it's up to us to then convince the people in charge of the money and in charge of spending that what we might measure matters.
00:17:25
Speaker
So if that black box is share of surge, share of voice, earned media, it could be anything. and But we have to really, before we start any creative project, any marketing activity, we got to think about How are we going to be selling this internally to show that it actually works?
00:17:41
Speaker
Even if it has a longer lead time to get there, what can we show incrementally? um It can't just be leads because that's what we're saying. Those leads are useless. So how do we get away from thinking that way? What can we think about that we can affect with marketing, with brands,
00:17:57
Speaker
that we can continue to show our worth. And so I think maybe as marketers, maybe the fault is maybe what we're doing wrong is not spending enough time thinking about what goes into our black box of measurements.
00:18:11
Speaker
The quote, only what gets measured gets managed, is Peter Drucker, well-known economist. Everyone loves that quote. Yeah. It is an interesting quote, given what's happening on the marketing landscape. We went through a huge period where data was king.
00:18:27
Speaker
And we all, as marketers, looked at our dashboards. And if the green arrows were going up and they were better than the red arrow was going down, it was all good. and We were... optimizing results and it was data data data at the same time you had brand sitting in the corner waiting to be discovered ah kept waiting for the pendulum to come back to brand it now appears that brand matters 2045 as you say could be the year brand but it also led itself to the attribution quantifying results conundrum
00:19:03
Speaker
When you're driving brand, when your focus is brand awareness and trying to get um market, ah it could be a ah niche market, a segmented market, aware that your product exists.
00:19:15
Speaker
And it should be one of the choices among many competitive options. That's a different marketing proposition that can be more difficult to measure. Sometimes you use the phrase leap of faith when I discuss that kind of activity and always get slapped on the wrist for using it because it looks at marketing as a guessing game. But When you're doing brand marketing, you're making a bet that it's going to get the impact that you want. But you don't know.
00:19:39
Speaker
You may not know a month, three months, six months from now. If you're a CMO and you are hard into brand and your CEO is saying you got to go hard into brand, how do you demonstrate results? How do you tell the CEO ceo this is the impact? How do you measure that?
00:19:54
Speaker
We need to dig deeper. It goes from case to case. It could be as easy as search. I think share of search is still an important measurement of this. We know what people do. They see some brand thing and they instantly Google or go to chat GPT, right? Let's not forget that that part of that search.
00:20:10
Speaker
Search is an important measure. If it's a really long sales cycle, what other things do we want? Is it that we want our brand to be measured? Is it we started probably about seven years ago talking about brand gen?
00:20:23
Speaker
which was a a combined effort of brand awareness and then adding lead gen on top of it to satisfy this understanding that brand awareness on its own is going to get our NCMOs fired. And and that's terrible because even if it's a great thing, we need to show incremental results.
00:20:40
Speaker
If you look at the scientific studies too, I think that none of them are saying go short all 100% in all grand. The number for B2B something like 30 or 30, 70% more more sales directed activities such as lead gen and brand gen for towards people who are already in the funnel and the remainder to be brand.
00:21:02
Speaker
Maybe that's how you do it You are continuing to nurture people who are in the funnel. You're pushing them further down the funnel, but staying away from advertising to people who are already ready to buy.
00:21:14
Speaker
Right. That's the key. Like no need to waste your money on that, but then put the remainder, you've got to fill the top of the funnel. If you just keep talking to your people who are already in your ecosystem, with common sense, you're not going to grow.
00:21:27
Speaker
If no one new gets to know about your brain, they're never going to buy you. End of story. So i that, I think, is the key. how do we met I think the key is how do we measure that top of funnel?
00:21:38
Speaker
It could be something from the salespeople. How are their door opening conversations going? How do the SDRs and the BDRs, how are their conversion rates? We got to work closely with sales in order to see what happens here.
Collaboration Between CMOs and CROs
00:21:51
Speaker
Earlier in the conversation, you mentioned the rise of chief revenue officers as part of the mix. One of the things that have, especially for smaller companies, that I've always stressed is that marketing is sales and sales is marketing.
00:22:05
Speaker
They have to be working in lockstep so they understand prospects, customers, what's happening in the marketplace, how they match up against the competition.
00:22:19
Speaker
The question is Given that collaboration across departments is crucial, what are the best ways that CMOs can effectively partner with other executives like the CRO to break down silos and to drive stronger results?
00:22:32
Speaker
Are there specific frameworks or steps or tools that you recommend to encourage a more integrated approach? The first one is the easiest one. Get rid of the idea of NQLs and SQLs.
00:22:44
Speaker
There is nothing that drives diversion more than and SQLs and NQLs. What you've got to think about is pipeline. as a whole, not where it came from. Every time marketing and sales, there's a breakdown in communication.
00:22:59
Speaker
It's because sales think that marketing is delivering crappy leads and marketing is annoyed because sales aren't doing anything with the leads that they're delivering. We've got to get away from that. I run a piece of that. and sales are from Sales are from Mars and marketing's from Venus.
00:23:17
Speaker
It's kind of that same thing, yeah that we have to be better cool parents. At the core, though, marketing is generally underfunded in many ways. Salespeople generally get compensated very differently. if the CEO wants a fully working and fully integrated system, then we got to think about compensation early on.
00:23:41
Speaker
How do we equalize compensation between those departments in a way that that makes everybody go towards the same goal? That's going to be a a key thing too. But apart from that, more tactically, get rid of NQLs and SQLs. Think pipeline.
00:23:56
Speaker
Secondly, if you're a CRO, you should be having a standing meeting with your CRO, if not weekly, at least biweekly. How are you tackling problems together? How are you supporting each other? you know If you two are the best of friends, the rest of your organization will follow Amid this battle between data and brand, there's a common perception that B2B marketing is boring.
Creativity as a Differentiator in B2B Marketing
00:24:19
Speaker
that it's not very much fun, it doesn't entertain. But um one of the things you rally around is creativity, doing things that are engaging, interesting. i'd like to get your thoughts on how creativity can be brought into the mix and how marketers can convince CEOs that thinking out of the box, zigging when people are zagging, doing things that maybe a change up when consumers are expecting a fastball is a good thing, is a way that you can break through the noise, the way that you can differentiate yourself in very competitive marketplaces.
00:24:58
Speaker
What's your advice to companies, marketers, CEOs who want to leverage creativity but doing it in a way that is aligned with their brand, is aligned with what prospects expect, what they want.
00:25:12
Speaker
At the same time, you've got that measurement element that that you want to bring into it. Well, I'd advise first, if I could, to skip that measurement altogether. Secondly, if we look at the stock market and we look at
00:25:28
Speaker
Organizations that do marketing really well. For me, Salesforce is right up there. They have some amazing marketing and they also perform really well on the stock market. Same actually service before I got on this call, was checking out one of their latest ads that dropped. Amazing. that They're fun. They're so clever.
00:25:46
Speaker
and And they help you think of the business in a different way. The beauty is neither Salesforce nor ServiceNow nor any of our clients, like say, none of our clients in the campaigns that we produce, for example, for Snowflake, none of them talk features and benefits.
00:26:04
Speaker
That's where B2B gets boring. If we let the engineering and product marketing department tell the audience about all the 4,000 features that they've added, no one's going to want to buy that. No one shares.
00:26:17
Speaker
That's not what that's for, right? Yes, maybe at some point someone one wants to know how it works or that it works, but that's not what advertising and marketing should be about. When it comes to fitting inside your brand, of course, it has to fit inside your brand. That's why ServiceNow doesn't necessarily look like Salesforce, even by even though they have someone in charge of marketing there right now who comes from Salesforce. But that's beside the point, right?
00:26:39
Speaker
You have to find whatever is authentic to that brand and lean into that. Lean into how this brand that you're working for know is different. And it it that what's different isn't your features and benefits or speeds and feeds and all that.
00:26:52
Speaker
What problems do you actually help your customers solve? And how do you make their world and lives easier? And leaning into that and telling stories around that in an authentic and appealing way.
00:27:04
Speaker
And using emotion for it. Like, that's key. When you look at your client portfolio and you think of creativity, any campaigns, any clients stand out as embracing that it creative approach to marketing, a brand that wants to be different, is willing to be different, and willing to take creative lists to do it.
00:27:27
Speaker
Snowflake has been over-explained since 2016 when they first came out stealth mode, especially the early billboard campaign. They now have a built billboard campaign that's been running for seven years. Those stand out.
00:27:41
Speaker
They were funny, a little edgy. They always leaned into zeitgeist. They still do. There's something about them that makes you open your eyes. Apart from really wanting to associate Snowflake with data, which is the most important thing that we wanted to do,
00:27:57
Speaker
Especially when it came to billboards, we realized that not everybody who sees this board, they're not our customers. Billboards on the 101 in San Francisco, there's soccer moms, there's teenagers, there's God knows what not that drives down on that road.
00:28:10
Speaker
We feel like we owe them at least a little chuckle by taking up the time that it took for them to read our billboard. We want it to not be so navel-gazing that it's boring for everyone who is in a position or ever going to be in a position to buy from Snowflake. That was key.
00:28:27
Speaker
Early on, if I can get this that right, I believe the CMO mentioned that 70% in the early days of Snowflake, it was key to, of course, hire right people, new people.
00:28:40
Speaker
ah They mentioned that 70% of those people they hired in the early days first came into contact with the Snowflake brand through those billboards. That was, again, different KPI. That doesn't necessarily talk about brand awareness in the larger sense, but to their core contention. constituent then that was the key that and how do you quantify the the effectiveness of a billboard campaign? They definitely look at that reach in terms of how many eyeballs do you get on um on it per month. But to Snowflake, the big percentage of those eyeballs are to do with data warehousing or anything that Snowflake does. Back in those days, it was more important that people who came to work for Snowflake had a good and wanted to come to work there.
00:29:21
Speaker
And the billboards were super important in terms of that. Let's take a step back. Airbnb, for example, is another brand that leveraged billboards. Killed back the onion of the snowflake marketing strategy, the idea that they would do something different.
00:29:35
Speaker
What was the strategic strategic thinking when they decided to go hard on billboards? We're going to be fun. We're going to be creative. We're going to do some different things. We're not going to do other things, although they're important because we have to make choices. Our investment going to be in billboards.
00:29:51
Speaker
Who convinced who that this was the right thing to do? Did the CEO have to get involved and say, yeah, let's do it? What was the backstory behind the but the Snowflake billboard strategy? They have a very brave CMO. And so and so she early on, decided that the best marketing ah strategy was to create marketing that markets itself.
00:30:17
Speaker
We've always done marketing that creates ripples on the water. Marketing that isn't just one and done, but marketing that becomes almost water cooler conversations.
00:30:29
Speaker
She's a rock star. She drove us forward as an agency with that in mind. And ah with regards to it, the CEO had to get involved. I don't actually know. wasn't in those rooms, but I doubt it. So I think that she has to produce results and they have to continue to deliver.
00:30:47
Speaker
The marketing department had been treated to do what they do best. I have an advisory client, scrappy, small startup serving the fast food and meat and restaurant industry.
00:30:59
Speaker
They are targeted geographically. They have no marketing budget. What they are spending their money on is a billboard. Two billboards, in fact, because they believe that it's the best way of capturing the attention of the people that matter to them. Restaurant owners, people who own grocery stores, manage grocery stores, are going to drive by those billboards every single day.
00:31:20
Speaker
How do you reach people like that? who may not be digital animals. Maybe billboards are the secret weapon of B2B marketing. The fact that most people drive or take the train or take the bus. If you do what Snowflake does and you're creative and you can get out box and have fun, that can work. One final question.
00:31:38
Speaker
This is a hard one an easy one, depending on the view of the world. But marketing continues to evolve and we see the rise of AI. and the impact it's having on how we do our jobs
Leadership and Innovation in Modern Marketing
00:31:50
Speaker
as marketers. What new skills or mindsets do you believe CMOs must adopt to a remain effective and B, to keep their jobs?
00:31:58
Speaker
Do you think there's emerging trends that will drastically reshape how marketing leaders operate in the near future? The obvious answer is things like prompting, engineering, that type of stuff.
00:32:09
Speaker
But I don't think that's what they need more than anything. What marketing leaders need to be successful in this future is real leadership skills. The marketing department and marketing is so uncertain that what's going to be more important than ever is the ability to help inspire their people to do the best work that they possibly can, provide a safe space for them to be created to come up with new ideas, to feel safe, because it is a really uncertain world.
00:32:45
Speaker
More than anything, marketing leaders are going to have to lean in lean into the second part of that word, which is that leadership ability. The other thing that they're going have to look into to be brave, because we're always seeing the volume of creative work being produced is enormous.
00:33:04
Speaker
to stand out, you're are going to have to stand out. And standing out is really uncomfortable. It's scary. Just think back to high school. Who wanted to stand out in high school? It goes against the human grain to want to stand out, but yet that's what needs to happen to be remembered.
00:33:19
Speaker
Marketing that no one objects to, sees, or have an opinion on is basically wasted marketing because no one remembers it. You're going to have to go against Your natural instinct is to stand out and lean into that and and dare to be brave and and make those decisions that make you feel a little bit uncomfortable.
00:33:39
Speaker
That's probably skill that people are going to have to have to live in that uncomfortable area that you can't quite navigate, but you have to be in. Could be the good tagline for marketers is that be brave may be the tagline ah that we need to and embrace going forward.
Conclusion and Contact Information
00:33:56
Speaker
This has been a great conversation. Thank you for all your insight. Where can people learn more about you and Skona? Skona.com. S-K-O-N-A.com. Come check us out. Or on LinkedIn. You'll find me at LinkedIn slash Jenny Sagstrom.
00:34:11
Speaker
Thanks, Jenny. And thanks to everyone for listening to another episode of Marketing Spark. If you enjoyed the conversation, rate it, subscribe or follow via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or favorite podcast app and share it via social media.
00:34:24
Speaker
And if you're a B2B or SaaS company with $1 million to $10 million in revenue, we're looking for traction and to scale. We should talk about how it can help you as a fractional CMO and strategic advisor.
00:34:37
Speaker
Reach out by email mark at markavis.ca. Connect with me on LinkedIn or visit marketingspark.com. We'll talk to you soon.