Marketing Operations Fundamentals

The Chief Marketing Officer is quietly being replaced. Not by a person but by a mindset. Over the past 12 months, we’ve seen a growing trend in FMCG. According to a recent Financial Times piece, we’re witnessing a real shift at the top of global FMCG org charts and it’s not just a title change. 📌 At Mars, former CMO Andrew Clarke now carries the title Chief Growth Officer, a role that spans marketing, digital, commercial, and strategic growth functions. 📌 At Unilever, the language is changing too: what used to be classic “Marketing” is being reframed through a growth and impact lens, with Chief Business Officers and Global Growth titles creeping into the C-suite. This isn’t just a branding exercise. It’s a signal. Boards are no longer satisfied with functional marketing leadership. They want someone who can drive growth — across DTC, digital, data, innovation, and commercial execution — not just oversee brand campaigns. In retained search, this shift is changing the mandate entirely. Clients aren’t asking me for “a strong CMO.” They’re asking: → Who’s already owned a P&L? → Who can build bridges between data science, brand equity, and retail revenue? → Who understands how to win when loyalty is low, attention is fragmented, and every product launch needs velocity from day one? The new reality is: Marketing, in its traditional form, is being absorbed into Growth. And if your org chart hasn’t adapted yet your competitors' probably has. What do you think; is this a smart evolution of the role, or are companies losing critical marketing expertise under the pressure of performance? #FMCG #ExecutiveSearch #ChiefGrowthOfficer #CMO #LeadershipTrends #Mars #Unilever #FinancialTimes #LaurenStiebing #ConsumerGoods

"I want to work in marketing, but I don't know where to start." After 5 years of running The Ninth Semester, I realized the Marketing industry is one of the top sought-after career paths for early-career professionals.Besides the obvious ways to break into Marketing, such as gaining relevant work experience and building your portfolio, the next best thing you can do is invest in the skills employers care about in marketing hires. A new LinkedIn Skills on the Rise report (https://lnkd.in/dA8Du_M6) highlights the 10 fastest-growing marketing skills based on year-over-year growth in skill additions and hiring data. From AI Literacy to Visual Storytelling, these are the skills that'll help you become a competitive candidate. I took the list a step further and curated roles to target, as well as free or low-cost courses and certificates to help you improve your skill set from platforms such as Coursera, Skillshare, HubSpot Academy, YouTube University, creators such as Adrian Per, and more You can view the full list of resources here: https://lnkd.in/dwugBB-8

After 9 years in marketing, I've finally come to a conclusion. This is the 1st marketing problem of B2B businesses: Skipping crucial steps to chase quick results. Here's what it looks like in practice: - Running outbound campaigns without a target market - Building a CRM routine without revenue objectives - Publishing content without a desired positioning - Writing a homepage without a clear messaging You understand the pattern: Doing (marketing operations) without (strategic input). It's like choosing the walls' color while your house doesn't have foundations yet. And all the marketing problems stem from this lack of clarity. - How can you focus without knowing what to achieve? - Why would prospects listen if you don't know what to say? - What will you say if you don't know who you're speaking to? Now here's the truth: Clarity doesn't come from a magic illumination. You get clarity by answering the right questions, one by one. Here are the 4 levels of B2B Marketing to help you: 1. Always start from Business Strategy Marketing must be aligned on the objectives and revenue targets of the business. Otherwise, you're building an art & craft department. 2. Turn it into a Marketing Strategy When the business objectives are clear, a great CMO will define a 'game plan' on how to achieve them. This step is the combination of strategic decisions (positioning, messaging) and planning (roadmap, budget). 3. Choose Marketing Tactics accordingly With the strategy in place, the next step is to choose actionable marketing activities. They need to make sense based on the target audience and desired positioning. 4. Run Operations to apply those tactics Here, it's not about answering questions anymore. It's about consistently executing marketing tasks and iterating based on results. You need the right skills, discipline, and clarity on what to do. *** Follow me Pierre Herubel for daily marketing tips. Join my free 5-day email marketing course (click "visit my website")

Early in my career, a colleague from P&G left for a startup. The pay was nearly double. The decision seemed obvious. But when I mentioned this to my boss, his response made me changed how I viewed career growth: “In the first third of your career, don’t chase money—chase knowledge. You’ll leverage that better in the next third to make real money.” At first, it sounded idealistic. But over time, I saw a pattern among top marketers: They optimized for learning, not just earning, in their first five years. Why this matters: [1] The Compound Effect of Skill Stacking I’ve seen P&G marketers turn down high-paying social media roles to master brand fundamentals first. Today? They’re leading global brands while their peers are still executing tactics. [2] The “Career Equity” Principle That startup role offering double the salary? Look closer. Are you building equity in yourself (strategic thinking, leadership, innovation) or just executing someone else’s strategy? [3] The Learning-to-Earning Ratio Every marketing leader I know followed this trajectory: Years 1-5: Learn intensively Years 6-10: Apply & grow Years 10+: Exponential career acceleration “But I need the money now.” I get it. I’ve been there. But consider this: A ₹10 lakh salary bump today vs. learning that could unlock ₹50 lakh+ annually in a few years. “But I might fall behind.” Look at any CMO interview in AdWeek or Marketing Week—nearly all highlight their early-career learning experiences as crucial to their success. It’s not about falling behind. It’s about positioning yourself to leap ahead. Before taking your next role, ask yourself: “Will I learn something new every week, or just get better at what I already know?” The best investment in your 20s isn’t in stocks or crypto. It’s in your skills toolkit. #career #work #job

I’ve been the first marketer at two companies now worth over $2 billion. If I did it again, here’s 9 things I’d do differently: 1️⃣ Start with brand as a scalable system Build a modular design system early with components you can combine instead of create. A Figma system, Canva templates, Google Slide layouts. Pair that with a messaging doc, your "copy-paste" bank of positioning, beliefs, and product language. It becomes a foundation for consistency and a knowledge base for AI. 2️⃣ Prioritize the 95%, not just the 5% LinkedIn & search ads worked early, but only because we caught the 5% already in market. The "demand capture" pool dries up fast. Invest early in "demand creation." Reach the 95% who aren’t ready yet, but will be. 3️⃣ Build in public People trust people more than companies. Let internal voices share what they’re building and learning. In the AI era, content is easy. Opinion & stories are valuable. 4️⃣ Know your customer so well the strategy writes itself I used to sit on every sales call and write every piece of copy. That proximity helped me hear what customers cared about, what words they used, where they hung out. Be close enough to "hear the music," and messaging & growth channels become obvious. 5️⃣ Start community early Create spaces where early customers can connect: Slack, Reddit, meetups, certification. It fuels your roadmap and scales support when customers can help each other. Even better if it creates user-generated content that is indexable/shareable. 6️⃣ Create the problem Don’t build the whole funnel on day one. If you don’t have traffic, don’t worry about conversion. Solve the problem you actually have. Let the next one emerge or you'll be building and rebuilding as things inevitably change. 7️⃣ Look bigger than you are Design clean & consistent. Logo small (bigger companies don't oversize their logo). Feature your biggest customers, your compliance certifications. Use big company channels but use them small (buy one billboard, get one great PR story, speak on one well-known podcast). Make big company content but do it small (like a single high production video). 8️⃣ Build lightweight systems You don’t need full-blown infrastructure. A Notion board or copy-paste doc can carry you farther than you think. Build systems for speed, not scale. 9️⃣ Protect your focus Get used to working with an infinite backlog. I used to start each day with a sticky note on my laptop of my 3 to 5 most important tasks. You weren’t hired to do everything, you were hired to make impact. If you've done this - what would you add?

CMOs have had a lot to think about (and worry about) so far in 2025. The CMO Coffee Talk community gives me a front-row seat to ongoing conversations amongst more than 3,500 marketing leaders, literally on a daily basis. Here are five go-to-market challenges that have come up the most this year. 1) Late-stage deal stall Activity is high, velocity and conversions are not. Security and legal slow things down, champions fight alone, and value proof lands too generic to move a buying group. CMOs see the gap between interest and intent, and they want a more deliberate last mile. 2) Proving impact under tighter budgets Scrutiny on CAC and payback keeps rising while attribution models keep shifting. Leaders are tired of competing dashboards and timelines that never reconcile, which turns planning into debate instead of decision. 3) Adopting AI without brand or ops chaos Teams want AI to move real work, not just produce more content. The fear: output volume climbs while quality, governance, and consistency fall behind, leaving brand risk and operational cleanup. 4) Execution lag and limited capacity Ideas aren’t the bottleneck—throughput is. Work slows at handoffs, intake is fuzzy, and revisions pile up. That grind drags down campaign cadence and burns out teams even when intent is high. 5) Data fragmentation and GTM plumbing Quiet leaks in routing, SLAs, and CRM hygiene compound into real revenue loss. Inconsistent ICP and intent handling waste spend at the top, while uneven BDR follow-through stalls the middle.

Campaign operators are the behind-the-scenes rockstars. Without campaign ops you get: ❌ Random acts of marketing – Launching campaigns without a clear process. ❌ Poor coordination across teams – Marketing, sales, and ops working in silos. ❌ No feedback loop for optimization – Campaigns go live and are never adjusted. The result? 🚨 Missed goals. Wasted budget. Frustrated teams. The map of campaign operations shows just the tip of the iceberg of what these teams do. 📌 1. Campaign Planning & Strategy Define objectives & KPIs (so you know what success looks like). Segment your audience (no more spray-and-pray marketing). Nail down value props & messaging before launch. 📌 2. Build & Setup Develop the right assets (creative, landing pages, forms). Set up automation & nurture flows (so leads don’t get lost). Ensure tracking is in place before launch (ever had missing UTM data? Yeah, it’s a nightmare). 📌 3. Execution & Launch Coordinate across multiple channels (email, paid media, social). Activate the right audience segments. QA everything (because broken links kill conversions). 📌 4. Monitoring & Optimization Track performance in real time (if a campaign isn’t working, fix it fast). Adjust bid strategies, messaging, and audience segments. Don’t “set and forget”—optimize as you go. 📌 5. Campaign Reporting & Insights Measure attribution & ROI (not just vanity metrics). Document best practices for the next campaign. Use data to refine future strategies. If you’re running campaigns without a structured Campaign Operations framework, you’re leaving revenue on the table. Does this diagram resonate with you? What would you add or change? PS: I'm writing more about this in my weekly newsletter https://lnkd.in/g_3YC7BZ subscribe for free to stay updated. #marketing #martech #marketingoperations

When I became a Head of Marketing, I thought the hardest part would be building campaigns that delivered results. It wasn’t. The hardest part? Partnering with leadership — aligning creative vision with business reality. After leading marketing at startups and scaling companies (and having a few coffee chats with fellow marketing leaders), here’s what I wish I’d known sooner: 𝟭. 𝗧𝘂𝗿𝗻 "𝗟𝗲𝘁’𝘀 𝗴𝗼 𝘃𝗶𝗿𝗮𝗹" 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗼 "𝗟𝗲𝘁’𝘀 𝗴𝗲𝘁 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝗶𝗰" When leadership comes to you with wild ideas (and they will), resist the urge to immediately say "that won’t work." Instead, redirect: 💬 “What’s the real goal here — awareness, leads, or engagement?” 💬 “Let’s test a version of this in one channel first.” 💬 “Here’s how we could amplify this with our existing strategy.” Marketing thrives at the intersection of creativity and practicality. 𝟮. 𝗘𝗺𝗯𝗿𝗮𝗰𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 "𝗖𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲-𝗥𝗢𝗜 𝗧𝗲𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻" Marketing’s job is to build brand and drive results. Leadership often wants immediate ROI. This tension isn’t a problem — it’s the process. Great marketing lives in that balance between bold creative and measurable impact. 𝟯. 𝗦𝗽𝗲𝗮𝗸 𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽 (𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗠𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴) I’ve made the mistake of presenting campaign click-through rates and MQL counts in a leadership meeting. I lost the room in minutes. Now I lead with: 📊 How marketing is accelerating revenue goals 📊 Where we’re de-risking spend 📊 How brand work supports the long-term vision Data matters — but tell the business story first. 𝟰. 𝗣𝗶𝗰𝗸 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗯𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗹𝗲𝘀 (𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗸𝗻𝗼𝘄 𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗻 𝘁𝗼 𝘀𝗮𝘆 𝘆𝗲𝘀) Not every design debate or copy edit is worth a hill to die on. Focus your energy on the strategic moves that actually impact growth. Sometimes "good enough" gets you to market faster — and that’s a win. My colleagues at interVal hear this one "GE" all the time. 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁’𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝗶𝗴𝗴𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗹𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗼𝗻 𝘆𝗼𝘂’𝘃𝗲 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗻𝗲𝗱 𝗮𝘀 𝗮 𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿?

When I was the first and only marketer at a SaaS company, I created a document that enabled our growth from five figures ARR to $1.5M ARR in 9 months (and helped us secure Series A funding) This doc informed our: - positioning - messaging - what our team wrote about on LinkedIn - what our sales team talked about with prospects - what we created all our content about I referred to this document as our "Realm of Relevancy" It covered every bit of critical info that was relevant to the world around our product: - what existing process(es) is our tool impacting or optimizing? - why is that existing process no longer the best or most efficient way to accomplish something? - if the current status quo is no longer the best method or approach, what is? - how do we go about implementing this new method? What all does it entail? - what changes, transformation, or outcomes can we expect if we successfully implement this new method? - how did we even get here? - how will this continue to evolve in the next 5-10 years? I gathered all this info from a 4-5 hour call with my 3 co-founders in the form of dozens of bullet points (bullet points vs. a slide deck are easier to operationalize and turn into endless topics) I then bucketed all the bullet points into a 3-part story: 1. The first part covered everything around why the current way to do things was no longer the most efficient way 2. The second part of the story covered everything around how we could do that thing now 3. And the last part of the story covered everything around what outcomes you could expect if you adapted to this new way I focused on communicating everything that was in my RoR to our audience through different forms of (educational, tactical, and entertaining) content I had our internal team (from our CTO to our CS rep) and influencers do the same We spent 9 months educating our TAM and changing the way people think about a semi-controversial topic such as attribution, driving over $10M in pipeline in the process I also used this experience to create RoR's for companies like Meta and Cognism If you want to see the exact doc I described in this post: 1. Comment below with the word "doc" and I'll send it to you 2. Send me a request with a note saying you want the doc and ill send it to you ultimately, great marketing teams are already communicating all of this through their content, it's just not all collected into one cohesive story that helps them make sense of it themselves and guides them Your CEO is already telling this story to other execs at dinners, she just hasn't been armed with something that explains how this complicated story should be unraveled so no important piece of info is missed and everything makes sense to the listener you need to build this story for them Comment below to see how P.S. I'm also working on a high-ticket service where I'll create a RoR for you, so drop me a message if that's of any interest—I'm only going to take on two at a time

I saw something interesting today. McDonald's employees were actively distributing flyers promoting their McSaver deals right outside Hong Lim Market & Food Centre. They were strategically positioned to catch people as they entered and exited the food centre. You would think a global giant like McDonald's, with their massive digital marketing budgets and international presence, would not resort to traditional flyering tactics. Yet here they were, engaging in grassroots marketing in a high-foot-traffic area. This highlights an important business lesson. Even established brands understand the value of direct consumer engagement and localized marketing efforts. In an increasingly digital world, there is still significant value in face-to-face interactions and physical marketing materials that consumers can take with them. What does this tell us? ✅ 𝐍𝐨 𝐛𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐨𝐨 𝐛𝐢𝐠 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐝𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠. If McDonald’s is hitting the streets, it is because it works. Digital marketing is powerful, but physical, face-to-face engagement still drives action. ✅ 𝐑𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐞, 𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞. They were not handing out flyers randomly. They were exactly where their audience was, hungry, near a food hub, primed to consider a deal. ✅ 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐬 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐝𝐨𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤𝐬. Many businesses ignore low-cost, high-impact traditional methods. Sometimes, old-school wins. Not every strategy needs to be high-tech. Not every campaign needs an algorithm. Sometimes, a flyer at the right place and time does the job. This is why we suggest offline marketing in some of our client campaigns. If McDonald’s still does it, why wouldn’t we? #Marketing #BusinessGrowth #McDonalds #TraditionalMarketing #ConsumerEngagement #MarketingStrategy