Career as a CMO (Chief Marketing Officer)

Any company that wants to succeed must increase sales and ensure that customers buy its goods and services. This won’t happen by itself. To accomplish its objectives, every business must carefully consider its options and develop effective strategies.

Have you ever considered yourself a potential team leader for the management of a company’s marketing initiatives? Do you intend to pursue a career as a CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) in the future? CMOs have a heavy burden on their shoulders because they are in charge of creating strategies to boost a company’s sales.

Do you believe you possess the skills necessary to accept responsibility for your actions and work through difficult tasks? If the answer is yes, you need to read this blog to find out how you can pursue a career as a CMO.

What does a CMO do?

If you want to pursue a career as a CMO, you must know what duties you will be carrying out.

• Establish and meet strategic objectives about initiatives for marketing campaigns, television advertising, and social media metrics.
• Create and enhance marketing campaigns for each division of our business.
• For outside contractors working on marketing and promotion projects, bargain compensation and project specifics.
• Create and spread a positive brand message that will appeal to our target market.
• Monitor franchisees’ daily revenue reports, social media tactics, and other marketing program elements.
• Directing customer operations division.

Job roles for a CMO

Before you kickstart your career as a CMO in any company, you are required to work and gain enough experience. This is true of any C-suite career. You cannot directly become the CMO of a company. To join the marketing team of a company, here are some job profiles you can consider.

1. Communications Manager-
   Unless you work with a specific PR firm, public relations frequently falls under the marketing umbrella. Many of the PR duties, including writing press releases, corresponding with local media, distributing newsletters, and creating social media posts with company news, are handled by a communication manager. A communications manager enhances the company’s reputation and fosters customer trust. This person needs to have excellent writing and pitching abilities to get local news outlets to write about the brand favourably.
   
2. Content Marketing Specialist-
   An individual in this position will know how to create content that is pertinent to engaging potential and current customers and bringing traffic to the business’s website to increase sales. To produce high-quality targeted campaigns that communicate to your particular audience, the content marketing specialist combines analytics and creativity. They can also aid in setting your brand apart from those of rival businesses.
   
3. Digital Marketing Manager-
   Online visual content is produced by digital marketing managers, who also use web analytics to track traffic, conversions, and the relative success of various channels. This person is probably in charge of managing your website, social media accounts, and e-commerce site. They might also be in charge of managing influencer or paid search campaigns. Digital marketing managers assist you in optimizing your marketing to get the best return on your investment; this position requires a fair amount of analytics expertise.
   
4. Marketing Manager-
   To make the organization’s marketing come to life, a marketing manager must walk a fine line between developing a higher-level strategy and getting their hands dirty. Managers of marketing recruit and train marketing personnel, assign tasks, manage the marketing budget, and conduct research to create new campaigns. To modify the strategy as needed, they also conduct competitive analyses, study consumer trends, and evaluate the success of marketing campaigns.
   
5. Product Marketing Manager-
   This task is carried out by a product marketing manager for a particular product. To keep the customers and the product relevant, this role involves planning and managing the product release as well as setting competitive pricing, positioning the product, determining its target market, and managing post-launch follow-up. Additionally, this position will be involved product update marketing.

Career path to become a CMO

If you want to pursue a career as a CMO, you can follow either of these paths.

Path 1:

Complete your 10+2 in the Arts stream. For your undergraduate degree, you can switch your field to Commerce and pursue a B. Com or BBA followed by a master’s degree in MBA or M. Com.

Path 2:

Complete your 10+2 in the Commerce stream. For your undergraduate degree, you can switch your field to Commerce and pursue a B. Com or BBA followed by a master’s degree in MBA or M. Com. It is ideal if you opt for the Commerce stream for your 10+2 as the curriculum has subjects which will teach you the basics needed for your undergraduate degree.

Salary in different career stages of a CMO

If you want to know how rewarding a career as a CMO is, take a look at this table with the salary figures.

Experience	Salary
1-4 years	Rs.500,000
5-9 years	Rs.1,000,000
10-19 years	Rs.3,000,000
20+ years	Rs.2,000,000

Skills to become a CMO

To succeed in your career as a CMO, here are a few skills you will need to develop.

• Powerful leadership abilities
  Leadership is crucial to your role in your career as a CMO. You give your team and your marketing initiatives the structure and inspiration they require to stay on task. Being a trusted source of knowledge and insight is essential for the success of your team since a strong leader leads by example.
  
• Abilities in verbal and writing communication
  Every facet of being an effective marketer requires effective communication abilities. This has two effects: first, you must be able to communicate effectively with your audience to be able to reach them. The success of your marketing activities could become segregated or ineffective if you don’t communicate your goals, methods, and ideas to your staff.
  
• Knowledge of data analysis software
  Key performance indicators (KPIs) from your marketing campaigns should be collected, which you’ll need to interpret. Your tactics’ success depends on your ability to comprehend this data and draw the appropriate inferences from it. Understanding how to lead in a setting that is always changing Working knowledge of numerous marketing tools, including those for market research, data analytics, website building, product branding, etc.
  
• The capacity to plan and carry out marketing strategies through both established and emerging channels
  A competent CMO not only excels at data analysis but also knows its market inside and out. A CMO must research because their strategies will never be successful if they don’t understand their target market. To engage with your customers most effectively, you must be aware of their needs as well as their preferences. These elements are necessary for creating successful strategies.
  
• Strategizing
  To support your strategies, understanding your data is essential. Your strategy will be developed using your data, which will also support your other marketing initiatives like social media and sales.
  
• Teamwork
  Many factors go into marketing, and now more than ever, factors outside of your department can affect how successful your company operates. It’s crucial to be a team player that gets along well with people both outside of your team and inside it.
  
• Organizational
  The organization is essential for any profession, but especially for a CMO. Since you, as a leader, are directly accountable for the efficiency of your team or department, you must have a firm understanding of where things stand right now, where they’re headed, and where they ought to be. This entails planning your day as well as your data collection.
  
• Humility
  Any job would benefit from having humility, but marketing is especially in need of it. In the ever-changing world of marketing, it’s acceptable to not have the solution at hand right now. Admitting when you don’t know something and actively learning from your team are key practices for good marketing leaders.
  
• Technical skills
  Technical proficiency is required for the CMO position. This includes knowledge of design software, search engine optimization (SEO) tools, email servers and programs, social media platforms, lead generating and sales management tools, and customer relationship management software (CRMs).
  
• Communication and leadership skills
  In addition to having strong marketing talents, good CMOs need also to possess strong interpersonal, leadership, and communication abilities. This will allow them to effectively manage their team, maintain a positive work environment, and convey complex campaign concepts.
  
• Experience
  Since the chief marketing officer position carries a lot of responsibility, the job description often calls for at least 10 years of experience working in marketing departments, with at least five of those years spent in a leadership position. Employers looking to hire the candidate will be especially curious to observe how their marketing efforts have affected sales, for example.

Is becoming CMO a good career option?

The CMO is now more relevant and crucial to a company’s success than ever because of technological improvements in recent decades. Social media platforms, analytics, AI, IoT, mobile computing, and the internet have all generated problems and opportunities that need to be resolved. Customers can express their opinions about brands, and brands now have a variety of channels to connect with consumers. Therefore, in your career as a CMO, you must be able to utilize the potential of these technologies to engage with and influence customers. A successful CMO will also be able to position its products in a competitive market while taking on rivals on an equal footing with customers in terms of speed and scale. A CMO will work closely with its executive counterparts to accomplish this to stay current and competitive. Therefore, this person must be able to innovate and adapt as markets and technology change. Similar to how people always change, the role is constantly evolving and getting more difficult. Now, the CMO must explore areas like sustainable growth, highly customized customer experiences, and cutting-edge marketing innovation.

If you are keen on learning about these topics and want hands-on exposure, check out the Clever Harvey JuniorMBA Chief Marketing Officer course.

Types of industries hiring CMOs

Do you think you can become a CMO only if you start your own company? That’s not true! If you want to know the kind of industries you can work for to pursue a career as a CMO, take a look at this list.

• Finance
• Entertainment industry
• Media agencies
• Advertising
• Technology
• Consultancy

Top recruiters for CMOs

Here’s a list of top recruiters you can consider to pursue a career as a CMO.

1. Axis Bank
2. HDFC Bank
3. Hindustan Unilever
4. Infosys
5. ITC infotech
6. Kotak Mahindra 
7. Larsen and Toubro
8. Reliance Industries
9. Tata Consultancy
10. Wipro

Courses to upskill as a CMO

To pursue a career as a CMO, consider taking these certificate courses:

1. Chief Marketing Officer program
2. Digital Marketing
3. Fundamentals in Strategic Marketing and the Marketing Environment
4. Introduction to Marketing
5. Introduction to Marketing Management
6. Introduction to Online Marketing Strategies 
7. Marketing Through Internet and Social Media

If you are really keen on learning about these topics and want hands-on exposure, check out the Clever Harvey JuniorMBA course.

Qualifications to become a CMO

In this section, we will discuss everything you need to know about the educational qualifications required to pursue a career as a CMO.

Degrees in India

You can take up the following undergraduate and postgraduate degree programs in India if you want to pursue a career as a CMO.

Undergraduate degrees in India

• BBA (Bachelor of Business Administration) Finance
• BBA (Bachelor of Business Administration) Sales and Marketing
• B. Com (Bachelor of Commerce)
• B. Com (Bachelor of Commerce) Accounts and Finance 
• B. Com (Bachelor of Commerce) Marketing

Postgraduate degrees in India

Course Name	Duration
Masters of Economics	2 years
Masters of Business Administration (MBA)	2 years

Degrees abroad

You can take up the following undergraduate and postgraduate degree programs abroad if you want to pursue a career as a CMO.

Undergraduate degrees abroad

• B. A Management Marketing 
• B. Com Marketing 
• Bachelor of Science in Commerce
• Bachelor of Science [BSc] (Business Management with Marketing)

Postgraduate degrees abroad

Course Name	Duration
Masters of Economics	2 years
Masters of Business Administration (MBA)	2 years

To know more about your career as a CMO, read this blog- How to become a Chief Marketing Officer

References

Here’s some additional information that will come in handy if you want to pursue a career as a CMO.

Famous CMOs:

Name	Name of Company
Ann Lewnes	Adobe
Chris Capossela	Microsoft
Deborah Walsh	General Motors
Diego Scotti	Verizon
Julia Goldin	Lego
Leslie Berland	Twitter
Linda Boff	GE
Lorraine Twohill	Google
Marisa Thalberg	Lowe’s
Oliver Francois	Fiat
Raja Rajamannar	Mastercard

Books you can read:

Here’s a list of 11 books that you can read if you want to pursue a career as a CMO:

1. Chief Marketing Officers at Work by Josh Steimle
2. Everybody Writes by Ann Handley
3. Hug Your Haters by Jay Baer
4. I’m Judging You: The Do-Better Manual by Luvvie Ajayi
5. Leading Through the Turn by Elise Mitchell
6. More Is More by Blake Morgan
7. Outside Insight by Jørn Lyseggen
8. Performance Partnerships by Robert Glazer
9. The Content Formula by Michael Brenner and Liz Bedor
10. They Ask You Answer by Marcus Sheridan
11. Top of Mind by John Hall

FAQs related to a career as a CMO