Any CMOs / Chief Marketing Officers / Marketing Directors about?

[MarketingCurious]

I'd love to pick your brains, if I may.

I'm a Marketing Director with 25 years' corporate experience looking to make my next move. Currently earn £150k (no bonus) and wish to make the step for more / different challenge and money. I am good at what I do but have no real context on how to position myself / the types of roles I should be pursuing / what a CMO role involves on a day to day basis. Recruiters just want to put me in a role similar to my current one but in a larger organisation so that's unhelpful. And most of the other marketeers I know are more junior than me so are unable to advise too.

Is anyone willing to offer their thoughts? Thank you.

Are you Chartered or a member of a professional body?

Can you find a mentor from something like that?

I’m a mentor for two institutes and this is the sort of thing I might get involved in helping someone with.

Hello, I'm currently a Head of Marketing but have been a CMO in the past - I have to say they can be pretty interchangeable job titles outside of large corporates. CMO just tends to be mean more contact with the Exco and translation of business strategy into Marketing strategy (I realise plenty of Marketing Directors do this too, but it depends on the structure of the business.)
Other than that it can be more multi-disciplinary, because you'd have a head of brand, digital marketing, product marketing, etc working into you, whereas Head of Marketing and Head of Brand may be the same level. What sector do you work in? That can make a big difference to salary. I'm in Financial Services, where the pay is better anyway, plus less competition for the big roles!
I realise none of that is particularly helpful, but I'd just start applying for CMO roles and you'll probably find you have all the skills to do it already. Ignore the recruiters advice and tell them that's what you want to aim for - a good recruiter will help you get there. Good luck!

I came to say exactly the same as @Bet01
I’m Head of marketing level and as far as I understand cmo and director are interchangeable depending on organisation but maybe Im showing my ignorance?

Surely the company, salary, how you think you can lead the marketing for that business matter more than the title, so
be lead by that. You position yourself by understanding the business and what you can do for them?

At CMO level the day to day role would be defined by you and how you think it needs to look to be most impactful for that organisation. So your question is actually an integral part of that role if you see what I mean.

I imagine CMO roles on a day to day basis would vary vastly, not just accross companies but from year to year as business evolves.

However, Im not that level, so just offering some thoughts.

I’d actually love to know what you do day to day! As I earn nowhere near what you do. Im good at what I do but have struggled in the corporate environment.

Thanks for your responses @GoldenEagles , @amidsummernightsdream and @Bet01. Sorry about the slow reply - crazy day at the marketing coal face! :)

To answer some questions...

• I'm not a member of any membership organisations though I have a post-grad diploma in marketing from the CIM.
• I work in professional services marketing. Have worked in massive firms and smaller ones too.
• It's the business strategy work and seat at the leadership team table that interests me - I like the intellectual challenge. I used to work as a marketing consultant and loved the opportunity to work with top teams, understand their business requirements and create strategy to help them deliver. I've done this in my current role and have now run out of road. The organisation is too small to do much more.

On a day to day basis, (having already done the big strategy stuff), I...

• Spend a lot of time liaising with partners and keeping them happy (so, senior stakeholder management)
• Reporting
• Campaign planning
• Special projects (so, one offs that need to be introduced once and then become business as usual). These run the gamut of comms, data, brand, digital, content, social media, etc.
• Budget
• Being a good corporate citizen working with other functions to coordinate better for the good of the business
• Developing internal programmes aimed at supporting women in the workplace
• Team management and development
• Supplier liaison
• Change management and internal comms
• Creating many, many slide decks for multiple purposes
• Checking other people's work, feeding back and checking again!