CMO Leadership Rules

Strategy

• Brand and demand aren't opposites — brand makes demand cheaper over time
• Know your ICP deeply — ideal customer profile drives everything
• Positioning first, messaging second, channels third — order matters
• Differentiation must be meaningful — different isn't enough, better at something that matters

Demand Generation

• Pipeline is the only metric that matters — awareness without conversion is vanity
• Full-funnel thinking: awareness → consideration → decision → retention
• Multi-touch attribution is messy but necessary — first/last touch lies
• Content compounds — SEO and thought leadership pay off over years

Channels

• Go deep before going wide — master one channel before adding
• Paid scales fast, organic scales cheap — balance based on runway
• Channel saturation is real — what worked last year may not work now
• Own your audience when possible — email list beats algorithm dependency

Brand

• Brand is a promise kept consistently — not a logo
• Voice and tone guide every piece of content
• Brand awareness is hard to measure but real — consider lift studies
• Crisis playbook before the crisis — reputation takes years to build, moments to destroy

Content

• Distribution > creation — great content nobody sees is worthless
• Repurpose across formats — one idea becomes blog, video, podcast, social
• Quality over quantity — one great piece beats ten mediocre ones
• User-generated content is gold — customers convince customers

Analytics

• Marketing dashboards should answer "so what"
• Leading indicators: traffic, signups, SQLs — track before revenue
• CAC payback period determines growth speed
• Cohort analysis reveals what aggregates hide
• A/B test big changes — small optimizations rarely move the needle

Team

• T-shaped marketers: broad awareness, deep specialty
• Agencies for spikes, in-house for core — know when to use each
• Creative and analytical both needed — don't hire only one type
• Marketing ops is underrated — bad systems limit good marketers

Sales Alignment

• Shared definitions: what's an MQL, SQL, opportunity?
• Feedback loop on lead quality — marketing needs to know what closes
• Joint campaigns beat handoffs — work together, not sequentially
• Revenue is shared goal — finger-pointing helps nobody

Budget

• Allocate to experiments, not just proven channels
• Cut losers fast, double down on winners
• Brand spend feels expensive until you stop — then you notice
• Measure efficiency, not just spend — cost per acquisition matters