Diary of a first-time CMO volume 2

You’ve reached the end of Alice’s diary of a first time CMO volume two, thank you so much for listening.

As the diary of a first-time CMO volume two comes to an end, Alice shares what she thinks will be important for her, the Cognism marketing team and B2B marketers in general over the coming year.

After sharing our content strategy in the previous entry, this entry dives into how we distribute the content we create throughout our various channels.

Our content framework revolves around ‘what we want to be known for’. Listen to Alice explain our ‘content roadmap’, which feeds our media machine content and big rock content campaigns.

One of the ways you can reduce the risk of failure before entering a new region is by doing some test marketing in that region first. You can gauge the interest, create some demand - and most importantly identify any blockers early on.

Working with SMEs is a huge part of the Cognism marketing strategy, and therefore we need to be able to identify and reach out to relevant SMEs in new regions when we have plans to expand there. This entry delves into how we manage this process.

This entry follows on from entry 37, discussing how Alice and the Cognism team applied the lessons learned from their DACH expansion, to their French expansion.

Not every venture is immediately successful. However, the lessons we learn from doing things the wrong way, teach us a lot about how to do things next time. This entry goes into details on what went wrong in our DACH expansion, and how we used this to launch effectively into France.

Alice and Cognism’s CEO are keen to be one of the first adopters of new AI tech that can help the company become more efficient in its processes. This entry delves into a few of the ways in which we are already utilising AI tools. 

Most people know Cognism for its sales use case, but internally, we drink our own champagne and utilise the Cognism product for our own marketing. This entry shares how.

How do you apply the Cognism demand generation approach in a smaller company? This entry deep dives how Alice adjusted the Kaspr set up to incorporate demand generation.

Cognism and Kaspr are two very similar products, but two very different audiences. When bringing Kaspr into the Cognism family, we had to think carefully about how we position each in a way that helps both companies to thrive next to one another. This entry explains that positioning. 

One of the biggest investments you make as a marketing leader is who you hire. How do you make sure each hire is just as strong as the last? This entry dives into the key values Alice looks for when hiring for the marketing team at Cognism.

This entry is part three of Cognism’s ABM strategy, specifically looking at how we build towards identifying our 1:1 targets and then how we try to reach said target accounts.

This entry is part two of Cognism’s ABM strategy, plus some of the results we’ve managed to achieve from our ABM activity so far.

Cognism has gone from zero ABM strategy to an ABM strategy pulling in 300k opps in a matter of weeks. Listen to Alice deep dive what we do for ABM.

Separate to OKR reporting, how do you track BAU targets? Especially as you grow and have a lot more to have oversight on as a marketing leader… This is how we manage reporting at Cognism.

Which roles should you have in house, and which can you outsource to someone external? This entry explains Alice’s strategy and philosophy for freelancers and agencies.

When others zig, you should zag. Cognism’s SEO strategy has always looked at the long game, focusing on quality - and not on programmatic SEO. Despite a lot of advisors telling us otherwise. This approach has resulted in a website that competes along with the likes of Hubspot.

When expanding into new regions, when can you translate existing content - and when should you create something new? Listen to find out how we balance the low hanging fruit content translation opportunities, versus creating dedicated regional content.

What happens in PMM when a new product is brought to market? This entry offers you an insight into the behind the scenes activity which took place for Cognism’s Enrich launch.

As the Cognism marketing team - and entire organisation - grew larger, we needed a system to hold us accountable to company goals. This entry explains what system we landed on.

Alice’s swings back and forth on in-person events and how to run them. But this year, we’ve landed on an in-person events strategy we’re happy with - and is working.

Listen to Alice’s take on our new VP of Paid Acquisition’s post about his quick wins from his early days in seat at Cognism.

It’s much easier to teach someone a new skill, than it is to teach them a new way of thinking… That’s why Alice prefers to bring people in who are already bought into the demand generation mindset.