How to go from marketer to CMO

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I went from marketing manager to CMO in four years. It was fast. It was exciting. And, honestly, it was a little painful. I lost sleep. I lost hair. I made a lot of mistakes and learned most of what I know now the hard way.

What I quickly realized is this: Being a great marketer is not the same as being a great marketing leader. Especially in a high-growth environment. The skills that got me promoted — the hands-on stuff, the campaigns, the creative — weren’t the same ones I needed to lead a team, align with cross-functional departments, or report to a CEO.

That gap hits you fast once you’re in the hot seat.

So if you‘re on that path, whether you’re newly promoted, leading a team for the first time, or aiming for the CMO role, this post is for you. These are five mindset shifts that helped me make that leap and that still shape how I lead today.

1. Lead with the story, not the strategy.

One of the biggest mindset shifts I had to make as a marketing leader was learning to lead with the story, not the tactical plan.

Early on, it’s tempting to drive straight to strategy: Which campaigns should we run? Which channels should we optimize? But over time, I started to notice a pattern. The companies that broke through didn’t start with tactics or even traditional strategy. They started with a story: a clear explanation of what was changing in the market, and why their product existed because of it.

At Drift, that story was “conversational marketing.” It reflected a real shift in how people wanted to buy. No one wanted to fill out a form and wait. They wanted to get answers in real time. That phrase gave our customers language to explain why we mattered. And, it gave our team clarity about what we were building, why it mattered, and how to talk about it.

Your job as a marketing leader is to define that kind of narrative, and then continuously reinforce it. What’s changing for your customer? What shift are they trying to navigate? And how does your product help them respond?

When the story is clear, repeatable, and grounded in something real, everything else — positioning, messaging, roadmapping — gets easier and more aligned.

Drift wasn’t the only company to build its strategy around a story. HubSpot did it with “inbound marketing,” and Gainsight did it with “customer success.” In both cases, the story came first, and the strategy followed.

2. Learn how to communicate with your CEO.

I used to think the way to show impact was to list everything the team was working on. I’d put together long status updates, filled with detail about campaigns, performance, and team activity. I thought it would show how productive we were.

But, I quickly learned that leadership doesn’t have the context (or time) to follow the tactical …read more

Source:: HubSpot Blog