How To Hire a Chief Marketing Officer

Complete with job descriptions, skill profiles, and interview templates. Use this Chief Marketing Officer hiring guide to help you make the right decisions, fast.

CHIEF MARKETING OFFICER RECRUITMENT GUIDE

What does a Chief Marketing Officer do?

A Chief Marketing Officer's primary mission is to facilitate growth and increase sales by developing a comprehensive marketing plan that will promote brand recognition and help the organization gain a competitive advantage. In order to achieve their own goals and effectively shape their companies' public profile, CMOs must be exceptional leaders and assume the voice of the customer across the company.

Day to day tasks of a Chief Marketing Officer

Lead Brand & Campaigns, PR, Research & Insights, Customer Acquisition, Customer Engagement (CRM), B2B and Partnership Marketing
Develop and implement cutting edge marketing strategies to drive acquisition, engagement, conversion and brand equity
Partner closely with Commercial, Data, Risk and Product teams to create and deliver on a winning marketing strategy and plan.
Have a deep understanding of customers needs, preferences & behaviours and understand how to use the right data & insights to deliver strategic commercial value
Improving how to measure success, from KPI development through to scalable processes and feedback loops.
Bring a commercial rigour to planning and budgeting, ensuring all key activities are measured and investments are monitored and iterated as required
Maintaining strong communication channels with cross-functional teams to develop and iterate on the marketing strategy and approach
Instilling a customer obsession across your teams, leveraging customer research to inform target markets, campaign design and decision making

Recruitment guide role overview illustration

CHIEF MARKETING OFFICER DEFINITION

A Chief Marketing Officer is a corporate executive responsible for activities in an organization that have to do with creating, communicating and delivering offerings that have value for customers, clients or business partners.

HIRING PROCESS

Chief Marketing Officer Hiring Process

1
STEP 1
2
STEP 2
3
STEP 3
4
STEP 4
5
STEP 5

STEP 1

Build the Ideal Candidate Profile

To find the best person for the role, you need to understand what the role involves. You can complete this with the hiring manager to define the role, its contribution, and the skills needed.

STEP 2

Write A Job Description Based On Skills

Once you understand the requirements for the role, you’ll need to understand the skills for success. You can then write an effective job description to promote your role.

STEP 3

Selecting The Ideal Candidate

See which applicants have the right skills for the role. Send all your applicants a Vervoe skills assessment from the expert library, or customize one for your organization.

STEP 4

Interview Top Performers

Your skills assessment results will identify top performers. Focus your time on interviewing those that have met or exceeded your requirements. Assessment results will also help guide which skill areas to focus on in the interview.

STEP 5

Making An Offer

Once you assess your candidates against these skills, you’re ready to offer the top performer(s). You should base your offer on the value that the candidate would bring to your team and your business as a whole. It is also important to ensure your compensation and benefits packages are competitive in the industry and help you attract and retain the top talent.

BUILD THE IDEAL CANDIDATE PROFILE

Skills needed for a Chief Marketing Officer

A chief marketing officer must be customer-focussed and have a strong high level knowledge of marketing strategies. They will be excellent in collaboration and stakeholder management, and have a strategic mindset. Because each employee is different, a Chief Marketing Officer needs to have skills in team management.

Marketing Strategy
Stakeholder Management
Strategic Thinking
Team Management

WRITE A JOB DESCRIPTION BASED ON SKILLS

How to write a Chief Marketing Officer job description

Once you’ve determined the skills required for the role, you can write the job description to advertise for your position. Here’s what to include in your Chief Marketing Officer job description:

Job Title: What position are you hiring for?
Summary: What makes your company unique? What would it be like to work for you?
Responsibilities: An overview of the role’s day-to-day activities, and how the position contributes to the organization
Requirements: Skills a candidate must have to perform the job successfully
Benefits: Details of compensation, benefits, and any perks on offer

Use our sample Chief Marketing Officer job description

SELECTING THE IDEAL CANDIDATE

Sample skill tests for a Chief Marketing Officer

Create a free account today to access the full assessment and more from our library

Try Vervoe Now

Question 1

Marketing Strategy

Question Type: Presentation

Based on what you know about our organization, outline some strategies you would implement to help and grow our customer base and drive revenue.

Question 2

PPC

Question Type: Audio

Describe when you would close an advertisement test and what metrics you would use to decide. Feel free to draw on previous experience as an example.

Question 3

SEO

Question Type: Text

Please describe your process to optimize the following page for Organic Search: https://example.com.

INTERVIEW TOP PERFORMERS

How to interview a Chief Marketing Officer

Once your Vervoe skills assessment has surfaced the most qualified people for your open role, you can focus on interviewing these candidates. The interview should focus on any skills that require development that were highlighted from the skills assessment.

Now you know that candidates can do the job, the interview becomes more of a relationship building exercise where you can get to know the candidate on a more personal level, understand their motivations, and how they would fit in with the team.

MAKING AN OFFER

How much does it cost to hire a Chief Marketing Officer?

The US average for a Chief Marketing Officer is $245,890 according to Salary.com while the reported average salary on Glassdoor amounts to $86,932. Ninety percent of Chief Marketing Officers earn up to $160,225 with 25 percent receiving $309,780 or better.

United States

Chief Marketing Officer salaries in the United States range from $160,226 - $367,949 (USD). Chief Marketing Officer salaries in the U.S vary significantly due to the size of the company and where they are based.

Source: Source: Salary.com

United Kingdom

Chief Marketing Officer salaries in the United Kingdom range from £49,000 - £153,000 (GBP). Chief Marketing Officer salaries in the UK vary significantly due to the size of the company and where they are based.

Source: Source: Payscale.com

Australia

Chief Marketing Officer salaries in Australia range from $112,000 - $288,000 (AUD). Chief Marketing Officer salaries in Australia vary significantly due to the size of the company and where they are based.