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
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
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
Pro Tip
For senior-level roles, you’re likely to receive a smaller number of applications than you would for an entry-level position. Ensure you provide details about what it’s like to work for your company, and what your company values are so applicants know whether your company is the right fit for them.
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
Pro Tip
In building your candidate profile, remember you’ve already identified what skills are needed to succeed in the role. Here’s where to list your “must-have” skills and maybe a couple of “nice-to-have” skills. For example, a Chief Marketing Officer must have experience in strategic planning, and it would be nice to have the ability to get their hands dirty when required.
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
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.
Chief Marketing Officer Salary 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: Salary.com
Chief Marketing Officer Salary 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: Payscale.com
Chief Marketing Officer Salary 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.
Source: Payscale.com
