The CMO leads brand management, marketing communications, market research, product marketing, distribution channel management, pricing, customer success, and customer service and manages the marketing team. And one of the primary responsibilities of a CMO is to bridge the gap between the company and technology by setting the requirements for the management of and access to customer data.But tech, in general, is having a rough time, with layoffs, etc. We have seen a lot of depressing news lately, and it's hard to get through this situation; it's hard for CMOs to manage the expectations of scared and worried teams.
In this episode of YouShouldTalkTo, Kyle Lacy, the CMO of Jellyfish, explains how to manage your teams' expectations successfully and how you can succeed in the future. Kyle and our host Daniel Weiner discuss brand measurement, the importance of driving efficient revenue, and what separates the good agencies from the bad.
Guest-at-a-Glance
💡 Name: Kyle Lacy, CMO of Jellyfish.
💡 Noteworthy: Kyle has spent the last 17 years building, scaling, failing, and winning in high-growth software. He is currently serving the Jellyfish team as their CMO, and before joining Jellyfish, Kyle had the pleasure of building a company called Lessonly. He has also led teams at Seismic, OpenView, Salesforce, and ExactTarget.
Kyle has been recognized as one of Indiana's Forty under 40 by the Indianapolis Business Journal, Anderson University's Young Alumni of the Year, and TechPoint's Young Professional of the Year. In addition, he is the author of three books: Twitter Marketing for Dummies (Wiley, 2010), Branding Yourself (Pearson, 2011), and Social CRM for Dummies (Wiley, 2012).
💡 Where to find Kyle: LinkedIn l Website
Key Insights
⚡ You don't have to measure everything. Brand measurement programs measure aspects of a brand's product, competition, and category, and one of the main reasons for conducting brand measurement is to ascertain changes that improve your brand's performance. But, according to Kyle, in the marketing world, there is a dilemma about whether or not you should spend a ton of time and energy trying to measure a brand, and he doesn't think you should. "I get the measurement fanatics that think you should measure everything and can measure everything — which is true. You can build attribution models to measure absolutely everything that you possibly could want to do, but there are some times where experiences — like a great direct mail or a great event, or a podcast — it just doesn't need to be measured. And I've found that creatives are more creative when it's the idea that's more important than the actual revenue generated."
⚡ It's important to drive efficient revenue. While the past few years have seen plenty of investment, successful fundraising, and rapid growth, things have changed. Tech is having a rough time regarding the economy and layoffs, and Kyle says that it's still about growing but while driving efficient revenue. "If you drive efficient revenue — both inbound and supporting outbound, or your product — then you're going to have a good story to tell. If you don't do it efficiently, it's going to be very, very difficult in the near future."
⚡ The marketing team needs to understand the leading and lagging indicators of where the market is going. Kyle is the CMO of Jellyfish and successfully leads his team and manages their expectations. From the leadership standpoint, Kyle explains how CMOs should manage the expectations of their teams. "We have a product that is needed; there's a reason why we have product/market fit. We need to execute and be proactive and remember, and have empathy with the market. I've said that for the past six years to my team, so it's not
