Monster

Welcome to The Beat by Rockstar CMO. I’m Ian Truscott, a CMO, trusted advisor, strategy consultant and Chief Bottle Washer at Rockstar CMO. In this newsletter, I’d like to share a mix of what’s caught my eye from our community, our podcast and our street knowledge blog.

Hello there!

This week, a chum asked me via a LinkedIn message, “What is keeping CMOs up at night?” I assume he’s doing some research for a marketing campaign or something his company is doing, and he referred to “the thing lurking in the dark.”

This got me thinking.

Firstly, the inspiration for the subject line of this newsletter, which always, as you know, comes from a song (best practice on subject lines and open rates be damned), and this week, I have gone with Monster by Automatic (video below).

You may not have heard of them, but they are a Welsh one-hit wonder, the kind of band that, when you research them on Spotify, have one track (this one) with 27 million plays, and err… the rest…. not so much.

It does fit the bill rather nicely, being upbeat enough to get our Monday marketing mojo working and my chum’s phrase of something lurking in the dark—a monster.

What would your marketing monster be?

I could have gone with some obvious candidates, the stuff many commenters are observing right now, around the general insecurity of being a CMO, budget pressures, the short tenures, technology changes, AI, changing buying behaviors etc., etc., etc.

But the nomination I shared with him for the thing lurking in the dark is the connection between the investment of marketing resources (both time and money) and revenue.

This is a bit of a two-headed beast when it comes to something dark inhabiting our nightmares.

The first side is that CMOs/marketing leaders want (or need) to tie themselves to revenue to appear valued and relevant (I refer you to my point about insecurity and tenure).

There is a huge personal pressure to do this in an environment where there is a perception outside marketing that digital marketing now makes everything measurable.

And what are the worst kind of monsters? Those we invent ourselves. This call is coming from inside the house.

The second head of this beast is that however hard we try, a lot of the buyer activity we influence with marketing spend is completely dark or fuzzy at best; attribution is a f**king rabbit hole. Let’s not kid ourselves; it’s impossible to be completely scientific about the input of time/money and revenue output.

As I’ve shared before, I am using a reporting tool with a client that I heard about from a podcast, not an ad, paid keyword, or any of that stuff their marketing team could measure. If they attributed the revenue, it would be to SEO or maybe a brand search, but it wouldn’t be to “brand trusted enough to get mentioned on a podcast”.

We’ve discussed some trends that are worsening this situation on the podcast, especially in the slot in our virtual bar with Robert Rose.

It’s quite a list; the consumer is becoming more sensitive about privacy (cookies, etc), email open rates are unreliable, the social platforms are trying to keep the buyer in their walled gardens, Google is doing the same with zero-click, we are seeing voice search and buyers using ChatGPT to do solution research. (etc. etc).

All this adds some friction to understanding buyer behavior and intent. Limiting our ability to find, understand, and offer something relevant to them. Specifically, it is getting harder to interrupt the buyer’s research into a solution with ads.

I believe this leads marketing leaders to conclude that they need to get above this and consider the strategic importance of brand marketing versus the very tactical but measurable (and safe) tactics in performance marketing.

BRAND! This is scary as f**k.

Brand impact on revenue is usually difficult to pin down, especially over the shorter term.

In some organizations, this is a hard sell to the CEO/CFO when we have all become trained on being data-led and on the promise of measurability.

Many B2B marketing leaders I have spoken to say that brand has become a dirty word.

It requires patience and long-term thinking (who's got that?).

What’s that coming over the hill?

Is it a monster?

What do you think? And what would you suggest to my chum?

Thanks for reading this far; I hope you enjoy your week!

Cheers!

Ian

Ian Truscott | Chief Bottle Washer Rockstar CMO

Say hello, reply to this email or find me on LinkedIn or my personal website.

On the Podcast

With the demise of Google Podcasts, if you are a Google person we are now on YouTube. Of course, if you are a Spotify, Apple, Overcast, Amazon or any good podcast player fan, we are there too - faithfully audio only - search for “Rockstar CMO” or find all the links on our website.

Street Knowledge

On the podcast this week, we discussed budgeting as we approach the season for budget planning. Here are some interesting articles we came across this week:

Back on the topic of the brand - here are some wise words from Robert Rose in his Rose Tinted Specs column for the Content Marketing Institute.

Get your Monday Marketing Mojo Working

Is is a Monster?