--- title: Upscale 5.0 - Marketing Leads description: As a scaling company, you’re often running against the clock. And, as the leader of a scaleup, it’s likely that hiring is your number one pain point, with up to 30–40% of your time spent on recruitment. image: https://notes.technation.io/hubfs/CMO%20Meetup.jpeg --- [![Tech Nation Solar](https://notes.technation.io/hubfs/TechNation%20January%202020/Images/tech-nation-header-logo-cropped.svg)](https://technation.io/) - [Home](https://technation.io/) - [Programmes](https://technation.io/programmes/) - - [Growth Programmes](https://technation.io/programmes) - - Early Stage - [Founders’ Network](https://technation.io/programmes/founders-network/) - [Rising Stars](https://technation.io/programmes/rising-stars/) - Mid Stage - [Upscale](https://technation.io/programmes/upscale/) - Late Stage - [Future Fifty](https://technation.io/programmes/future-fifty/) - - [Fintech](https://technation.io/programmes/fintech/) - [Cyber](https://technation.io/programmes/cyber-security/) - [Applied AI](https://technation.io/programmes/applied-ai/) - [Resources](https://technation.io/resources/) - - [Resources](https://technation.io/resources/) - - - [Digital Business Academy](https://technation.io/resources/digital-business-academy/) - [Immersion](https://technation.io/resources/tech-immersion/) - - [Scaling Guide](https://technation.io/the-ultimate-guide-to-scaling/) - [Scaleup Glossary](https://technation.io/resources/scaleup-glossary/) - - [Government Resources](https://technation.io/resources/government-resources) - [Brexit guide](https://technation.io/resources/brexit-readiness-business-guide/) - - [Fintech collaboration toolkit](https://technation.io/resources/fintech-collaboration-toolkit/) - [Insurtech Standards](https://technation.io/insurtech-standards/) - [Guide to AI](https://technation.io/guide-to-ai/) - [Reports](http://technation.io/insights) - - [Reports](https://technation.io/insights/) - - [Tech Nation Report 2019](https://technation.io/report2019) - [Tech Nation Report 2018](https://technation.io/insights/report-2018/) - [Tech for Social Good](https://technation.io/insights/tech-for-social-good/) - - [A Bright Tech Future report](https://technation.io/bright-tech-future/) - [The Unicorn Update](https://technation.io/news/uks-digital-tech-sector-has-created-one-tech-unicorn-a-month-for-last-year/) - [Data Commons](https://datacommons.technation.io/home) - [Visa](https://technation.io/visa/) - - [Visas](https://technation.io/visa) - - [Tech Nation Visa](https://technation.io/visa) - [Startup and Innovator Visa](https://technation.io/visa/startup-and-innovator/) - - [Alumni Network](https://technation.io/tech-nation-visa-alumni-network/) - [UK regions](https://technation.io/about-us/national-network/) - - [UK regions](https://technation.io/about-us/national-network/) - - - [East of England](https://technation.io/about-us/national-network/east-of-england/) - [North West](https://technation.io/about-us/national-network/north-west/) - [Northern Ireland](https://technation.io/about-us/national-network/northern-ireland/) - - [London](https://technation.io/about-us/national-network/london/) - [South East](https://technation.io/about-us/national-network/south-east/) - [Scotland](https://technation.io/about-us/national-network/scotland/) - - [Midlands](https://technation.io/about-us/national-network/midlands/) - [South West](https://technation.io/about-us/national-network/south-west/) - [Wales](https://technation.io/about-us/national-network/wales/) - - [North East](https://technation.io/about-us/national-network/north-east/) - [Yorkshire](https://technation.io/about-us/national-network/yorkshire/) - [News](https://technation.io/news/) - [Events](https://technation.io/events/) - [About us](https://technation.io/about-us/) - - [About us](https://technation.io/about-us/) - - [Alumni](https://technation.io/programmes/alumni) - [Partnerships](https://technation.io/about-us/partnerships/) - [Press](https://technation.io/about-us/press/) - [Jobs](https://technation.io/about-us/jobs/) - - [Contact Us](https://technation.io/contact-us/) - [Fintech Delivery Panel](https://technation.io/about-us/fintech-delivery-panel/) - [Lawtech Delivery Panel](https://technation.io/about-us/lawtech-panel/) × Search Search # Upscale 5.0 - Marketing Leads ![Liam Ward](https://app.hubspot.com/settings/avatar/8c975dde3657bd69f95758936c2834b3) [Liam Ward](https://notes.technation.io/blog/author/liam-ward) , July 9, 2020 ⏱ 4 min read ![](https://notes.technation.io/hubfs/CMO%20Meetup.jpeg) The session will bring together marketing leads from the rest of the cohort to discuss scaling a marketing team, prioritising scarce resources, marketing strategies at scale and scaling as a marketing leader - as well as create a community of marketing leads for you to network with. **Scale Coaches:** - [Will McInnes](https://uk.linkedin.com/in/willmcinnes) - CMO, Brandwatch **Session Takeaways:** - Scaling and building out your Marketing team - Frameworks and strategies for scaling as a Marketing Lead - Tips on prioritising limited resources - Understand peer challenges and approaches that you can tailor to your situation - A network of Marketing Leads to support you as you scale   --- #### **> SESSION NOTES** **SCALING AS A MARKETING LEAD** *Will McInnes, Brandwatch* **Context** Brandwatch is a platform for digital consumer intelligence that allows you to tap into live consumer opinions. Vizia brings digital insights to life. Qriously is a mobile survey platform that allows you to ask up to 2 billion people at a time and makes it easier to reach people who are usually hard to get a hold of. BuzzSumo is a self-serve product, brilliant for content marketing inspiration.  Brandwatch also merged with competitor Crimson Hexagon. If your business is thinking about merging with another, Will is happy for you to contact him about it. --- **Part 1: Reflections and regrets as a CMO** - **Not building demand gen sooner** Brandwatch has always been a strong content marketing organisation. The brand driven marketing strategy prioritises inbound over outbound but while building on what is already working and solving problems that presented themselves, they realised clients hadn’t ever heard of Brandwatch. This meant there was work needed to be more credible and known - but led to a running out of a pipeline. If Will could go back, he would have also implemented a more data driven strategy to go after companies that would be the right fit, in parallel with the inbound, earlier in their journey - something for B2B companies to consider in the marketing strategy. - **Not maximising the website opportunity** The website could have been used to interact with potential clients more but the digital team was not pushed to trial it more. Instead, they would have to request to be sent a demo which slows everything down. Ensure your website is meeting the demands of customers and maximising your traffic. - **Allowing Marketing Ops to sit in central Ops team** The people who look at the data in the Marketing Team sat within the Ops team which created a bottleneck to get the data quickly. Each scenario will be different for each team, but it is beneficial from CMOs/Heads of Marketing to have people in the team directly feeding you with insights. - **Not enforcing SLAs harder and more continuously** Lots of MQLs were just building up. Work with the team to establish a process for processing outstanding MQLs. - **Allowed digital spend to cheat** So much comes in through the web and organically so does the marketing budget actually generate ROI? Not convinced there is value for money but attribution is complicated. Be honest with yourself about how digital spend is actually impacting your lead generation. - **Not cultivating enough ‘game changing’ stuff** Nothing too groundbreaking has been done, of course they’ve done interesting things and taken some risks but mainly bread and butter B2B marketing. As marketers, give your team space to work on things that can be outside of their day-to-day - high impact pieces of marketing. - **Not institutionalised customer and sales proximity** Guilty of being a little removed from the frontline. Not been as close to customers as they could have been. In a scaleup, think about how you can get your marketers and sales team working together in pairs to be closer to each other. (The Amazon ‘[empty chair](https://www.inc.com/john-koetsier/why-every-amazon-meeting-has-at-least-one-empty-chair.html)’ is the customer’ analogy). --- **Part 2: Wins** - **Working in NYC** Having started the role in NYC, one thing that is clear is how much bigger the American’s think when they see things working. Not only is the US one of the biggest and fastest growth and expansion opportunities, their growth mindset in marketing is one that we can take lots from. - **Finding your ying** Finding your counterpart who you can work well with on the data side while you focus on the strategy. Or, more importantly, someone you trust in your marketing or sales team who can work on the areas that you aren’t as strong on. - **Building brand** Brand marketing done well is the best ROI and it’s cheap to do. Think about how you can build your brand while implementing your marketing strategy. - **Design DNA** Design is strong at Brandwatch. Having design in house and in the team has been brilliant as you have control over the whole customer experience. Work with your design resource to develop a clear end-to-end design experience. - **Repeatedly driving for ‘world class’** As a CMO or Head of Marketing, it’s your job and responsibility to continuously push your team to drive for world class. Setting that bar for your team will enable them to achieve more as a marketing team. - **Seeing product marketing as extra strategic** Extremely important bridge between product and marketing teams  - **CRO and growth teams** Growth teams are the future of marketing. It’s all about finding data points to back up assumptions of user behaviour. If you have the resources, create a cross-functional team to work on problems in your sales/marketing process, who will arrive at different outcomes to a standard marketing team. - **Being stubborn about metrics** Don’t ever apologize or back down, you have to push to get what you are asking for. People will always expand the metric criteria to try and water them down - stand strong on the metrics that you need to measure. - **Treating the board like peers** If you go into conversations with them more like that, it changes the tone and dynamic. They will have good and bad ideas, it’s not always yes but sometimes ‘it might not’. --- **What does a CMO do?** **“**Create the **conditions** for **sustainable growth** towards the **mission.** And **make it happen.”** Instead of zooming in all the time, zoom out and look at the broader picture --- **BREAKOUT DISCUSSIONS** **How do you prioritise limited resources in a scaling marketing function? ** - Finding the right people can be difficult especially when you need these resources to help expand and grow your business further - Taking time to find the right person is better than hiring someone who isn’t quite the right fit and having to let them go a few months later - Using data and experience to focus on certain areas **How do you balance long term marketing strategy development vs the need for short term results? How are you adapting your marketing strategies/team for COVID-19?** - Short term quick wins can be used to achieve the same goals - Prime to survive - know what your post covid existence will be and continue to work towards that - Think about how you can use the crisis to your advantage - Still work towards those long term strategies, bring in new third parties and partners - Use opportunity to get better deals due to cuts in budget - Use it as an opportunity to attract talent, could be a good time to hire if you are able to --- **RESOURCE LIST:** - [Sales for Dummies](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Selling-Dummies-Tom-Hopkins/dp/0470512598) - [Metrics and Mindsets for Retention & Engagement Podcast](https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/metrics-and-mindsets-for-retention-engagement/id842818711?i=1000466139606) - [How CEOs can solve the CMO dilemma ](https://www.bain.com/insights/how-ceos-can-solve-the-cmo-dilemma/) - [Obviously Awesome: A product positioning exercise ](https://aprildunford.com/entrepreneurship/obviously-awesome-a-product-positioning-exercise/) - [SiriusDecisions Summit](https://www.siriusdecisions.com/) - Follow [@jasonlk](https://twitter.com/jasonlk?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor) - [Leadership That Gets Results ](http://www.powerelectronics.ac.uk/documents/leadership-that-gets-results.pdf) **Podcasts**: - - [The importance of Reinvention](https://player.fm/series/the-cmo-podcast/jocelyn-wong-the-importance-of-reinvention) - [What High Performers Aren’t Telling You, with Scott Anthony Barlow](https://coachingforleaders.com/podcast/high-performers-scott-anothony-barlow/) - [a16z Podcast: How We Podcast](https://a16z.com/2019/11/26/a16z-podcast-how-what-why-500th-episode-behind-the-scenes/) - - - - [mailto:?subject=Upscale%205.0%20-%20Marketing%20Leads%20&%20body=https://notes.technation.io/blog/upscale-marketing](mailto:?subject=Upscale%205.0%20-%20Marketing%20Leads%20&%20body=https://notes.technation.io/blog/upscale-marketing) [Upscale](https://notes.technation.io/blog/tag/upscale) ## Add your thoughts... [Upscale](https://notes.technation.io/blog/tag/upscale) # [Upscale 5.0 - International Expansion By Liam Ward, July 30, 2020 ⏱ 3 min read](https://notes.technation.io/blog/upscale-international-expansion) [Upscale](https://notes.technation.io/blog/tag/upscale) # [Upscale 5.0 - Hiring Talent By Liam Ward, July 9, 2020 ⏱ 7 min read](https://notes.technation.io/blog/upsale-hiring-talent) [Upscale](https://notes.technation.io/blog/tag/upscale) # [Upscale 5.0 - Operations Leads By Liam Ward, July 9, 2020 ⏱ 6 min read](https://notes.technation.io/blog/upscale-operations) ## Address Registered Address (not office): Tech Nation 20-22 Wenlock Road, London, N1 7GU. - Menu - [Home](https://technation.io/) - [Growth Programmes](https://technation.io/programmes/) - [Resources](https://technation.io/resources/) - [Insights](https://technation.io/insights/) - [Visa](https://technation.io/visa/) - [News & Events](https://technation.io/news/) - [About us](https://technation.io/about-us/) - [Contact us](https://technation.io/contact-us/) - [UK network](https://technation.io/about-us/national-network/) - [Privacy Policy](https://technation.io/privacy-policy/) - [Terms](https://technation.io/terms-and-conditions/) - [Cookies](https://technation.io/cookie-policy/) ## Become a partner If you’d like to become a commercial partner or sponsor, we have a range of programmes, reports, events and campaigns you could get involved in. [Find out more.](https://technation.io/about-us/partnerships) © Copyright 2020, Tech Nation. All rights reserved. [![Tech Nation](https://notes.technation.io/hubfs/TechNation%20January%202020/Images/tech-nation-footer-logo-cropped.svg)](https://technation.io/)