Kevin Ryan and Bill Hunt on the CMO Suite from SES San Jose 2009

Kevin Ryan gives the inside scoop from the office of the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), from his perch as CMO of WebVisible. Hunt: You've crossed the chasm of being a search marketer, of being a marketer, running the SES show, and now you've actually got a proper job and work for a living -- in the session you gave us some really great tips on do's and don'ts from a CMO perspective. Can you share those with us? What are some rules you wish your employees knew before they came in the CMO's door to pitch you on an idea. Ryan: Any good CMO has sold something in their lives, so they're familiar with the sales process and know good sales from bad sales and good salespeople from bad salespeople. My advice is to do your homework. Learn as much as you can about the company you're going in to pitch. Find out what their needs are, and if you can't find it out on your own, don't be afraid to do it by email. Be succinct in your communications, and ask if you can get some informal time before the meeting, even if it's just to go over your pain points. Hunt: I think that hyperattention to the prospect's needs is crucial and often overlooked, because so often people forget that they're there to solve a problem for a client, and quite often their client doesn't have the luxury of spending a huge amount of their attention on internet marketing, no matter how much the firm pitching it thinks it's the greatest thing ever invented. What are some recommendations you would have for search marketers to elevate it on the CMO's agenda? Ryan: Well, the role of the CMO is that you're the chief support officer for the internal constituents, so the more you can elevate how important it is and, again, to translate those pain points into a specific search need, you'll be tremendously ahead you will be of the competition in the search marketing world. One thing people don't do enough of is actually showing practical application. We spend more than most in the search realm, so we're quite literate in search marketing, but of course we're always open to new ideas brought in by people who have done their homework and identified innovative solutions to problems we can't solve on our own.

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Howto & Style

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• kevin-ryan
• webvisible
• bill-hunt
• back-azimuth-consulting
• cmo
• ses-san-jose-2009
• ses
• search-marketing
• sem
• sales
• chief-marketing-officer

[1888junkteam]

excellent work!