The Virtual CMO Masterclass Series

with Eric Dickmann, Founder and CMO of The Five Echelon Group

Understand the importance of building out a strategic marketing plan process to gather data, define your objectives, clarify your timelines, narrow your scope, and begin the process of selecting specific tactics and channels as well as the underlying budget required to execute a successful marketing plan.

with guest Tim Fitzpatrick, President of Rialto Marketing

Marketing too broadly is expensive and inefficient. To start, you first need to clearly identify your niche or target market. From there, it's important to understand your ideal customer profile. Who are they? What's important to them? Where can you reach them? Etc.

with guest Kevin Mako, Founder and President of MAKO Design + Invent

There are few break-through products out there. Most often, products are an incremental improvement over something that exists. The key is understanding where a product fits into the marketplace and how it can be differentiated from the competition.

with guest Michael Solomon, Author and Professor of Marketing at the Haub School of Business

Your brand is more than just your products or services. It's how you do business, what you value, and how you interact with your customers. Building a brand story that both resonates, and builds trust with potential customers is a critical aspect of any strategic marketing plan.

with guest Greg Rosner, Founder of Pitch Kitchen

Once your brand story is crafted, you need to distill down a compelling message you can take to the marketplace. Attention spans are short and your value needs to be clearly articulated in your messaging. Building messages that address pain points and create a desire are important aspects of your content strategy.

with guest Michael Fleischner, Founder of Big Fin SEO

It's not always easy to get things done with the team you have on hand. Luckily, digital freelancers and content creators can augment internal staff and help you scale your marketing team. It has never been easier to bring in marketing expertise and let skilled professionals improve the quality of your marketing output.

with guest Alex Desnoyers, Channel Consultant at HubSpot

Once you start to get your content completed and campaigns running, you'll want to make sure to have a marketing automation platform in place. These tools allow you to automate marketing functions and provide a wealth of data to help you track to the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. 

with guest Ed Garry, Senior Director at Huron Consulting Group

While marketing automation can help streamline the execution of campaigns, a customer relationship management platform provides a centralized hub for customer data and allows organizations to have a 360 degree view of customer interactions from marketing, sales, and service. These tools help you keep and expand customer relationship while improving internal processes.

with guest Jonathan Baldock, Advisor at Social HP

Whether your company is in the B2B or B2C space, social media should be an important part of your strategic marketing plan. Communicating your value proposition and pushing it out over the right social media platforms to reach your target market is an inexpensive way to increase brand awareness and amplify your reach. 

with guest Hamlet Azarian, Founder at The Retail Merchant Group

Inbounding marketing is the process of creating content that draws prospects to your company. Whether that's through content marketing, paid advertising, or search engine optimization (SEO) to drive organic traffic, having a strategy to draw in new prospects is critical to the success of your marketing strategy.

with guest Tracy Russ, Creator and Managing Director at SOLID

Raising awareness of your products, services, and brand can be helped by implementing a comprehensive Public Relations (PR) and communications strategy. Working with members of the press, bloggers, podcasters, and influencers, a successful strategy can help engage these authoritative external resources to drive awareness and build credibility.

with guest Matt Rouse, Co-Founder at Hook SEO

Email is an important asset in your marketing toolkit. Whether your contacting prospects to educate them about your products and services, or emailing existing customers to keep them engaged with your brand, email is low-cost tool with a broad reach. Learning to capture lead information, build and segment lists, and craft compelling email communications is an essential part of every marketing plan.

with guest Melissa Forzait, Principal at Melissa Forzait Events

Marketing is a cost center and an expense that needs to be managed. When you spend money effectively, marketing can have a tremendous impact on your business. But it's easy to get carried away and spend money on tools and tactics that add little value. Learning how to maximize you limited marketing budget dollars is an important aspect of building your strategic marketing plan.

with guest Ben Amos, Founder at Engage Video Marketing

Video is everywhere. On your website, on social media, in your email communications, it's an important part of your overall marketing strategy. But it takes time and effort to create video content that stays on-brand and effectively communicates your market messages. Learn how to effectively incorporate video into all aspects of your marketing strategy and win big across your digital channels.