Why the best marketers CMO’ed eBay — Mike Linton // Ancestry

The CMO role is constantly under pressure, with many lasting less than two years. How can marketers turn this situation around? As a CMO, you also have to partner with different agencies; how do you drive alignment rather than competition? What is the future of marketing, and how do you future-proof your career? Learn about these and more from a former CMO at Ancestry, eBay, and Farmers Insurance. Listen to Mike Linton, former CMO of Ancestry, as he discusses why the best marketers CMO'ed eBay.
About the speaker

Mike Linton

Ancestry

- Ancestry

Mike Linton is former CMO at Ancestry

Show Notes

  • 02:27
    The challenge of retaining a CMO position for more than 2 years
    A lot depends on the level of decision rights you have and how much you can exercise them. Theres also the need to manage expectations.
  • 08:57
    The real reason eBay had a pipeline of CMO worthy marketers
    It was about a team of marketers who understood the financial implications of marketing and how it translates to generating revenue.
  • 12:43
    The top things every would be CMO should know
    You can't just win your part alone. You have to balance short- and long-term results over short- and long-term tools.
  • 15:38
    Working with agencies
    Make your creatives understand the numbers and let everyone know their role without trying to undermine each other.
  • 21:51
    Where is marketing going?
    Its a tough time for marketing now. The rush to performance marketing and acquisitions is slowing down as consumers become more cautious with their money. Marketers will have to awaken their old muscles of brand building to survive in the game.
  • 26:10
    Future proofing the new world of marketing
    You can do performance marketing, if it makes sense mathematically but also have a strategy to take market share from competitors.
  • 30:18
    Branding has a lot to do with the future of your company
    Does your company have a superiority model? Do you have a consistent way to tell your story to get customers over time? The consumer value proposition is different every year. Do you have the plan to adjust your brand to win there?

Quotes

  • "If you get the right situation, you get the leaders' backing with the right expectations, and then enough of the peer group is behind your vision, and you still have to produce the results. But people aren't immediately pecking at you. You'll likely succeed and stay on as a CMO more than the average." - Mike Linton

  • "I realized early that I did not want to be in a position where people told me what to do, held me accountable for it, and fired me anyways. And that is the biggest risk of marketers today: a bunch of people want to vote, you let them vote, and you put this thing up, and that doesn't work, but you're held accountable." - Mike Linton

  • "You have to understand what all the marketing does. You can't just win your part alone. You have to balance short- and long-term results over short- and long-term tools." - Mike Linton

  • "Both the creative agency and the media agency were in the same room. They wouldn't bid on the business or argue with each other. But we all knew what we had to deliver: the sales numbers and what we thought the advertising was driving. I also want the creatives to understand the financials." - Mike Linton

  • "If you're in a b2c space with lots of extraordinary, creative, everyone sees it. And also, everyone knows that it's the front of the funnel, so they will be on your back because that goes with the job. And if you don't like that, you shouldn't ever take the job." - Mike Linton

  • "Consumers are more cautious with money if the marketplace stays like it is. And value equation matters in the acquisition game because people take privacy rules and other stuff. You're going to have to reawaken those old muscles. And many companies are not ready for that, thinking about it, or do not have the patience to do it." - Mike Linton

  • "Performance marketing is critical, and you should decide precisely how to use it. And if it's a tool you can maximize mathematically, you should do that." - Mike Linton

  • "You have to be bringing new customers, and one of the things you can do if you're in venture capital land is you can acquire without any brand or anything, and you should. That's what makes it work. You're just trying to get scale and don't need the brand. You don't need a lot of that in VC land." - Mike Linton

About the speaker

Mike Linton

Ancestry

- Ancestry

Mike Linton is former CMO at Ancestry

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