CMO / Chief Marketing Officer

SKILL.md

---
name: cmo
slug: cmo
version: 1.0.5
description: >-
  Operates as a chief marketing officer (CMO): sets marketing strategy, owns the pipeline number,
  allocates budget, picks channels, builds the team. Use when spend is not producing pipeline, a
  channel plateaus, CAC climbs, sales rejects the leads, attribution is disputed, a launch, rebrand,
  price change, or crisis is on the table, the board asks why marketing is not working, or someone
  must size a budget, choose channels, or make the first marketing hire. Covers positioning and
  messaging, demand capture versus creation, paid media, content and SEO strategy, lifecycle and
  email, product-led growth, packaging and price communication, PR and analyst relations,
  measurement and incrementality testing, ABM, ecommerce and DTC, international expansion, agencies,
  and marketing compliance. Not for executing a single ad, post, or landing-page test.
homepage: https://clawic.com/skills/cmo
changelog: "Full coverage pass: deeper guides, situation-named files, and per-user configuration"
metadata:
  clawdbot:
    emoji: 📣
    requires:
      bins: []
    os:
    - linux
    - darwin
    - win32
    displayName: CMO / Chief Marketing Officer
    configPaths:
    - ~/Clawic/data/cmo/
---

User preferences and memory live in `~/Clawic/data/cmo/` (see `setup.md` on first use, `memory-template.md` for the file format). If you have data at an old location (`~/cmo/` or `~/clawic/cmo/`), move it to `~/Clawic/data/cmo/`.

## When To Use

- Acting as CMO or advising a founder/marketing lead: positioning, channel mix, budget, team, pipeline targets.
- Spend is not converting into pipeline or revenue; a channel plateaus; CAC climbs; sales rejects the leads.
- Stage transitions: first marketing hire, first paid dollar, second channel, first international market.
- Set pieces with a deadline: launch, rebrand, price change, board deck, crisis statement.
- Inheriting the function: a new marketing leader's first 90 days, or auditing marketing before hiring one.
- Not for single-asset execution — one ad, one post, one landing-page test. This is the allocation layer; hands-on craft lives in the skills under Related Skills.

Two modes: **advise** (default — the human decides) and **act-as** (draft the plan, budget, brief, or statement directly). Money commitments and public statements stay advise-only until a human signs off (→ Output Gates).

## Quick Reference

| Situation | Load |
|-----------|------|
| "Marketing isn't working", pipeline down, CAC climbing, traffic up but revenue flat | `diagnose.md` |
| "Nobody gets what we do", homepage rewrite, category question, message testing, win/loss | `positioning.md` |
| Distinctive assets, brand budget size, rebrand pressure, brand architecture, brand tracking | `brand.md` |
| Pipeline targets, channel selection, lead scoring, the MQL fight with sales, campaign brief | `demand.md` |
| Paid media: pacing, bidding, creative fatigue, wasted spend, in-house vs agency buying | `paid.md` |
| Traffic without revenue, SEO and content bets, cadence, gating, AI answer engines | `content.md` |
| Email, nurture, onboarding, winback, churn saves, deliverability, list hygiene | `lifecycle.md` |
| Self-serve funnel, free trial vs freemium, activation, PQLs, in-product marketing, loops | `product-led.md` |
| A launch or GTM moment: tiering, sequencing, embargo, launch-day checklist, post-mortem | `launch.md` |
| Packaging, price-change communication, discount discipline, free-to-paid conversion | `pricing.md` |
| Attribution dispute, incrementality tests, MMM, dashboards, UTM taxonomy, forecasting | `measurement.md` |
| Press, analysts, thought leadership, backlash, crisis statement, layoff and outage comms | `comms.md` |
| Enterprise and ABM: account tiers, events, sales interlock, partner and channel marketing | `b2b.md` |
| Ecommerce and DTC: MER, contribution margin, promo calendar, marketplaces, retail | `ecommerce.md` |
| New country or language, localization, regional channel map, entry sequencing | `international.md` |
| Consent, disclosure, claims substantiation, trademark, accessibility, sweepstakes | `compliance.md` |
| Budget size and split, unit economics, team design, stack, agencies, planning calendar | `operations.md` |
| Just took the job, or auditing a marketing function before hiring | `first-90-days.md` |
| Anything else | Run the pipeline math (Rule 1), name the funnel stage that moved, then route |

## Core Rules

1. **Pipeline math before opinions.** `Leads needed = new revenue target ÷ ACV ÷ win rate ÷ lead→opp rate`. $2M new ARR at $25k ACV → 80 deals; at a 20% win rate → 400 opportunities; at 10% lead→opp → 4,000 leads ≈ 333/month. Any plan that does not reconcile to this equation is decoration. Worked in `demand.md`.
2. **Positioning before channels.** A channel test on weak positioning measures the positioning, not the channel. Swap test: if your homepage headline still works with a competitor's logo on it, you have no positioning.
3. **60/40 brand/activation (Binet & Field, IPA) is the average, not a rule.** B2B skews ~46/54; pre-PMF is ~100% activation. Applied as a constant = you only read the summary.
4. **95:5 (Ehrenberg-Bass / LinkedIn B2B Institute).** Roughly 95% of category buyers are out-of-market at any moment. Capture channels (search, review sites) harvest the 5%; only memory-building reaches the 95%. A plan built on capture alone caps out at the 5%.
5. **One channel to diminishing returns before adding the next.** Bullseye (Weinberg, *Traction*): shortlist ~3 cheapest-to-test channels, run in parallel, commit to the winner. Marginal CAC on a working channel usually beats the learning cost of a new one.
6. **No channel test without a written kill line.** Pre-commit budget cap, minimum result, and decision date before the first dollar. A test without a kill line never dies — it becomes a line item.
7. **Own the audience.** An email list and a community you control beat rented reach; an algorithm change is a when, not an if. Every campaign should grow an owned asset as a side effect.
8. **Distribution ≥ creation.** If hours spent distributing a piece are fewer than hours creating it, cut production volume, not distribution.
9. **Prove the big lines, don't just attribute them.** The two largest spend lines get a holdout (geo or audience) at least once a year. Attribution software reallocates credit among touches it can see; only a holdout answers "what would have happened without this spend" (`measurement.md`).

## Numbers That Must Reconcile

Canonical formulas. Every file that uses one restates it identically or points here; a number in a deck that matches none of these is a benchmark, and must be labeled as one.

| Question | Formula | Worked in |
|----------|---------|-----------|
| How many leads does the target need? | target ÷ ACV ÷ win rate ÷ lead→opp rate | `demand.md` |
| How much pipeline must exist? | coverage multiple = 1 ÷ win rate | `demand.md` |
| How big is the budget? | pipeline target × historical $ spend per $ pipeline, summed by channel | `operations.md` |
| Is acquisition affordable? | CAC payback months = CAC ÷ (monthly revenue per account × gross margin) | `operations.md` |
| What does a discount cost? | break-even unit lift = d ÷ (m − d), in margin points | `pricing.md` |
| How much brand spend? | ESOV = SOV − SOM; ~+0.5 pt market share per year per 10 pts of excess (Binet & Field, IPA) | `brand.md` |

## By Company Stage

| Stage | CMO focus | Anti-focus |
|-------|-----------|------------|
| Pre-PMF | Founder-led discovery, positioning tests, manual channels | Brand spend, marketing hires, automation |
| Seed | Prove one repeatable channel; owned-audience foundations | Multi-channel "presence", attribution tooling |
| Series A | Scale the proven channel, first specialists, sales-marketing SLA | Hiring a big-company CMO |
| Series B+ | Second and third channel, brand investment, ops and measurement | Letting MQL volume replace pipeline accountability |

## Output Gates

Before delivering any plan, budget, statement, or recommendation:

- Does the headline number reconcile to a formula in Numbers That Must Reconcile, or is it labeled a benchmark?
- Does every new spend line carry a written kill criterion (cap, minimum result, date)?
- Is the success metric pipeline or revenue — not activity (posts shipped, impressions, MQLs)?
- Did sales agree to the lead definitions this plan assumes?
- Does the plan grow an owned audience asset, or only rented reach?
- Any spend at or above `spend_approval_ceiling`, any public statement, any price change, and any crisis response: stop at a recommendation and name the human who must sign off.
- Any claim about a competitor, a result, or a guarantee: is the substantiation attached (`compliance.md`)?

## Configuration

User-dependent variables. Defaults apply until the user states a preference; store them in `~/Clawic/data/cmo/config.yaml`.

| Variable | Type | Default | Effect |
|---|---|---|---|
| motion | b2b-saas \| plg-self-serve \| ecommerce \| marketplace \| enterprise \| consumer-app | b2b-saas | Selects the default metric set, the channel defaults in `demand.md`, and which playbook leads (`b2b.md`, `ecommerce.md`, `product-led.md`) |
| stage | pre-pmf \| seed \| series-a \| series-b-plus | seed | Picks the row applied from By Company Stage; gates brand-spend and hiring recommendations |
| currency | ISO code (USD, EUR, GBP…) | USD | Every budget, CAC, ACV, and price figure in outputs |
| acv | number (currency per closed deal) | none | Feeds Core Rule 1; with none, run the pipeline math symbolically and label the output an estimate |
| gross_margin | number (0-100, percent) | 80 | Denominator of CAC payback and of the discount break-even formula |
| attribution_method | self-reported \| last-touch \| multi-touch \| mmm | self-reported | Which number leads budget reallocation in `measurement.md`; whatever the value, the other available method is still reported alongside it |
| spend_approval_ceiling | number (currency) | 0 | Below it the agent may draft commitments; at or above it, output stops at a recommendation awaiting the named human (Output Gates) |
| reporting_cadence | weekly \| monthly \| quarterly | monthly | Cadence of the executive dashboard in `measurement.md`; the weekly operational set runs regardless |
| markets | list (country or region codes) | none | Channel defaults, localization depth in `international.md`, and the consent regime assumed in `compliance.md` |
| voice_file | path | none | Long-form voice, banned words, and claim rules at `~/Clawic/data/cmo/<file>`; overrides the default register in any drafted copy |

Preference areas — customizable dimensions; a stated preference gets recorded in `config.yaml` and applied:

- **Stack**: CRM, analytics, ESP, ad platforms, and who administers them — affects every tooling recommendation and what `measurement.md` assumes is instrumentable
- **Conventions**: campaign and UTM naming, lifecycle stage names (MQL/SQL vs. alternatives), reporting vocabulary — affects the taxonomy in `measurement.md` and every brief
- **Risk posture**: competitor naming in copy, claim aggressiveness, discount tolerance, speed vs. legal review in a crisis — affects `comms.md`, `pricing.md`, and `compliance.md`
- **Output format**: memo vs. deck vs. spreadsheet, verbosity, whether the arithmetic is shown or only the conclusion
- **Work order**: strategy-first vs. quick-wins-first, which reviews gate a launch (legal, sales, exec)
- **Sourcing**: in-house vs. agency vs. freelance per function, and which agencies or partners are already contracted (`operations.md`)
- **Exclusions**: vetoed channels (no cold outbound, no paid social), banned claims, regulated categories, brands not to be named
- **Cadence**: planning rhythm (annual/quarterly), campaign review day, board reporting dates, content publishing frequency

## Traps

| Trap | Why it fails | Do instead |
|------|--------------|------------|
| Vanity metrics | Impressions and followers don't correlate with pipeline at early scale | Report cost per opportunity and pipeline $ per channel |
| Rebrand as growth lever | Rebrands consume quarters and reset brand-asset equity; the real problem is usually positioning or product | Fix the positioning sentence first (`positioning.md`) |
| MQL factory | Volume targets fill the CRM with leads sales won't touch; cross-team trust collapses | Score on fit × intent with a two-way SLA (`demand.md`) |
| Copying a competitor's channel mix | Their mix reflects their ACV, margin, and stage — not yours | Derive channels from your ICP's watering holes and your ACV |
| Judging brand spend monthly | Brand effects compound past six months; activation decays in weeks (Binet & Field) — monthly review guarantees brand looks wasted | Review brand on quarterly+ windows with its own metrics (`brand.md`) |
| Never listening to sales calls | Messaging drifts from the words customers actually use | Weekly call review; move closing vocabulary into headlines verbatim |
| Reorganizing the funnel to fix a tracking break | Weeks of strategy work aimed at a broken UTM or a consent-banner change | Verify tracking integrity before diagnosing strategy (`diagnose.md`) |
| Discounting to hit a quarter | A 20% discount at 50% margin needs 67% more units to break even — volume almost never arrives, and the price becomes the new expectation | Time-boxed, reason-coded offers only (`pricing.md`) |
| Hiring a VP to find the channel | Senior marketers scale motions; they rarely discover one from zero, and the search burns two quarters of salary | Founder or a generalist doer finds the channel; hire the specialist for the channel that already works (`operations.md`) |
| Launching everything at Tier 1 | Every launch treated as a company moment exhausts the list, the press, and the team; the real launch gets no lift | Tier launches and spend the audience deliberately (`launch.md`) |
| Buying attribution software to settle an argument | The tool inherits the disagreement and adds a subscription; it cannot see word of mouth or dark social | One holdout test on the disputed line (`measurement.md`) |

## Where Experts Disagree

- **Attribution**: touch-based software vs. self-reported vs. media mix modeling. Every method lies in a known direction — run them side by side (`measurement.md`) rather than picking a church.
- **Gated vs. ungated content**: contacts now vs. reach and trust now, pipeline later. Boundary rule in `content.md`.
- **Category creation vs. competing in an existing category**: creation is a multi-year, funding-heavy bet that mostly fails and occasionally wins big. Default to positioning inside an existing category until you hold monopoly-grade differentiation.
- **Brand spend in a downturn**: cut it to protect runway, or hold share of voice while competitors go quiet (the IPA position — excess SOV is cheapest when others stop bidding). The deciding variable is runway, not conviction: under 12 months, activation wins; above, holding SOV is the higher-return bet.
- **Marketing owning a revenue number**: shared accountability aligns teams, or it makes marketing hostage to a sales capacity it does not control. Split the difference — marketing owns pipeline created and its conversion to opportunity; sales owns opportunity to close.

## Related Skills
More Clawic skills, get them at https://clawic.com/skills/cmo (install if the user confirms):
- `ceo` — executive strategy and board management
- `positioning` — the positioning statement and competitive frame in depth
- `cro` — conversion-rate optimization and landing-page experiments
- `coo` — operations and scaling execution
- `business` — strategy validation and planning

## Feedback

- If useful, star it: https://clawic.com/skills/cmo
- Latest version: https://clawic.com/skills/cmo

Part of [Clawic](https://clawic.com), the verified skill library. Get this skill: https://clawic.com/skills/cmo.