The Most Valuable Roles In Marketing

We asked our Exit Five Executive members, VPs and CMOs running B2B marketing teams, which role on their team is the most valuable right now, and the answers weren’t what we expected. The roles were all over the map, but read together, they’re telling for where marketing is going, and a fun look at what’s going on inside some top-performing teams right now. Here are the patterns that kept showing up.

1. Taste is the hardest thing to hire for right now

Everyone has the same AI tools now, so the people who stand out are the ones who know what good looks like.

A CMO at a fintech company told us their VP of Brand is the most valuable person on the team, because “there is so much cheap AI slop out there now, and she creates genuinely beautiful, thoughtful creative.”

Their bottom line: taste + craftsmanship is a differentiator.

When everyone is using the same tools to spit out the same generic stuff, the opportunity is to go the other direction, take chances, and use your own creativity and judgment to do something a robot never could.

2. Brand has a bigger seat at the table

Brand came up more than any other function in the thread, and nobody was talking about logos.

• A VP of Marketing at an AI company named their corporate marketing lead, because “our social, executive PR, company PR and brand run through her.”
• A CMO at a medical company went even further. Their VP of Brand and Product Management is “my most critical person in marketing right now.” As the company moves to a market-driven organization, that team is responsible for the entire product lifecycle, including development.
• A CMO at a software company jumped in with “Agree agree on all the brand leader love! Mine is exceptional.”

On these teams, brand runs PR, social, and in one case, product.

3. The trait matters more than the title

A lot of these leaders answered by describing a person, not a job.

A Chief Growth Officer at a media tech company put it best: “For me, it’s less about the role and more about the person.” Her brand and events manager has “more agency, curiosity, and ambition (along with an exceptionally high bar for taste/quality) than anyone else,” so on a small team, she keeps picking up more across programs. “Whatever’s next, I know she’ll say yes to it and figure it out.”

Other leaders described the same thing in their own words:

• “One of those hard to hire hidden traits of GSD and ask questions later.”
• An “email and delete” person: “I can send her anything, take it off my plate, and she’ll figure it out and own it.”
• A senior director of digital who “manages up like a baller.”

An SVP of Marketing at a legal tech company said the most valuable person to the company isn’t even a marketer. It’s the Director of Legal Solutions, an attorney who’s benchmarking the products, building synthetic legal cases for demos and marketing, running high-value demos as a semi-sales engineer, and speaking at conferences.

4. Somebody has to run the machine

Big ideas still need someone to make them happen, and a few leaders named exactly that person.

The legal tech leader gave a second answer for who’s most valuable to him: his Director of Field, who’s built a program across 300+ events, 70 association partners, and about $3M in swag and gifting. In his words: “I think that whole leg of my overall strategy would collapse without him.”

Another leader moved someone who’s been on the team for years into leading campaigns. Her take: “Campaigns are everything.” On her team, demand gen is spread across customer marketing, digital, events, and field, and the campaigns team decides what actually gets activated.

Chief of Staff came up twice. One leader shouted out “my chief of staff who literally manages the insanity that is a marketing team,” the person who connects and coordinates every part of the org with its cross-functional partners. (Curious though, what’s the difference between a chief of staff and a project manager?) The legal tech leader chimed in: “Good lord I want a CoS.”

Based on what you hear on LinkedIn, you’d think demand gen is the darling of B2B marketing and the most valuable role right now. These leaders told us something different. In today’s market, the people who stand out have taste, own their work, and say yes and figure it out.

BTS: Exit Five Miami Offsite Recap

Seven years after starting Exit Five as a side project on Patreon, I still pinch myself that this group of people chooses to work here. To celebrate the year, we took the team to Miami for a walking food and history tour in Little Havana, poolside team trivia, fancy dinners, a sunset cruise on a luxury yacht, and the Five Fund (our play on Shark Tank where Dan and I invited the team to pitch new ideas for the business). Ultimately, Exit Five is a brand because of this group of people. If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.