Recent Aberdeen research has shown that the rise of content marketing has driven all marketing teams to become publishing organizations – this shift in the role of a marketer requires CMOs to think differently about how we hire and what we look for.  As Chief Content Officer at Aberdeen, I’m tasked with the marketing of Aberdeen and its content to both the readers of Aberdeen research and the marketers who use our content in their own marketing efforts.  This includes the creation, editing and distribution channels, inbound and outbound marketing, the creative aspects across all media types, our marketing technology stack, as well as our product portfolio.  I have a large (and growing) team of marketing talent that comes to work each day excited to take on the world and  tackle the sphere of marketing to marketers – a challenge beyond all challenges!

As a marketing leader, the talent you choose has a great impact on your team’s capabilities and when I began bringing a knife to work, my team’s capabilities shifted dramatically, prompting me to find more knives to bring.  No, I’m not a psychopath, (well, this could be debated) I am referring to the pet name “swiss army knife” that I use for team members that bring a variety of skills, often way beyond their job scope.  I added the first swiss army knife, Katie (marketing goddess), to the team in January and have been adding more as quickly as I can find them.  Let me explain what I mean and why you should consider this approach:

  • Look beyond the obvious.  When filling a role, folks often focus on getting the precise skills they need for the exact job and lose sight of the extras they can get if they think beyond the scope of the role.  For example, Katie’s role is mostly focused on PR and social strategy, but she also brings creative skills, messaging, demand gen, events, and just general good creative and strategic thinking honed from working in a role where she had to be a one-man band. Look for these types, it pays off… and, no, you can’t have her.  I highly recommend looking for folks who have worked in this capacity in small companies; they often have become experts in figuring stuff out on their own and become execution machines.
  • Fill gaps and overlay skills. Since then I’ve added several of these types: Jessie (also worked in a small company as a one-man band) who can do a little creative coupled with a lot of skill around content who also gets digital marketing and knows how to motivate a team; Kelsy, whose career began as a web developer although her love/schooling/education/internships are around video production –she’s doing all of our video and expanding our capabilities in the online tool area; Taylor who is hired to run project traffic for us, but understands how to plumb systems together and will launch our project management software and also be a point person around our team analytics.
  • Anchor with deep talent.  While the swiss army knives can contribute to stuff, both their own and all over the team, I have anchor people with deep talent and experience that help keep the strategy on track; folks like Hally the product marketing smarty, Andrew the award-winning king of content, Rich the creative genius, Jon the Marketing Tech guru, and more.  Next week I’m adding an expert demand gen leader, and so it goes.  These folks know their jobs and, with their experience, help the swiss army knives learn more and stay focused on the greater goals.
  • Cross-pollinate.  Here’s where it gets cool; this group is cross-pollinating like a hive full of bumble bees.  I’ve got content experts expanding their WordPress and coding skills by working with swiss army knives.  There are new product ideas (new Aberdeen content for marketers to use) being created because we have execution skills we didn’t before.  We are reinforcing the importance our metrics-orientation by anchoring with a solid foundation of technology to measure all the things we do.  I hold a monthly pot luck lunch for the whole team which is mostly a social event, but is dedicated in part to sharing what we’re each working on and inviting others to join in and add skills to the mix.
  • Watch it flourish.  When your team has confidence in each other they are more willing to think outside the box because they know they can go beyond their skill set with support of others.  Of course, this is predicated on hiring people with a high work ethic (we all try to do that), but the swiss army knives help expand the usefulness of the deep expertise of the “anchors” into new areas. Over just a few weeks, we’ve geared up to launch a brand new website, roll out all new communication templates along with an all-new segmentation strategy, and develop and distribute 2 new persona-focused websites (CMO Essentials being one of them) all at the same time that we’ve been producing nearly 150 pieces of content a month and supporting multiple blogs.  This kind of production, in my opinion, comes from the unique mix of talent we’ve acquired on this team.

So, while I don’t condone weapons at work, I do think that a few utility tools can help make all the difference.  I hope, as a marketing leader, you find this advice useful as you build your own team.  As always, I’d love to hear your stories…