Ep #110: Balancing a Channel Investment with Your Direct Marketing Budget w/ Cate Lochead

Strike the right balance. Cate mentioned that as a software marketer, she fell in love with the challenge of striking a balance between the voice of the engineer and crafting messaging that will resonate with the consumer. With early-stage companies, marketers are challenged to transition the overall marketing narrative from the early positioning that’s geared towards how the product was built, into a story that will convey exactly how it’s going to change the world.

Build a team you can trust. For Cate, one of her strengths as a marketer is being able to intuitively hire the strongest people for each role and delegate effectively so she can focus on her top priorities as CMO. Even though she’s passionate about communications, she knew she had to let go of this particular role and instead hire a leader she trusted to take ownership over it.

Put things into context. Cate commented that one of the most important skills she looks for in potential CMOs is the ability to contextualize the business. In other words, it’s important to be able to understand the interconnectedness of the business overall by taking a birds-eye-view approach of all the operations.