10 CMO interview questions

Interview tactics run the gamut, from Google’s infamous story problems to the routine script, “what are your greatest strengths?” or, “where do you see yourself in five years?” These questions are not only tiresome but ineffective at determining whether a candidate is truly a good fit for the role.

The following ten interview questions will get to the heart of a CMO candidate’s personality, strengths, weaknesses, and skills – while avoiding the interrogation and mental acrobatics.

1. What’s on your marketing dashboard, and what KPIs do you track?  
   What we learn: This gives us a few insights – what results the CMO cares about, and if they can turn metrics into concrete results. What does marketing success look like to them? For example, if they’re tracking customer satisfaction, that shows they think about marketing through the lens of customer experience. If they track average revenue per customer, they’re thinking about what marketing influences. All of this tells us how they answer the question, “What is marketing?”
   
2. How do you approach branding a company, and its products and services?
   What we learn: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The problem that branding and marketing suffer from is that everyone has an opinion about it.  How does the CMO balance the opinions of the executive team, the CEO, and board members with the ability to test and use data? It can be tricky for a marketing leader to effectively manage the branding process, without burning a lot of team bandwidth.
   
3. What do you consider the biggest challenges for a CMO these days? How do you work with your executive team to get the most out of the marketing function?
   What we learn: This question will allow the candidate to showcase their leadership skills and style, while revealing challenges they may struggle with. It’s also key in determining how they communicate with executive leadership and hold their marketing team accountable. Marketing is challenging because it’s multifaceted: its math, art, branding, sales, event management, digital execution, and project management—a good marketing leader can connect those and build the right working contracts among their peers.
   
4. What pricing frameworks do you prefer to use? 
   What we learn: Pricing strategy is very complex these days, from usage- or volume-based pricing, value- vs. market-based pricing, paying for access or ownership of a product or a subscription, etc.  Pricing is a complex discipline; how versed is the CMO in dealing with all the pieces of the marketing pricing puzzle? Have they used pricing frameworks like the feature matrix we often recommend?
   
5. What is your approach to market research, both customer and competitor-focused?
   What we learn: This will tell us how innovative the candidate is at using new forms of research in the marketing space (A/B testing, social network inquiries, online data) vs. traditional research and higher-priced external research. How focused is the candidate on the competition? This is also a great opportunity to hear what they know and think about your current competitors.
   
6. Share some tools and techniques you’ve learned in the past year, and your key takeaways?
   What we learn: This is a question to determine how current they are, and how much they are “learners” versus “doers.” In an industry where being relevant is key, is your potential new CMO willing to learn and grow?  In the field of marketing, if they don’t innovate, they’re going backward.
   
   The growth in marketing software has been substantial in the past few years. The chart below shows 9,900+ marketing technologies available to marketers. While no one needs to know all these tools, it’s a clear indication that one needs to stay on top of the quickly changing digital landscape and understand how to choose an appropriate CRM and tech stack.
   
7. In your digital marketing approach, how do you balance inbound and outbound marketing?
   What we learn: Great marketing teams strike the right balance between many different marketing & growth levers. The inbound vs. outbound debate is a great test that doesn’t really have a right answer, but provides good insight into how much your candidate will count on “pay-to-play,” or noise-making marketing efforts, vs. harder to build, but longer-term organic content and inbound marketing strategies.
   
8. If you could start your last role over again, what would you do differently?
   What we learn: This gives us insight into the candidate’s ability to be self-aware, their appetite for growth, and their willingness to share things that may not have gone well.
   
9. What do you think of the art and science of marketing, and where do your strengths lie within that? 
   What we learn: Marketing is a delicate blend of art and science. A good marketing leader can use the science of data and analytics to be effective in optimization while mastering the art of design (finding great slogans and a voice for your brand). It’s extremely rare, if not impossible, to find a CMO who can do both. This question will help you decide if their strengths are complementary to the other executive members and the marketing team.
   
10. Knowing what you know so far about our company, what strategies and tactics would you put in place to help drive revenue?
    What we learn: This question allows the candidate to show off their knowledge of your company so far and gives them the chance to ask questions. Ultimately, this is an opportunity to see how innovative they can be.