Marketing
Marketing recruiting for brand, demand and product marketing leaders
KYO's marketing search covers brand and communications, demand generation, content and lifecycle, product marketing, and CMO and VP-level leadership. These are permanent, direct-hire roles inside companies that already have an in-house marketing function and need a leader or a senior operator to run part of it. The most common problem in a marketing search is not supply. It is a brief that quietly asks for a brand marketer and a demand marketer in the same person.
Which marketing roles does KYO search?
- 01Brand and communications. Positioning, narrative and the way the company sounds, including comms and PR ownership where it sits in marketing.
- 02Demand generation. The operator who owns pipeline as a number, along with the budget and the channels behind it.
- 03Content and lifecycle. Editorial ownership and the lifecycle programmes that keep an audience, which is a different job from producing more posts.
- 04Product marketing. Positioning against competitors, launch, and giving sales something they can actually say.
- 05CMO and VP search. Leadership hires, where the question of level and timing usually matters more than the candidate list.
Why do marketing hires go wrong more often than the other two?
Because marketing is four jobs, and a company can go years without having to say which one it means. Brand, demand, product marketing and content attract different people who read the same job description and picture different work. When the hire arrives and finds the real priority is the discipline they are weakest in, that is not a bad hire. It is a bad brief.
Brand, demand, product marketing or content: which do you actually need?
| If the problem is | The discipline is | The hire usually looks like | Getting it wrong looks like |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nobody knows who you are or what you stand for | Brand and communications | A brand or comms leader with positioning and narrative in their history | A demand hire producing more of a message nobody believes yet |
| Pipeline is short and inconsistent | Demand generation | An operator who owns a number and the budget behind it | A brand hire being asked to explain the cost of acquisition |
| Sales cannot explain the product against competitors | Product marketing | Someone who has done positioning, launch and enablement | Content volume that changes no sales conversation |
| There is a message but nothing to read | Content and lifecycle | An editor or a lifecycle owner rather than a generalist | A senior brand hire writing blog posts and leaving |
| All of the above, and the team is three people | A senior operator now, a leader later | A hands-on senior who will still be hands-on | A leadership title with no team and no budget behind it |
When is it a CMO, and when is it a senior individual contributor?
Later than the org chart usually suggests. A leadership hire made before there is a motion to scale ends up doing the work personally, with a title that made the hire expensive and the expectations wrong on both sides. At this size the right answer is more often a senior operator who will do the work now, with the leadership hire following once there is a team and a proven motion to lead.
What does a good marketing brief contain?
Which of the four disciplines this role is primarily accountable to, what the other three are covered by in the meantime, the budget and headcount attached, and who the role reports to. If the honest answer is that the role covers all four, say so in the brief and price it accordingly rather than discovering it at offer stage.
Start a search
Start a marketing search
Say which of the four disciplines the first year is judged on, and the search gets shorter.
kelly.yosten@kyosearchpartners.comCommon Questions
We wrote one job description covering brand and demand. Is that a problem?
- Usually. It is worth deciding which one the first year is actually judged on, and hiring for that.
Do you search comms and PR roles?
- Where they sit inside marketing, yes. Standalone corporate affairs functions are outside this.
Can you find a marketing leader who is still hands-on?
- Yes, and it is worth being explicit in the brief, because seniority and hands-on execution are frequently assumed to come together and often do not.
How do you handle compensation when we are not sure of the band?
- That is part of the advisory work, and it is better settled before going to market than renegotiated after someone has said yes.