Critical Traits of Today’s Chief Marketing Officers for Tomorrow’s DSOs
Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) are the driving force behind a company’s brand, strategy, and customer engagement. As the role continues to expand and adapt to digital demands, certain traits have become indispensable for today’s CMOs.
Empathy
Understanding and connecting with customers on a deeper level goes beyond demographic data – it requires a genuine sense of their needs, desires, and pain points. In any relationship, empathy builds trust and loyalty. By fostering empathy within their teams, CMOs can cultivate a culture of people-centered business. Ultimately, an empathetic CMO can anticipate and address customer concerns sincerely, crafting campaigns and drafting messaging that resonate authentically. As CMOs often serve as the bridge between a company and its customers, empathy is a necessity.
Data-Driven Decision Making
In the era of big data, successful CMOs can utilize the vast amounts of information available to make highly informed decisions. By analyzing customer insights, market trends, and campaign performance metrics, they fine-tune strategies for maximum impact. Data-driven decision-making enables CMOs to allocate resources effectively, optimize marketing ROI, and customize experiences that better resonate with target audiences.
Digital Savvy
CMOs today must be proficient in digital marketing, digital analytics, and emerging technologies such as generative AI and machine learning. A strong understanding of social media, content marketing, and SEO is essential, as well as the digital tools that power these strategies. Strategic CMOs leverage their digital expertise to identify growth opportunities, anticipate market trends, and effectively allocate resources to achieve long-term objectives. It can also empower CMOs to assess competitive threats and market dynamics, allowing them to position the brand for success in a rapidly changing dental landscape.
Creative Vision
To differentiate one’s brands and engage audiences in a crowded marketplace, having a vision and being creative are both musts. On a daily basis, a creative vision guides CMOs in conceptualizing bold ideas, refining messaging, and visualizing the brand’s identity across various touchpoints. It also helps to ensure that every piece of content and every interaction, aligns with the brand’s core values while speaking directly to the consumer’s needs and desires. It’s about pushing boundaries and experimenting. Often, the best breakthrough ideas emerge when teams are not confined but are given the creative freedom to explore and experiment. By maintaining a strong creative vision, CMOs can inspire their teams to think outside the box, iterate and innovate, and create brand experiences that capture attention but also build lasting relationships with consumers.
Growth Mindset
A growth mindset is absolutely critical for modern CMOs. It’s how leaders are able to view challenges as opportunities for learning and development rather than setbacks. By fostering a culture of continuous experimentation and improvement, CMOs can also drive innovation within their teams.
Leadership
Exceptional CMOs are not just leaders within their marketing departments but are also influential across the entire organization. They know how to inspire their teams, creating an environment where creativity and strategic thinking can thrive. The best CMOs know how to collaborate seamlessly with other departments such as sales, product, customer service, and engineering. They understand that successful marketing is a cross-functional effort, and they work tirelessly to align goals, share insights, and drive a unified strategy across the organization. By inspiring and engaging these various teams, CMO leadership helps to ensure that the company’s vision is consistently executed and that all departments work together to achieve common objectives.
If the best CMOs embody change as a catalyst for opportunity for excellent innovation, bold creativity, and direct results, how do they translate these critical traits into real-world success? To gain deeper insights, we turn to three industry leaders who exemplify what it means to be a forward-thinking CMO. Mehmet Dogan of Planet DDS, Ash ElDifrawi of The Aspen Group, and Diane Vaccaro of 42 North Dental share their perspectives on the challenges and opportunities facing today’s marketing leaders and how they are preparing their organizations for the future.
Officer at The Aspen Group (TAG), with over 25 years of experience in driving growth across industries. At TAG, Ash led the development of a digital platform supporting 2,000 locations with advanced analytics/CRM and content and rebuilt the marketing, product, and UX functions. A licensed Clinical Psychologist, Ash holds a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the Chicago School of Psychology and has published The Ten Worlds: The New Psychology of Happiness. He also co-hosts the podcast Hold Me Back with his son.
As the head of marketing, what do you view as your priority?
“The number one priority for me is to get the winning team on the field. In other words, to assemble a high-performance modern marketing organization. Like any sports franchise, it’s much harder than people think. Winning teams today look very different than 5 or 10 years ago, and CMOs are still figuring that out. I’m finding that more and more, marketing is becoming less of a ‘functional’ aspect of the business and more of the business driver. It’s becoming the engine of the business, which means the talent I find and hire goes beyond the traditional functional elements of marketing.
Marketing is about growth, and growth is harder than it’s ever been. It’s about the customer experience, which is changing faster than it ever has. It’s about technology enabling every aspect of what we do. It’s about forgetting all the things you learned about best practices in brand marketing and realizing there are no more rules on how to build brands or win customers. Just like in sports, winning teams require the combination of world-class athletes and industry-leading specialists.” – Ash ElDifrawi
What has been the biggest shift in marketing in the last three years (since COVID)?
“More than ever, consumers truly own our brands. The power has shifted fully to consumers in terms of their ability to influence the success and failure of brands. We’ve always known that social media is relevant and all that comes with it, but now more than ever, due to the way the media landscape has evolved, consumers have significantly more power thanks to the proliferation of these platforms. As a result, we must be highly focused on things like reviews and being part of conversations happening on social media. A close second, which is related, is the nearly infinite places that you can engage consumers. Not long ago, a marketer could capture 75% of the market in 3-4 channels. Today, finding a channel that grabs just 10% of the market is almost impossible. This massive explosion of content on various platforms and the way consumers engage with them is forcing marketers to try to figure out how to stay relevant or how to diversify their media mix in a way that captures a significant part of the audience. It’s become quite a challenge. Lastly, I’d be remiss not to mention AI. The challenge here is not about marketers spending disproportionate time trying to fully understand all AI can do, but rather it’s about understanding how their key partners and platforms are using it or being influenced by it.” -Ash ElDifrawi.
Diane Vaccaro is the Chief Marketing Officer at 42 North Dental, where she leads efforts to differentiate the organization with a focus on quality patient care. With a background in marketing for top designers like Liz Claiborne and Calvin Klein, she also led Kmart Apparel marketing for several years. Diane was previously the CMO at MyEyeDr., where she helped triple the company’s size. A former instructor at Baruch College, she taught marketing and consumer behavior. Once AI makes her job obsolete, Diane looks forward to retiring to the beach with her books, crafts, and dogs.
How do you identify and evaluate new tech and trends to integrate into your strategies?
“I find myself on Reddit boards a lot. I read articles. I rarely respond to vendor outreach. I understand the limitations of the organization and team, and, even more importantly, the sequencing of new initiatives. I try to keep in mind the novelty isn’t the thing. What problem am I trying to solve, and where is it in terms of contribution to the organization?” -Diane Vaccaro
In your opinion, what skills will be most crucial for marketing professionals to thrive in the future landscape?
“Curiosity. Linking problems to solutions with a sense for simplicity. An ability to distill a message to the core. Storytelling and an appreciation for the basic tenets of messaging.” – Diane Vaccaro
What is the key to effectively leading marketing?
“A handful of items…
1. Patient centricity: making sure that the voice of the patient has a seat at the table when we are making decisions as an organization.
2. Deep understanding of your audience.
3. Identifying and discerning priorities to gauge ROI and resource planning.
4. Rely on subject matter experts (you can’t be an expert in everything!).
5. Remain purpose-driven.” -Diane Vaccaro
How do you ensure your team stays equipped and skilled to stay competitive?
“We attend the Hubspot conference (locally run). I think of it as CE for marketers. We get multiple folks involved in vendor pitches, as it always resonates differently among team members. We also carve out time for thinking and research. -Diane Vaccaro
Mehmet Dogan is the Vice President of Marketing at Planet DDS, with 25 years of experience across the US, Canada, and UAE. He has worked with brands like Overjet, Jarvis Analytics, and twofour54, contributing to projects such as The Dental Economist Show and campaigns like Star Wars: The Force Awakens amd Sesame Street Middle East. At Planet DDS, Mehmet leads a team driving marketing efforts for DentalOS, helping dental support organizations enhance efficiency and growth. An author of three books, Mehmet also runs an award-winning marketing blog, Alti Ustu Tasarim. He lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia, with his family.
What is the key to effectively leading marketing?
“The key to effective marketing leadership is to challenge the status quo. Of course,fostering collaboration, consistency, and building a strong team is important – but these are table stakes and baseline expectations for a leader. Real leadership in marketing is about pushing boundaries, encouraging new ideas, and not being afraid to disrupt the market. It’s about creating an environment where failure is seen as a stepping-stone to innovation.” -Mehmet Dogan
Are there any innovations or practices you’re seeing marketers do in other industries that you think could be transformative for dentistry?
“The famous marketing saying ‘50% of marketing is waste, but you don’t know which 50%’ is still painfully true in dentistry. While other industries have advanced in tracking and optimizing their marketing spend based on insight and data, dental marketing often remains in the dark. Many dental groups can’t even trace a click-to-chair patient journey with a high confidence rate. There are sophisticated tools (like Legwork) available that can track marketing spend by channel and its impact on production, yet they remain Underutilized. Personalized marketing at scale is another practice that could be transformative. By leveraging advanced data analytics, patient data/insights (demographic, family, insurance, treatment plan), and AI, dental marketers can create highly tailored campaigns and experiences for their patients. This approach, common in retail and tech, can lead to significantly improved patient engagement and outcomes in dentistry, which is the ultimate goal. Brand work is also crucial. In a sea of similar dental practices, what makes yours stand out is the question dental marketers must ask themselves. Tend, MiNT Dentistry, and DECA Dental are prime examples of groups that have successfully differentiated themselves through great branding and fantastic customer experience. Adopting these tactics and strategies might not revolutionize dental marketing, but it will undoubtedly enhance its effectiveness and return.”-Mehmet Dogan
In your opinion, what skills will be most crucial for marketing professionals to thrive in the future landscape?
Ruthless consistency is paramount for future marketers. This doesn’t get enough credit, but sticking to your strategy and executing it flawlessly, day in and day out, truly makes a difference. I do like creative marketers who try new things every day/week, but I LOVE ruthlessly consistent ones (as the famous Bruce Lee saying goes, “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times”). Following that is curiosity, the drive to continuously learn and innovate. – Mehmet Dogan
