Most CMOs are invisible online.
They’re brilliant operators — but nobody outside their Slack workspace knows it.
That’s a problem.
Because in 2025, your personal brand is your unfair advantage.
It attracts the best talent. The best deals. The best speaking gigs.
And it builds leverage that no marketing budget can buy.
🚀 The Shift:
The era of faceless marketing leaders is over.
Founders and CMOs who treat themselves like brands outperform those who don’t.
Why?
Because people buy from people — and your audience wants to see the person behind the growth stories.
When your name becomes synonymous with insight, creativity, or bold thinking — your company benefits from your reputation halo.
Think of:
Katelyn Bourgoin: Turned her curiosity into a brand that drives inbound leads.
Dave Gerhardt: Built a content-first personal brand that made Drift a household B2B name.
Chris Walker: Scaled Refine Labs off the back of his LinkedIn thought leadership.
They all used personal branding as a growth channel.
🧩 The Playbook: How to Build a CMO Brand That Scales
1. Pick Your Positioning
Your personal brand = your career moat.
Start by deciding what you want to be known for.
Ask yourself:
→ What kind of content do I love talking about?
→ What perspective do I have that others don’t?
→ What do I want to be the go-to person for in 12 months?
Write it down as a statement:
“I help [audience] achieve [outcome] through [approach].”
Example:
“I help DTC brands scale their paid social profitably through better creative testing.”
This becomes your content filter.
2. Document, Don’t Perform
The best brands don’t create — they document.
Talk about what you’re learning, what’s breaking, what’s working.
Post screenshots, frameworks, client lessons (without revealing private data), and mistakes you’ve made.
This builds trust faster than polished PR ever could.
3. Build in Public (for Credibility)
Share your process, metrics, experiments, even your failures.
People root for what they can see evolve.
Your transparency is your magnet.
4. Create a Content Engine (for Consistency)
→ Write 3 short posts per week
→ Record 1 “thinking out loud” video
→ Turn 1 of those into a newsletter or thread
You’ll never run out of content if you treat every internal meeting, client insight, or experiment as a potential story.
5. Turn Visibility into Leverage
Once you’ve built attention — direct it:
Launch a newsletter (to own your audience)
Host a monthly roundtable or AMA
Offer mentoring or consulting
Speak at events
Your personal brand becomes a funnel — not just for followers, but for opportunities.
⚡ Future-Proof Insight:
If you’re a CMO or founder, your brand is no longer optional — it’s infrastructure.
Because when algorithms change, ad costs rise, and attribution breaks…
your name still holds weight.
And that’s the most scalable marketing asset you’ll ever own.
💬 Question for You:
If someone Googled your name today, what would they learn about your expertise — in the first 10 seconds?
If the answer is “not much,” it’s time to start building your brand.
