Ask a CMO: Dave Bornmann of Higher Logic

For our latest edition of our Ask a CMO series, we had the pleasure of speaking with Dave Bornmann, the CMO of Higher Logic, a company that connects people, knowledge and ideas through its online community and marketing automation platforms.

How did you get your start in marketing?

My first job out of college was with a software company. I started as a sales engineer where I was doing product demos and product training. I did that for a year, and I really didn’t like it. There was an open entry-level marketing role, so I moved onto the Marketing team. I loved it right off the bat. So much so that I immediately pursued my MBA in Marketing. I’ve been in marketing ever since.

How do you define the role of the CMO?

In my opinion, a B2B marketing leader has three responsibilities: building demand, building a brand, and building a team. It’s been my experience that building a brand and building a team are the ones that people often get right. What people don’t always get right is building demand.

I believe the key to a successful B2B demand program is having strong alignment with the sales organization. This means everyone from the Chief Revenue Officer down to the front-line reps. It’s critical to understand the sales process. You should know what it’s like to have discovery calls, to run a demo, to have additional conversations beyond the demo as the buying committee starts to get larger. Who are the influencers? Who is the final decision maker? Who is your technical buyer? What process do they all go through when you’re not sitting in the room?

And it goes beyond that. It’s important to understand the sales funnel and the conversion rates from one sales stage to the next – and also the duration for each of those stages. When you understand that, you can start to identify where things are breaking down and collaborate with the sales team to troubleshoot.

If you were building a team from scratch, who would be your first three hires?

My first hire would be a demand-gen person who is also skilled at content creation. When your team gets larger, those can become two separate roles. But, to start, you need someone who can run campaigns and create the content to support them.

My second hire would be a product marketer. You really need to understand your product-market fit and how your product is solving your buyers’ problems. Good product marketers do this very well.

My third hire would also be a combination role – a sales and marketing operations position. Having somebody on your team who can effectively leverage your martech platforms is super important. The combo part is having analytical skills. Someone who can look at the data coming out of our software platforms and identify insights that help us course correct and make our marketing programs more successful.

Higher Logic recently announced new AI features that you’ve built into your product suite. How do these tools help your association customers?

We launched three AI tools in April. One uses AI to bulk upload any piece of content that the association has created and put it into a resource library. The second component is auto tagging the content. The third tool is gen AI that we built inside our marketing automation platform to accelerate campaign development. We recently added a fourth AI tool –successfully launching our first AI Assistant – and are soon launching AI-driven Smart Campaigns to consistently keep members engaged by delivering valuable content based on actions they’ve taken.

When it comes to hiring marketing talent, what is your go-to interview question?

I have two. My first one is “Tell me about the biggest marketing challenge that you’ve ever faced. What made it such a challenge? How did you tackle it? And what were the results?” To me, it’s important to see how the candidate thinks and what they consider “big”. The other key is their answer about the results and how they got to those results. In other words, what made it big, and then what did you do?

The other question I always ask is what the candidate likes most about their current or most recent job. I let them answer that, and then I ask them as a follow-up – what do they like least about their current job? These questions help me determine if the person will be a good cultural fit on the team.

What Learning & Development programs do you have in place to expand the skills of your team?

As I mentioned, one of the key roles of a CMO is to build a great team. Creating an environment for employees to learn and thrive is critical. I encourage each of my team members to regularly identify a professional development opportunity, like a conference, certification, or other training, to help them build out their skillsets and advance their careers.

Additionally, I look for opportunities for the team to learn together. I’m about to engage an AI marketing expert to lead the team through an education session to ensure we’re aware of the AI tools, beyond gen AI, available to help us be better, more efficient marketers. I’ve always been a lifelong learner as I think it’s important for people to continually grow and expand their knowledge base.

What podcasts are you currently listening to?

On the business side, I listen to two regularly. One is Pipeline Visionaries and the other is Renegade Marketers Unite. I find these super interesting. I highly recommend them for B2B marketers.

The other one I listen to regularly is Smartless, which I love.

If you weren’t a marketer, what would be your dream job?

My dream job would be doing something professionally around making the world a better and safer place for members of the LGBTQIA+ community, and in particular, the trans community which I feel is increasingly under attack. It’s really disheartening to me.

If you need assistance filling any HR or Marketing gaps, contact our team today to begin finding the perfect talent to fit your needs.