How to Hire a Chief Digital Officer (CDO)

A Great Digital Marketing Executive Is Essential to the Success of Your Business

You already know that in today’s rapidly changing marketing climate, you need a savvy digital officer to guide your teams into the future. Your next chief digital officer (CDO) or chief digital information officer (CDIO) can have a make-or-break impact on your business. You need an individual who has demonstrated executive leadership and a cutting-edge understanding of digital technology in order to drive:

  • Revenue Growth;
  • Profit Growth;
  • Competitive Advantage.

If your digital strategies are behind your competitors, it is going to be a struggle to outgrow them. Digital transformation is overused, but leading your industry online is critical to sustained success. This is why top companies are looking to Chief Digital Officer executive search firms as they add a new role to the executive team. We are seeing the fastest growing B2C companies have both a high-performing Chief Marketing Officer and a top-notch Chief Digital Officer. This allows for two senior executives to be creating a sustained competitive advantage which leads to greater growth and a strong competitive advantage.

What to Look for in a Chief Digital Officer

Only 8% of companies surveyed are happy with their current digital marketing team’s performance. To find the right person to improve performance, you need someone with the following qualities. As fast as digital is changing have you hired the right leader who can stay in front of all the emerging trends? Are they driving a higher level thought process on digital across the leadership team?

A Lifelong Learner with an Eye to the Future

The right CDO is a lifelong learner who is not only an expert in current digital technologies but can anticipate upcoming changes. You need an executive who can provide a cutting-edge advantage by effectively implementing new technologies before they have become mainstream.

Proven Executive Leadership

You need a digital officer with a track record of directing teams and driving growth. In reality, this is harder than in most areas of the company. They need to be creating roles that have never existed before, which means they need to create new performance metrics and just as quickly change other roles that were new just a few years ago.

Emotional Maturity

Because of the pace of change, you need a leader who is comfortable moving at a very fast rate and willing to make decisions. This is because without moving so quickly they fail to see the forest for the trees. Your CDO needs to be able to effectively lead teams in areas where they may not have worked. Are they comfortable having someone on their team know more than them?

MarketPro has been the leading marketing executive search firm for over 25 years. We started performing digital marketing executive searches before most people knew what digital was or had even heard of digital transformation.