Business Growth Strategies For CEOs: Top CMOs On Marketing Strategy Implementations

Carol Eversen

A high impact marketing leader, Carol defines and executes strategies for companies navigating transformation and seeking to grow. Frequently engaged to deliver enhanced growth and profitability, she is adept at creating, activating and monetizing new products and services. Carol blends the combination of functional and leadership skills formed in blue chip companies with an action-oriented pragmatic mindset developed in start-up and mid-market experiences. A business strategist, martech expert and storyteller with a deep belief in delivering outstanding customer experiences, Carol leads teams to build client-driven solutions, expertly leveraging and optimizing digital channels to deliver growth.

Outsider Insights | What We’re Hearing from CEOs Right Now — And Why AI Keeps Coming Up

Wed, Mar 18, 2026 | Posted by Dawn Werry

Outsider Insights

Across Chief Outsiders, we talk to hundreds of CEOs every month. In this series, we explore the trends and challenges we’re hearing from these discussions – and what you can do if you’re facing the same issues in your business.

Executive Takeaways

AI accelerates clarity. It doesn’t fix broken data.
Speed to confident decisions is the real competitive edge.
Shared definitions matter more than more dashboards..
Governance comes before automation, alignment before acceleration.

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AI Search is Here – And it’s Reshaping the Buyer Journey

Tue, Dec 16, 2025 — Part 1 of our four-part series exploring how AI search is transforming visibility, SEO, and digital strategy - and what CEOs need to do now to stay competitive. Executive Takeaways Declining web traffic isn’t random - it’s a symptom of changing search behavior. AI search is already impacting over 25% of user journeys - and growing fast If you’re not being cited, you’re missing opportunities-period.

Find New Markets and Shift Your Focus -- At Least Temporarily

Wed, Jul 22, 2020 — Part 8 of the series: A B2B CEO’s Guide to Navigating the COVID-19 Revenue Reality The COVID-19 pandemic undoubtedly has created an economic crisis that has left few businesses untouched. But, if you have been following this blog series, you understand the value of innovation, and, in particular, the value that your aligned sales and marketing leaders will bring to that strategic exploration. Now is the time to entrust your collective team to the task of identifying new opportunities. Borne out of necessity in a world of shelter-at-home mandates, so many new creative ideas have emerged. If your market-facing teams really understand your core competencies, they will find creative ways to apply those core competencies in a unique and innovative fashion to solve today’s challenges.

Compensation Alignment

Mon, Jun 29, 2020 — Part 7 of the series: A B2B CEO’s Guide to Navigating the COVID-19 Revenue Reality Experience has shown that when sales and marketing are aligned in a strong partnership, they deliver more profitable revenue growth. I have seen this theory in action in subscription businesses, advertising businesses, and tech solutions companies, to name a few. And, if you have read all of the blogs to this point, you now have some insights about how to create this powerhouse one-two punch to effectively conquer your marketplace.

Sales Enablement and Support

Tue, Jun 9, 2020 — Part 6 of the series: A B2B CEO’s Guide to Navigating the COVID-19 Revenue Reality Your sales executive likely has a keen sense of what types of sales support materials traditionally have been helpful, and therefore has an opinion about sales support needs from marketing. But times have changed, and the playbook has been torn up. Given the times, the sales team simply can’t say with conviction that they truly understand exactly what sales support tools will help convince buyers to move forward. In our last blog, we talked about partnering between sales and marketing for lead generation and lead management optimization. Let’s explore how sales and marketing can partner to close more sales from those leads.

Lead Generation and Lead Management Across Sales and Marketing

Wed, May 27, 2020 — Part 5 of the series: A B2B CEO’s Guide to Navigating the COVID-19 Revenue Reality Have you ever heard sales blame marketing for bad leads and marketing blame sales for not acting on the leads they give? Those are common complaints from both functions. And there are usually aspects of both sides of the coin that are accurate. In our last blog, you hopefully learned from the examples of two businesses that realigned certain responsibilities in a way that created greater cross-functional accountability for sales.

Marketing and Sales Organization Design For Now and For Later

Tue, May 12, 2020 — Part 4 of the series: A B2B CEO’s Guide to Navigating the COVID-19 Revenue Reality The “way it has always been” is gone for good. It’s time to consider the reality: The world is changed now, and likely will be different once we shake off the effects of the pandemic. But, as we discussed in our last blog, now is not the time to slash and burn headcount without a smart, and reasoned, approach to moving forward.

Short-Term Functional Cost Control Without Sacrificing the Future

Fri, May 8, 2020 — Part 3 of the series: A B2B CEO’s Guide to Navigating the COVID-19 Revenue Reality In an economy roiled by the pandemic, it can be tempting for CEOs to wield a cost-cutting knife—with unrelenting and deep-cutting fervor. Indeed, it’s understandable: For generations, the natural inclination of many B2B CEOs has been to cut marketing when things were tough. In our last blog, we hopefully impressed upon you the importance of viewing both sales and marketing functions as a cohesive team, working as a symbiotic unit to pull sales out of crisis mode.

The Sales and Marketing Accountability Paradigm Shift

Tue, May 5, 2020 — Part 2 of the series: A B2B CEO’s Guide to Navigating the COVID-19 Revenue Reality In a world that has struggled to make sense of the COVID-19 pandemic, you, too, are likely working to better understand the roles that your team members will play in the recovery.

Growth Insights for CEOs