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

Dana Prestigiacomo

Dana is an accomplished marketing executive with a proven track record of delivering results in a wide-range of companies, from high growth startups to Fortune 100 businesses competing in new and existing markets. Dana has achieved these goals by being a results-oriented professional with proven expertise in traditional and online marketing including market research, branding, public relations, social media, content strategy, lead generation and go-to-market strategy. She understands the challenges and opportunities of companies who are new entrants to crowded markets, expanding into new geographies, trying to accelerate a strategic acquisition, or who might be struggling to change existing brand impression. Dana blends competitive and customer insights with company goals to develop effective short and long-term strategies that deliver efficient and effective plans and programs to drive growth.

Why the CEO-Led Growth Model Breaks at Scale

Tue, Feb 10, 2026 | Posted by The Chief Outsider

Series Overview

As companies grow, GTM breakdowns rarely show up as sudden failures. They emerge as friction. Progress slows, pipelines become less predictable, and confidence in forecasts declines, even as teams work harder and act with good intent. Written from both the marketing and sales lens, this six-part series, Building a Unified GTM Operating Model, explores why scale exposes weaknesses in informal GTM systems and how an intentional operating model restores clarity, alignment, and scalable growth.

Executive Takeaways

CEO-led, informal GTM models break predictably as scale introduces complexity.
Early GTM failure shows up as friction, not collapse.
Sales–marketing misalignment is a structural issue, not a performance problem.
A unified GTM operating model is required to restore growth, confidence, and value.

Read More

Stemming the Tide: How Conscious Leadership Can Stop the C-Suite Revolving Door

Wed, May 18, 2022 — Co-Authored by: Dana Prestigiacomo, CMO, Chief Outsiders Jim Fallon, Consultant, Conscious Leadership Group Gone are the days of the CEO for life. Today, when a well-intentioned, freshly-recruited CEO enters the doors of the highest executive office at the company, those doors typically are left propped slightly open. In fact, over the past several years, the average tenure of a corporate CEO has plummeted to just under seven years – a worrying notion for companies with consistency on their minds. In reality, the notion of leadership has changed -- and the change has accelerated over the past few years, starting at the very top.

Insights First: Four Keys to Owning the Post-COVID Marketplace

Tue, Jun 1, 2021 — Interest rates are low. Vaccinations are high. And for the first time in more than a year, we can see the bottom of the faces of our friends and loved ones. Indeed, optimism is abounding these days, and if you are a business owner, you’re likely straining at the reins to get back out there and reap the rewards. As a marketing executive, I know that feeling – it seems that dollar bills can be plucked out of the air, and you want to reach up and grab your bounty.

Less is More: How to Keep Content as King of Your Marketing Castle

Mon, Apr 22, 2019 — It’s interesting to ponder what the future holds for marketing. Will we have messages targeted to our eyeballs or windshields, or virtually delivered directly to our psyche? Regardless of what medium will ultimately power the future of marketing, it will, then, as now, be powered by content. In fact, content has been one of the most important, if not the most important, elements of marketing for many years – so successful, in fact, that companies are doubling down on content strategies. In 2018, the Content Marketing Institute observed that 91 percent of business-to-business (B2B) marketers are unlocking the power of content to barker for their businesses. So what, exactly, defines content marketing?

How Customer Advocacy Fuels Growth

Wed, Apr 10, 2019 — Regardless of industry or the size of your business, growth is getting more difficult. Today, you need to have an exceptional sales team. You also need to have an exceptional marketing team. But sales and marketing alone aren't enough to sustain growth. The cost of customer acquisition continues to increase and businesses can no longer rely on annual contracts to lock customers in. Over the past year there has been much discussion about the retirement of the marketing and sales “funnel”, which we all have grown to love and the emergence of what HubSpot is calling the “flywheel”.

Random Acts of Sales and Marketing: Questions for Unity

Thu, Feb 22, 2018 — A random act of kindness is defined as a non-premeditated, inconsistent action designed to offer kindness towards the outside world. Things like buying the stranger in line behind you a cup of coffee, or shoveling snow off of someone’s driveway. While these types of random acts of kindness are a wonderful way to give back, it doesn’t work quite so well in the realm of sales and marketing. In fact, they can ruin a company’s reputation and ability to grow. You would think CEOs would all shy away from letting this happen. But it’s happening all the time in businesses of all types and sizes.

Growth Insights for CEOs