Why Second Key Marketing?

CMO4 Strategic Development

You’ll have four experienced CMOs developing strategies and tactics in your strategy sessions—exclusively for your business, and all under NDAs. I handle everything else, including sourcing them (sometimes a mix of CMOs and CEOs), and you approve the final team.

Client Benefits

C-Level Expertise Without the Full-Time Cost
Every business needs senior marketing leadership—but not every business needs (or can afford) a full-time CMO. With Second Key Marketing, you get the insight and impact of elite CMOs and CEOs without the overhead.

Your Custom CMO⁴ Team
From a network of 75+ top-tier CMOs and CEOs, I hand-select four experts tailored to your specific challenges. Some bring deep industry knowledge; others specialize in key technologies, channels, or strategies critical to your goals.

More Firepower Than Agencies or In-House Teams
Most agencies and internal teams rely on one C-level leader supported by specialists in one area i.e. copywriting and social media. With us, you get four seasoned executives—quadrupling the experience, creativity, and strategic insight driving your marketing plans.

Technology-Driven Strategy That Cuts Through the Noise
From AI tools to CRM optimization, we help you identify and deploy the right tech for smarter, more effective marketing. We also guide traditional and digital solutions, including Where-To-Buy software and tools that outmaneuver competitors.

Ongoing Strategic Support
Your CMO⁴ team stays in reach—even after the initial engagement. When new challenges or opportunities arise, you can tap into the same trusted experts or a refreshed team.

Fortune 500-Level Talent, Now on Your Team
Our CMOs have driven growth, innovation, and category leadership at the highest levels. Now, they’re focused on you—bringing world-class thinking and battle-tested experience to your business.

Plans Built to Perform—And Executed to Win
We don’t just create smart strategies. Depending on your needs, we help execute them, oversee internal teams, define KPIs, build custom dashboards, and track ROI.

Examples of Problems We Solve

Stagnated Growth

We will uncover the core issue(s) causing the stagnation and develop a strategic plan to jump start and grow sales. We have found that sometimes the issue is something different from what the leadership team thinks it is. Our deep dive approach to understanding the situation will get at the issue and provide a plan that addresses it head on.

Understanding How to Use AI

We will help you understand how to use the power of AI in your business. We have CMOs who have used AI for years, keep up with new AI products, understand which AI product to use, and how to provide the maximum value to your business.

Pricing & Distribution Issues

Our network includes CMOs with years of experience determining how to price and promote products and services – both cost plus and value added pricing. We have CMOs who build and managing distribution channels. Some of the issues we often see are companies who compete only with price; have too many distributors; have distributors who are not in compliance with marketing updates, poorly trained and unmotivated distributors.

Brand Development, Positioning, and Brand Building

We have several CMOs experienced in all the elements of branding and brand messaging. This includes brand analysis, brand planning, positioning, naming and logo development. Our CMOs understand how to make your brand stand out from your competitors, avoid cliches, be bold, emotional, and instill value to your audiences and customers.

Digital Transformations

Some companies struggle with how best to move their company to digital technology, or how to set up and optimize their existing digital software. This is not only with marketing, but also with other departments- financial, operations, sales, and product/service development.

Traditional Advertising

Our CMO network includes CMOs who have planned traditional multi-million dollar advertising budgets for CPG products, retail chains and franchises, smaller retailers, and professional service businesses. Our CMOs understand how to maximize the value of direct mail, PR, TV, radio, podcast, and programmatic advertising.

Complex Problems & Opportunities

Some marketing issues are complicated. Sometimes a complex issue or objective cannot be solved with any of the software on the market. This is especially true for companies with unique business models or a unique set of circumstances. Other times, CEOs and their teams are disadvantaged by the limits of their experience or self-imposed constraints of not being able to think outside the box.  This is when the power of four C-level brains working together becomes extremely valuable.

Promotional Marketing / Sales Promotion

We have several CMOs in our network who have implemented hundreds of promotions for B2B and B2C companies at the salesforce, trade, and consumer levels. Dealer loader programs, off-invoice and bill back allowances, on-packs, in-packs, instant redeeming coupons, POS couponing, games and sweepstakes including official rules by state, coupons, tie-ins, loyalty programs, bundles, free samples, and FSIs. We have CMOs who have negotiated dozens of licensing deals, and CMOs who have sourced, designed and manufactured hundreds of millions of premiums for QSRs and CPG products overseas.

Digital Marketing Optimization

Many digital agencies understand how to optimize one or two digital channels but claim that they can do it all. Those agencies typically lack the expertise to understand digital marketing at the planning level. We have several CMOs who understand how to determine what digital marketing channels to use, and how best to optimize them. We have CMOs who are experts at website design and development, social media setup, technical-SEO, SEM, SEO, CRM marketing, influencer/affiliated marketing, content marketing, social media advertising, streaming advertising (OTT). We have CMOs who understand how to allocate budgets, test and optimize all types of digital marketing. We have C-level experts in Where-To-Buy software and implementation.
↑