The CMO Journal's top 5 essays of 2024

I usually write this post at the end of every writing year and post it on Substack, but seeing as I'm entering the 5th year of my newsletter, I decided to change up things and write this on LinkedIn.

First, an introduction to folks who haven't come across me or the newsletter: My name is Sairam, I lead marketing at Atomicwork, and I have had marketing leadership stints at the VC firm Accel, Wingify (makers of A/B testing product VWO), and Freshworks, where I also led corporate marketing for a while.

This view, both in and around startup marketing for over a decade, gave me perspective and experience, which I share in my newsletter, called The CMO Journal. I have been writing it for almost 5 years now, and a bunch of India's founders, marketers, and VC folks think it is worth reading.

I will be sharing the best essays of 2024 here, and I hope you read and follow it too.

Second, though it was not my most prolific year of writing (or reading, for that matter), there were some good pieces in there. And as usual, the ones that were most read or discussed weren't the ones I thought would be.

So here you go, the best of the newsletter from 2024.

1. What the f*ck does a marketing head do?

In which I break down what the roles, responsibilities, and things no one else knows about what a marketing head does in a startup. Easily the piece I got the most feedback about, and which I suspect helped the most people. Read here.

2. You have two choices: Get career insurance or become irrelevant

Probably the most important essay of the year, in which I implore marketers to build some kind of leverage for their career and to do it quickly. I also go into how to do so, with 5 tactics to start building your brand. Read here.

3. 10 things I’ve learnt in 12 years of work

A list of my learnings from a decade and more of work. Very broad, very general career stuff. Should be useful to more than marketers. You will come to these conclusions yourself anyway, save yourself some time. Read here.

4. The return of the content marketer

As we tried to figure out the content marketing function inside Atomicwork, I realised the role and what it owned needed to be completely reframed for modern marketing. And that the content marketer needed to be treated as more than just a creator. They now have to oversee and run the whole funnel. I also describe what exactly that might look like in a startup. Read here.

5. How we built an inbound marketing engine for the enterprise at Atomicwork

In one of the last essays of the year, I broke down what we did at our own startup, and how we found a way to get inbound attention from the enterprise ICP we were going after. Though this is a more tactical essay, it was still appreciated, with feedback and wanting to know more. Read here.

Thank you for reading. If you like what you see, and want the newsletter delivered directly to you, please go here and subscribe.

I would love to see you there.

As I said, 2025 will be the 5th year of writing this newsletter. I hope to have a live event in Bangalore for readers and friends to celebrate, and will be sharing more details soon.

And to my readers, in all this time, if this newsletter has helped you, made you think, or even just been enjoyable to read, I would love it if you could share it with your friends, or even just one friend. Would mean a lot to me!

See you on the other side. Happy new year!