Business and Economics

The CEO's Guide to Marketing-Led Growth (Second Edition)

How to Drive Business Success Through Strategic Marketing: Marketing as a Growth EngineBy Michael Shenher

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Length4h 48m

About this audiobook

Why do some companies grow effortlessly while better products lose on price? The difference is rarely the sales team, the market, or the economy. It's a blind spot at the top: CEOs who treat marketing as a department to fund instead of an asset to build. In this revised second edition, author and business advisor Michael Shenher shows chief executives how to take strategic ownership of marketing — without writing a single ad. You'll learn the five-stage Marketing-Led Maturity Model, the two numbers every CEO must know cold, how to hire and keep the right marketing leader, how to budget like a capital allocator, and how to win in the age of AI. And in the book's signature chapter, Shenher draws on decades of valuation and exit advisory work to reveal what acquirers actually pay for: a growth engine that survives its founder. Practical, direct, and built for owner-operators and mid-market CEOs, this is the playbook for building a company the market chooses and buyers pay a premium for.

CEO Romance

Audiobook details

GenreBusiness and Economics

Length4 hrs 48 mins

Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices

FormateBook with Audio

Publish dateJul 4, 2026

LanguageEnglish

1Introduction: The Growth Lever Hiding in Plain Sight

64Twelve Against a Hundred and Twenty

2The Delegation Trap

65The Employee Multiplier

3Marketing Is Capital Allocation by Another Name

66The CEO’s Move

4Why Now

67PART III — THE STRATEGY

5The Lighthouse and the Tugboat

68Chapter 8: Brand Positioning as Competitive Moat

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6What This Book Will Do for You

69The Ground You Choose to Hold

7A Note on What I Am Asking of You

70The Slot in the Mind

8PART I — THE MINDSET

71The Three-Legged Stool: Relevance, Differentiation, Credibility

9Chapter 1: The CEO’s Marketing Mindset

72The Coffee Shops

10The Conductor’s Podium

73Tesla, and the Honest Lesson About Founder-Fused Brands

11What Marketing Actually Is (and Why the Word Fails Us)

74The Firm That Stopped Selling Services

12Two Operating Systems: Sales-Driven and Marketing-Led

75Repositioning: The Playbook in Brief

13The Case of the Distributor Who Kept Losing on Price

76The CEO’s Move

14The Journey Is the P&amp;L in Disguise

77Chapter 9: Customer-Centricity and the Experience Economy

15The CEO’s Move

78The Brochure and the Building

16Chapter 2: Acquisition, Retention, and the Economics of Loyalty

79The Journey, Walked in Their Shoes

17The Two Numbers

80Personalization Without the Shudder

18The Fully Loaded Truth About Acquisition Cost

81The Voice-of-Customer Machine — and the Number That Lies

19Lifetime Value: The Number That Changes the Question

82The Distributor’s Second Act

20The Leaky Bucket

83The CEO’s Move

21Costco: A Business Model Built on Renewal

84Chapter 10: Measurement — From Vanity Metrics to Enterprise Value

22The Software Company That Grew Profit Forty Percent Without a Single New Logo

85Flying by Instruments

23The Hotel Test

86The Four-Layer Stack

24The CEO’s Move

87What the Instruments Cannot Tell You: Attribution, Honestly

25Chapter 3: The Marketing-Led Maturity Model

88Two Panels: The Team’s and the Board’s

26Why You Need a Map Before a Plan

89The Company That Deleted Forty Gauges

27Stage One: Marketing as Expense

90The CEO’s Move

28Stage Two: Marketing as Function

91Chapter 11: Alignment — Marketing, Sales, and Product as One Growth Engine

29Stage Three: Marketing as Alignment

92The Most Expensive Border in Business

30Stage Four: Marketing as Strategy

93Relay Race or Rowing Crew

31Stage Five: Marketing as Operating System

94The Machinery of One Boat

32The Self-Assessment

95The Oar Product Holds

33The CEO’s Move

96The Brokerage That Ended Its Cold War

34PART II — THE ORGANIZATION

97The CEO’s Move

35Chapter 4: Building the Marketing-Led Organization

98PART IV — THE FUTURE AND THE EXIT

36Strategy Doesn’t Fail in the Boardroom

99Chapter 12: AI and the New Marketing Reality

37The Cathedral and the Scaffolding

100A Chapter Written in Wet Cement

38The First Belief: The Customer Is Everyone’s Department

101The Electricity Test

39Working Backwards: The Amazon Mechanism

102The Three Shifts

40Structure: Silos, Bridges, and the Revenue Question

103What Does Not Change

41The Case of the Manufacturer Whose Org Chart Was the Strategy

104The Mid-Market Sequence — and the Guardrails

42Routines: What Survives the Enthusiasm

105The CEO’s Move

43The CEO’s Move

106Chapter 13: Marketing as Enterprise Value — The Exit Lens

44Chapter 5: The CEO–CMO Partnership

107The Day Everything Gets Priced

45The Shortest Seat at the Table

108Staging Versus Renovation

46The Translator

109What the Inspector Prices

47Hire for the Stage, Not the Résumé

110The Three-Year Renovation

48The First Ninety Days: A Contract, Not a Honeymoon

111The Owner Who Renovated — and the One Who Staged

49Evaluating Honestly: Leading Indicators and the Two-Clock Problem

112The CEO’s Move

50The Fractional Option: The Mid-Market’s Honest Answer

113Chapter 14: The Ninety-Day Marketing-Led Transformation

51The CEO’s Move

114Against the Perfect Beginning

52Chapter 6: Budgeting — Marketing as Capital Allocation

115Days 1–30: Diagnose — See the Company as It Is

53The Question Behind the Question

116Days 31–60: Decide — The Questions Only You Can Answer

54The Farmer’s Ledger: Harvest Spend and Soil Spend

117Days 61–90: Deploy — Install the Machinery That Makes It Stick

55Setting the Total: Three Honest Methods and One Dishonest One

118What the Second Year Knows

56Defending the Budget: Speaking Board

119Appendix A: The Marketing-Led Maturity Model — Self-Assessment Instrument

57When the Cycle Turns: The Evidence Nobody’s Instincts Believe

120Dimension 1: Leadership

58The CEO’s Move

121Dimension 2: Strategy

59Chapter 7: Building a High-Performance Marketing Culture

122Dimension 3: Organization

60The Ten-to-One Puzzle

123Dimension 4: Measurement

61Why Marketing Culture Is a Special Case

124Dimension 5: Customer Connection

62The Anatomy: Four Properties

125Appendix B: The CEO’s Marketing Glossary

63Netflix and the Machinery of Learning

126Appendix C: The Board-Ready Marketing Dashboard: Panel 1 — The Growth Engine (economic layer)

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The CEO's Guide to Marketing-Led Growth (Second Edition)

About this audiobook

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