Chief marketing officers are being held accountable for business growth despite lacking control over the decisions and organisational structures needed to deliver it, while simultaneously being expected to achieve more with fewer resources, according to new research from TikTok and Uncensored CMO.
Seven in 10 CMOs now allocate more budget to short-term performance activity than long-term brand building while three quarters believe their CEOs cannot articulate the marketing strategy. CMOs found sales the most challenging function to work with.
There is also a wider training deficit. Nearly four in five CMOs said fewer than half of their team were fully trained in core marketing fundamentals.
Other key findings include:
- Growing pressure on brand investment: 56 per cent said it has become harder to make the case for long-term brand investment compared with three years ago.
- Limited investment: Almost half said their company reinvests less than 5 per cent of turnover in marketing.
- Doing more with less: 74 per cent of CMOs grew revenue but only 45 per cent saw budgets grow over the last 12 months.
- Limited board-level experience: Although 66 per cent of companies have marketing represented on the executive team, only 46 per cent have someone with marketing experience at board level.
A strategy skills gap: Strategy is the capability most commonly identified as missing from marketing departments, with 28 per cent of CMOs citing it as their biggest skills challenge.
The challenge that CMOs have communicating their marketing strategy to c-suite colleagues and ‘doing more with less’ were two problems that Uncensored CMO founder Jon Evans highlighted at this year’s Cairns Crocodiles.
“If you go to the US and you talk to some big CMOs, you’re basically talking to the press release. Every answer is from the press release, and you don’t get a sense of them actually doing the job,” he said at the event.
This new report, which polled 65 CMOs, argues that CMOs can address these challenges by developing four interconnected capabilities:
Planning: Looking beyond immediate execution, making strategic choices and aligning investment, people and resources around a long-term plan.
Performance: Staying close to customers, turning insight into action and demonstrating marketing’s commercial contribution.
Persuasion: Building support among CEOs, boards and internal stakeholders so that marketing strategy is understood, funded and implemented.
People: Developing the leadership capabilities, culture, collaboration and marketing skills needed to deliver sustainable growth.
“Marketing can be transformational, but CMOs are being held accountable without being given sufficient control, investment or authority. They are expected to drive growth while spending too much of their time fighting for the conditions that make growth possible,” Evans said.
“The answer is not to retreat into the marketing department. CMOs need to become visionaries, commercial operators, internal politicians and leaders.
“The Real 4Ps provide a framework for doing that. By strengthening Planning, Performance, Persuasion and People, CMOs can earn greater influence, secure investment and create the conditions for marketing to transform the whole business.”
TikTok global head of business marketing Isobel Sita-Lumsden said that the best CMOs aren’t responding to change, they are helping to shape it.
