Today’s B2B CMO is increasingly in the ‘hot seat’, expected to be the voice of the customer across the journey and to drive tangible business outcomes.
Almost 90% of marketing leaders surveyed said their role had become “more” or “much more complex”, reflecting the fact that the CMO is one of the shortest C-Suite tenures.
CMOs are leaned on to do a lot of cross-functional alignment, collaboration, pulling various people together on a topic that may have nothing to do necessarily with marketing.
To shift from hot seat to spotlight, marketers must effectively helm and orchestrate a multifunctional growth engine within their larger organisations, including branding, demand generation, data science, ecommerce, marketing technology and CRM. The breadth of this role presents a new set of intricacies around initiative prioritization and resource management – specialist recruitment, integrating diverse skills into cohesive teams, and ensuring seamless handoffs among team members.
There seems to be an unlimited number of initiatives that marketing can do. Determining and getting alignment around what's the best and wisest use of marketing resources can be challenging.
To match their evolving roles, CMOs are investing in talent acquisition, focusing on data and tech competencies. Half of the Marketing leaders surveyed expect to increase their team size, with a third reporting data and technology skills as the focus.
We need more divergent skills than ever before, and technology is the primary driver of that.
Tech industry marketers appear to be further ahead, with 40% of those surveyed focusing on AI and Machine-learning specialists. Across all survey respondents, analytics and performance tracking are surging in priority.
I like to keep the core team as technical marketers, people who, if I have to have a super lean team, are going to be able to run the tools.
B2B Marketing is at a pivotal juncture of digital transformation; buyers are ready for a different kind of B2B experience and the tools and capabilities are available to the marketer who can harness them efficiently and effectively. To do so requires transforming the profile of the CMO into one of Growth Orchestrator, inspiring other C-suite leaders to get behind customer centricity and business impact. The path forward requires bold leadership, innovation, and a commitment to transforming the B2B landscape.
The modern CMO is at a crossroads with an ever increasing amount of responsibility and complexity.
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