CMOs Under Increasing Pressure to Produce Results

We’ve heard a lot about Chief Marketing Officers in the last few years.  With Digital Transformation at the top of many CEOs minds, the CMO role has gained prominence and power.  Of course with that prominence, comes increasing scrutiny.  Matt Langie wrote a story on CMO.com about the pressure CMOs are facing due to the high visibility and costs of digital marketing efforts.

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The CMOs interviewed that story identified four concerns they face:

1. More variables and more players to navigate.  The marketing marketplace has been going through a high level of turmoil in the past few years with the influx of hundreds of new tools and mergers and acquisitions by big players in the space.  Matt writes: “The pressure mounts each time a digital solution enters the marketplace. What are its capabilities? How does it drive ROI? Who is behind the latest release? What product support can I expect? These are all questions facing digital marketers on a nearly daily basis.”
2. More issues that require marketers to quickly react/adapt. As our digital capabilities evolve to provide immediate feedback from customers, marketers are expected to address this feedback through their marketing efforts.  There are plenty of stories where marketers did not react quickly enough to both good and adverse events.
3. Expected to be more proactive in more areas.  Being reactive and adaptive is great, but CEOs don’t like to be surprised.  This puts more pressure on CMOs to be proactive in areas like site optimization, mobile and social.  There has been a lot of talk about analytics, so CMOs are under pressure to be more proactive with identifying trends.
4. Answering the usual call to deliver more, faster.  Every executive is under pressure to deliver more and deliver faster.  As marketing budgets increase, CEOs are looking for more return on that spend.  So not only do CMOs have to deliver more with limited budgets, they need to respond faster to market changes, which increases pressure on budgets even more.

As I see it, our digital marketing technology is enabling us to become faster, more agile, and more responsive.  However, as we gain these abilities, the pressure to deliver and show real results increases. Right now technology gains aren’t necessarily keeping pace with increasing expectations.

Here is a link to the story where you can read more details: Pressure Pushing Down On CMOs.