REQUIRED READING POST

Marketing is evolving at a rapid rate and the role of the Chief Marketing Officer is transforming, shifting to include driving growth strategy. Chief Marketing Officers now have an opportunity to drive growth within the C-suite and reinvent their company purpose and marketing position. As PwC said in their 2025 predictions for CMOs, “there’s an opportunity for CMOs to carve out a role as innovator, strategist and growth-driver. From working with the CEO to tell your company's story to activating the new tech capabilities with the CIO.”

CMO Council has been tracking the transformation trend of CMO into growth-driver, with our expert content, research, and specialist site, the Growth Guidance Center. JOIN our Growth Officer Community on LinkedIn, GO

SPECIAL FOCUS: Visionary Growth Engineering Starts Here

The Growth Guidance Center, hosted by CMO Council, is dedicated to exploring the forces and factors that accelerate, inhibit, disrupt, diversify and sustain growth. This knowledge transfer initiative will highlight best practices, critical resources and next generation solutions to accelerate revenue growth, improve market visibility, identify opportunities, and manage and optimize profitability and revenue performance. FIND OUT MORE

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP: The Evolution of the CMO

In today’s rapidly shifting business landscape, the role of marketing has evolved far beyond its traditional boundaries. Marketing is now a critical driver of business strategy, growth, and innovation.

In many organizations, marketing is still seen as a cost center rather than a growth engine. This perception is a major barrier for CMOs who want to elevate their roles within the C-suite. To shift this mindset, marketing leaders must demonstrate how their efforts contribute directly to business outcomes, such as revenue growth, customer retention, and product innovation.

CMOs who succeed at earning a seat at the table know how to position marketing as a strategic partner in driving business growth. They align their teams’ work with the company’s vision, executing in ways that directly support business priorities. By focusing on KPIs that matter to the entire executive team—such as customer lifetime value, sales effectiveness, and new market entry—they can showcase marketing’s integral role in achieving business objectives. READ MORE

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP: Four Steps to Align Revenue Teams Around Product-Led Growth

Revenue growth has always been hard, but it’s getting harder. Last year was defined by cutting costs and scaling back, and we’re now emerging with reinvigorated growth goals in 2024, but fewer resources to achieve them. About half (49%) of B2B marketers in the US report that they’re facing budget or other resource constraints in 2024.

There’s an undeniable shift happening as we face the mounting pressure to grow in a challenging environment. Change takes time, but you can start asking yourself the following questions to assess where you are:

• Do all employees feel like they are members of your company’s revenue success?
• Do you know who your best customers are and understand that deeply?
• Are you focused where you need to be, and are you willing to let the rest slip through?
• Are you leveraging all the data points you have, even if they aren't all in the same place yet?

By taking the initial steps to address gaps that exist, you’ll be in a better place tomorrow than you were yesterday to pursue the people who will get the most out of your product, and your company will reap the revenue rewards. READ MORE

INSIGHTS: CMO Intentions 2024: Fueling Martech Innovation Through AI

There’s a strategy shift in MarTech and AI, as MarTech procurement intentions have made a massive swing to embracing new GenAI tools, applications and analytics. Almost 60% of marketers surveyed view this area of investment as offering the most value and ROI.

CMOs appear clear, confident and intentional in where AI will deliver the best results in marketing process improvement. Our latest study, CMO Intentions 2024, conducted in partnership with Zeta Global to gain insights and predictions about MarTech, shows AI in the vanguard of a paradigm shift in MarTech adoption and use in 2024.

Many CMOs will enter this new era of MarTech in good shape. They reported they’ve met revenue and customer attainment goals last year despite market turbulence. The majority also gave their teams solid marks for marketing campaign execution and performance. READ MORE

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP: Complex CMO Reality Changes Role

Chief marketers are at the vanguard of seismic change in the marketplace, the pace of which has accelerated in recent years, throwing up a constellation of challenges and transforming their role in the organization.

“Marketing has, over the last decades, changed, evolved and transformed itself more than any other discipline in business. The evolution of marketing has been subtle and equally disruptive, motivated by technology progress, performance expectations, alterations in the marketplace or by societal developments all over the world,” explained Ricardo Oberlander, Head of the CMO Council European Advisory Board. READ MORE

INSIGHTS: How to Build Valuable, Resilient Brands

Successful marketers constantly reposition brands for long-term, accelerated growth, finding new spaces outside their category boundaries and seeking breakthrough innovations. In fact, the most valuable brands in the world create shareholder value faster, resist market downturns and, also manage to weather recessions better than their counterparts.

This resilience is down to the connections such brands make, and how they position themselves. The deciding qualities, according to global research house, Kantar, are that they are "meaningful, different and salient."

Today’s top brands – and brand marketing teams – are always looking to accelerate growth, whether that means leveraging insights to raise creative work from good to great; finding new ways to show up impactfully along the path to purchase; or pursuing breakthrough innovations that find new spaces beyond the bounds of their pre-existing categories. READ MORE

MORE excellent evergreen content from the CMO Council’s previous publication, Peer Sphere. READ HERE