A CMO’s greatest challenge
Every CMO, irrespective of their seniority, faces the same fundamental challenge. They all have to interface with senior stakeholders that are not marketing specialists, yet who often make decisions related to marketing.
In this in-depth guide, we cover why this causes such concern by breaking it down into parts, before considering how they can be minimised.
If you’re a CMO reading this, we hope it helps you to work with greater freedom and inspiration.
Knowledge gap
As we’ve already covered in our CMO guide, every CMO is faced with a vast array of tasks and subsequent time constraints. They have to lead the direction of all marketing activities, while also interfacing with senior management and stakeholders, particularly in regard to the business’ financials.
And this makes them uniquely positioned to work with senior people that have little or no first-hand marketing experience. This is not a small concern, as the impact of this knowledge gap typically has cascading and serious consequences for the development of all marketing activities.
If you’ve been a CMO for some time, then you may be nodding your head in agreement. You’ll be aware of multiple situations where you’ve been in meetings and agreed to a decision that makes little marketing sense, purely because you had no other choice.
It would be easy to think of office environments as utopian places where the best ideas always thrive and the most knowledgeable make decisions related to their area of expertise, but it simply isn’t the case. Nor will it ever be.
A structural concern
Company structures are perfectly imperfect systems of cooperation, like many other social systems in society. They are excellent at providing a framework for all employees to work together, while being guided by a leading team.
However, this framework by no means guarantees that the best ideas are valued or implemented. Furthermore, the control of senior teams and the structure of a C-suite naturally means that they are responsible for decisions that go beyond their area of expertise.
Valuing experience
Like any other member of the C-suite, a CMO is likely to have extensive skills and experience gained over many years. However, marketing changes rapidly due to societal and technological evolution.
This places marketers in a difficult position to be able to justify their experience beyond the data, especially when other members of the C-suite demand greater accountability for every marketing decision in the face of growing complexity and unpredictability.
Expertise vs Seniority
What this means for CMOs is that they often need to shoehorn their decisions into the parameters that can be validated by data, or more significantly, agree to activities that are counterintuitive to their marketing instincts.
Let’s take a specific example. A CMO at a SaaS business may have been incredibly successful over the past 12 months with a customer acquisition strategy that focused on influencer marketing. The CMO may have then been granted increased budgets, possibly even backed by additional investment.
Clearly, this is a great position to be in for any CMO, although it comes with greater responsibility and pressure as they are now expected to deliver the same success or better the following year. After all, the numbers show it’s possible and the whole C-suite is on board.
However, there’s a catch. The CMO knows that pursuing the same strategy is unlikely to work. The previous strategy was isolated to a particular niche and used tactics that are only likely to appeal to them.
Of course, this is something that the CMO may counter by presenting their concerns to the board. However, by doing so, they may be suggesting an alternate strategy that is completely unproven. So, after discussion, they may agree to continue with the same strategy and adapt it slightly. In doing so, they decide not to listen to their gut and push forward with full conviction.
This example is just par for the course for any CMO. They could be in a global tech startup, a legal firm, a fashion brand or a car company. This happens due to the data providing a method for all senior teams to collaborate. It will also continue to happen for the foreseeable future.
Marketing disproportionately affected
The reason this is such a concern for a CMO is because of the nature of marketing as a discipline and how it’s very different from others in the C-suite. This is because marketing activities are publicly visible for members outside the department to form an opinion on. For example, a Chief HR officer or Chief Legal Officer may naturally have an opinion on a new brand campaign, advert or promotional video.
By contrast, a marketer will rarely be able to have an opinion on a new approach to hiring, a new financial model or a legal document. This is an important consideration, as marketers are subsequently required to be extremely diplomatic when taking on board other opinions, while also being assured and assertive where necessary.
In some cases, these opinions may be extremely valuable and indeed necessary. In others, they may cause unnecessary tension, particularly as they will not be party to all the decisions (both macro and micro) that a CMO will have made.
This may lead the CMO to waste unnecessary time explaining themselves, or alternatively, take on board opinions that have not been made without due diligence.
The trickle-down effect
Pursuing decisions that are not based on a CMO’s best judgements can have a much more significant impact on the teams they manage. They subsequently instruct their teams to work on activities that are not the most effective use of their time. This is a major concern, particularly as the ideal situation is to have a supporting team that are themselves highly experienced.
To overcome this, a CMO will have to sharpen their diplomacy skills when explaining why the decision has been made, while minimising the risk of creating political tensions between teams.
If this is completed effectively, it will reinvigorate members that are likely to be frustrated by the inefficiency. However, it is no substitute for the vigour with which they operate when they are tasked with objectives that they know are the most valuable use of their time.
Cultural differences
The culture of the organisation has a guiding influence on the way that this challenge can be managed. In a large enterprise, the structure and hierarchy is likely to take priority given the sheer number of people required to cooperate. This means that personal efficiencies are often sacrificed at the expense of the overall business success. As a result, a CMO is likely to be confronted with decisions that are likely to be for the greater good, emphasising the need for diplomacy in managing their creative ambitions as well as of their team.
By contrast, a newly established business that is scaling rapidly may present a CMO with more varied concerns. The lack of data and rigour across the business may require them to think on their feet with greater regularity. They may not have a strong gut instinct based on their experience given the uniqueness of the situation, and there may be little evidence from which to evaluate the decisions of others. As a result, they may be wise to move fast and pivot quickly as data is collected.
We hope you’re inspired
We hope you enjoyed this guide. If you require supplemental information or would like help with your marketing strategy, then don’t hesitate to arrange a call. Alternatively, you may be interested in reading more guides and research.
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