We all know the old trope about CMOs holding the most tenuous seat in the C-suite. After all, you’re easy to blame for any performance shortfalls, and even easier to replace with some other bright-eyed dreamer.
Making matters worse, the job keeps dramatically changing. First ads went digital. Then data unification was put on your plate as well as an omnichannel strategy now being required. There’s the growing curse of cancel-culture for you to handle. And now we’re adding artificial intelligence to your list of responsibilities, too.
But here’s some surprising truths for you:
- The CMO role is not as volatile as you might think—at an average of 4.2 years, it’s just under the 4.6 year average tenure for all C-suite roles.
- Because the challenges of the CMO role have become so complex, an effective person in the position is harder to replace.
- The need for such an increased scope of knowledge is raising the value and standing of the CMO role within the organization, helping them achieve more than ever.
- Fractional CMO roles are also becoming more common, affording marketers greater latitude to problem solve and correct issues.
It’s time to forget the tropes and instead embrace the opportunities before you. So let’s consider a few of the ways the most effective CMOs are increasing their job tenure, despite the ever expanding list of responsibilities tied to the position.
Building Teams of Effective Allies
The most important quality we see in successful CMOs—and this is particularly true among fractional CMOs—is they are effective team builders and loyal partners to their allies.
Top-down marketing structures, where the CMO forms a vision with executive staff and then everyone else falls in line, have become increasingly difficult to implement. The learning curve on the technologies in play can be steep, often leading to incomplete or, worse yet, naive guidance.
Marketing leadership has always needed to build a solid staff and work with trusted partners. But now you need to also create teams capable of taking a lead role in the development and execution of marketing initiatives. What’s more, you need to incent these teams to be collaborative with each other to ensure consistency across all programs.
By doing this you allow employees, agencies and vendors to shoulder more of the burden of developing a cohesive marketing strategy that fully integrates across the brand footprint—all while maintaining control of the outcome.
Plus with fractional CMO roles on the rise, building a strong team of partners and experts is essential for achieving ongoing results—even when there is no full-time person to oversee every aspect of the marketing operation.
Looking Beyond Your 12-month Plan
The needs of the annual marketing calendar can be overwhelming. But the most successful CMOs never lose sight of the bigger picture. That’s particularly difficult in a world where nearly every touchpoint with your product is expected to be measurable and therefore matched with an ROI metrics.
Many of the marketing technologies and innovations we are faced with today require extensive development and testing that can span many months, if not years. But if you fail to invest that effort now, you could find ourselves lagging behind competitors for considerably more time later. Hence trusted partners and allies outside your own team are proving to be great testing grounds for fast test and learn initiatives.
This is why effective CMOs always make smart, long-range bets based on the trusted counsel of their internal and external teams.
Not everything you try will pan out. But by taking the risk and maintaining a forward focus, you signal to your employees and partners that their ideas are valued—which in turn inspires even greater efforts from your team.
Inspiring Ongoing Confidence
The CMO role has always required leadership mixed with translating technology and trends into the organization while maintaining a part of showmanship skills. With so many intangibles in marketing that may belie visible results, it forces you to always put on a brave face and stoke belief in your programs, both in the boardroom and among the rank and file.
But as the complexity of the job grows, it requires you to offer more than just cheerleading. Now you need to also be a perpetual student, with a willingness to be trained in the intricacies of the latest innovations in the marketplace.
Effective CMOs today need to be more curious, open and approachable than in the past. This means they must sharpen their listening skills to absorb the facts completely. They need the ability to instantly assess this information and project outcomes. And they need to encourage and reward honest feedback to make sure they continue receiving truthful reporting from their teams.
Leading a winning marketing organization in the modern world doesn’t require you to know everything about how AI works or how to navigate every kind of social media uprising. But it does ask you to have your staff and partners’ collective backs.
Or to put it more succinctly, earning the confidence of your organization starts with having complete confidence in the teams you have assembled.
The road forward is definitely full of potholes for CMOs across the U.S. But the good news cannot be ignored as well. CMOs everywhere are finding ways to stay in their role longer and longer, resulting in more vibrant brands and more effective campaigns. And joining these ranks may require little more than admitting where you need help, then going out to find it.
Tim Ringel is the Global CEO of the next-generation international advertising group Meet The People.
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