Marketing leadership is not a deliverable

When rushed CEOs and other C-suite leaders try to cut corners with marketing, the line between tactical execution and strategic guidance can sometimes get blurred. Hoping for a quick solution to marketing problems and needs, company execs may look to familiar marketing agencies to fill a leadership void. And there the trouble begins. 

Agencies are expert at producing videos, managing social media calendars, writing blogs—all crucial tasks. But, in the absence of a dedicated marketing leader or strategy, the C-suite may also ask an agency to “handle” the CMO function, as if it could be just another deliverable. 

Let’s be clear: The fact that a firm is coordinating all of your marketing tasks does not mean they can or should act as your marketing leader. They are both essential but hugely different roles.

Strategic marketing leadership—true CMO-level thinking—is about owning the intersection of customer insight, company strategy, and market opportunity. It’s about making hard decisions, aligning teams, and being accountable for outcomes. The CMO is the person who works with the CEO and others to craft a strategic vision for marketing, and then guides the marketing agency as it executes aspects of that vision.

Marketing leadership looks upstream, asking: 

• Who exactly are we targeting – and are we missing important audiences? 

• Why are we losing deals? 

• What market shifts are we not capitalizing on? 

• How do we compare to competitors – in products and messages?

• How do we reposition to win? 

To focus on these types of questions, the head of a marketing agency might well be taking their eyes off of the most important tasks on their plate: Making sure the LinkedIn posts are scheduled properly or the podcasts edited and launched on time. 

There are a few issues that can underlie the tendency to hand off marketing guidance to the wrong people.

• To those who have never worked with a true leader of CMO, marketing may just seem like a series of activities to be lined up and then checked off.   

• Marketing is sometimes viewed as a “cost center,” rather than a growth engine – so investing in a marketing lead may seem like an unnecessary investment.

• When internal stakeholders – often salespeople and even the CEO – have been acting as a de facto marketing department, they may have mixed feelings about fully letting go of their “side hustle.” The truth is they do not have time to do justice to all that marketing should be delivering, and being liberated from this added responsibility will make their lives infinitely easier. 

More is possible – and essential

If you’re a CEO or sales leader, it is truly in your interest to make sure marketing is led, not just done. You wouldn’t ask your finance software provider to act as your CFO. You wouldn’t let your outsourced recruiter define your org chart. Why treat marketing any differently?

Hire or appoint a leader who owns the strategy. Someone who can guide agencies, vendors, and internal teams with clarity and purpose. Someone who speaks the language of revenue and customer lifetime value, not just impressions and clicks.

Because when marketing is led well, everything else becomes more effective. When you engage someone who owns the strategy and the strategic vision, you move from simple deliverables to 

• greater accountability and efficiency

• consistent brand positioning

• sustained cross-functional communication

• faster and smarter decision making

Want to learn how a CMO can guide your planning and execution? Contact me today at this email.

David Stanton is CEO and founder of The Marketing Solver. He brings over 20 years of marketing and communications leadership to every fractional CMO engagement.

When CMOs fail to own their strategic leadership roles, everyone suffers

Think about it – can you imagine any CFO inspecting employee timesheets or questioning why that guy in Product spent $37 for lunch last week?

Could such a person still claim to be living up to the “C” in their title?

And yet, all too often, we hear about CMOs who – in addition to their big-picture responsibilities – find themselves critiquing slipsheet designs or correcting punctuation in white papers. 

Somehow the CMO, more than other C-suite personas, is expected to be dotting i’s and crossing t’s – getting into the nitty gritty of anything and everything. This is partly the fault of companies and how they (mis)perceive the roles of Marketing and the CMO. Marketing is a “service” department, according to this line of thinking, and therefore should be willing to serve (coffee, tea, croissants?) the Big Folks who actually “generate revenue” … 

Ouch!

First of all, if you do not see Marketing as a revenue-generating department, then it is time for an immediate All-C-Suite meeting to level the playing field and correct perspectives.

Second, while Marketing may be designated as a “service” on someone’s org chart, that word should never be misunderstood to mean “taking orders from everyone at all times.” In this area, marketers need to own the problem as much as their colleagues; whether due to bad examples, or because they at times feel challenged to justify their existences, Marketers often reinforce the “small picture” perception of their abilities and purviews.

The truth is that CMOs need to own their authority – and insist on having others respect it – because the alternative represents a huge loss for the company and the Marketing team.

What the CEO thinks matters – in a big way

I have been reading with keen interest – partly encouraged, partly horrified – the latest annual Boathouse “CEO Study on Marketing and the CMO.” This in-depth report, based on interviews with 150 CEOs from top companies in key sectors, paints a very mixed picture of the ways that CMOs and their departments are viewed and valued.

On the plus side, the proportion of CEOs who see their CMOs as “Best in Class” has more than doubled in four years, from 21% to 45%. The study also shows similar dramatic leaps in the proportions of CEOs who say their CMOs “share my values” and “support me in driving my longterm vision.”

But there are major areas of concern, as well. Only 19% of CEOs give their CMOs a grade of “A” in terms of their ability to drive company growth. And half of CEOs feel their CMOs are “playing it safe,” with a 13% drop in CMOs’ scores for “innovation” and “generating new ideas.” 

Perhaps most disturbing is this statement: “Alarmingly, CMOs are often not seen as core to the company's growth strategy, with half on the periphery in an executional or operational role.”

The Boathouse report is complex – sometimes a bit contradictory – but well worth your time. While it can be used to affirm or dispute a host of theories about CEOs, CMOs, and organizations generally, here are a few key points that I took away.

• Relationships matter, but metrics still win

The new study suggests that CMOs have devoted worthwhile time and effort building connections to their CEOs. But while the CEOs may feel heard and supported, their gaze still inevitably falls to the bottom line – and what Marketing’s contributions may be. For the sake of the Marketing team, be sure you take a balanced approach that emphasizes relationship building and black-and-white results.       

• Stay away from your comfort zones

CMOs need to understand their strengths, their potential, and their opportunities. CMOs coming from creative backgrounds may still feel – perhaps even unconsciously – that producing beautiful, elegantly written signage and collateral is their sweet spot. Face it: Doing those things well makes you a Creative Director, not a CMO; and if you do not step up to the plate and dig into your strategic vision and priorities, the company and your Marketing team will pay a price.

• Stop trying to please everyone

The “justify your existence” mindset is a huge problem for CMOs and Marketing teams. It manufactures distractions and exponentially creates demands for things that the Marketing team should be handing off to someone else. Make sure that your role as the CMO is understood and honored from the get-go, because trying to fix the situation from two or three or ten years in will be difficult – maybe impossible.

From my view, even the troubling findings of the Boathouse report point to opportunities. The actions required are clear, so all that is needed is commitment to change and improve. And the number 1 improvement to make is for CMOs to insist – in their own minds and those of their colleagues – that their strategic role be seen as mission critical, and to act on that knowledge even when it may require some gentle educating and mindset adjustment.

David Stanton is CEO and Founder of The Marketing Solver™, innovation driven marketing agency bridging the gap between marketing strategy and activation. Please send your comments and ideas to this email. 

Every truly great performer is also a team player

Starting a business can pay dividends in a variety of surprising ways – and I’m not talking about revenue here.

One of the most pleasant side benefits of creating my own brand and building a foundation of support for my business has been looking back over the contacts I have made in a career of 40-something years. From my early days in publishing through two decades in consumer insights, I have worked with so many smart and memorable people — some of whom I haven’t thought about in way too long.

And now I have a great excuse to reconnect with them!

It is wonderful to be reminded just how talented and inspiring and diverse these folks are – professionals with extraordinary skills from every part of the world, all still vivid in my memory. I am sure I learned from every one of them somehow or other.

The alchemy of teams

This all got me to thinking about the nature of teams and teamwork. Wherever I have worked, I have been part of a team – and often a series of intelocked teams whose activities were highly coordinated and interdependent (or intended to be … ).

And when you work in teams, you learn certain things about how they work, and how they affect the productivity and intelligence of you as an individual. There are definitely smart and not-so-smart ways to approach teamwork, and I feel I know a little about what that means. Here are a few observations from my modest experience.

1. Trust the work of others

We all have plenty of things to get done – and in a well-designed team, there should be little or no overlap between roles. But sometimes we may feel that we know better than someone else how to do something, even when it is not our job. More often than not, this reflects some kind of insecurity on our part, or maybe dissatisfaction with the role that is actually ours. The upshot, however, is likely to be wasted time and possibly growing frustration and confusion for the team.

When these urges to jump into someone else’s lane hit, take a mindful look at what is going on. If there are fundamental issues with the team, or a sense of not feeling fulfilled by your own role, address those head on, rather than breaking the org chart and causing grief for everyone.

2. Share credit generously

In a well-functioning team, there should be little or no need to worry about who is getting the spotlight at any given moment. Everyone should know that they will get the recognition they have earned, and no one should be hungering for more than their fair share of glory. 

So, when the opportunities arise, share credit warmly and fully, making sure that you are more inclusive rather than less. A split second of recognition from the right person in the right context can validate months of work and set the foundation for continued shared achievement. But the moment that anyone feels ignored, or that one team member is getting credit for more than they may deserve, bad feelings will ensue and the whole system can ride off the rails. Why take that chance?

3. Don’t blame, and never make excuses

Sometimes it seems, in corporate life, as if deflecitng blame and finding people to take the heat for a given failure is some kind of science or art form. We know people who are masters at the craft – but do we respect them or ever want to work with them if we can avoid it?

Blaming and excuse making rate very high on the toxicity index when it comes to work environments – and anyone who puts you in a position where you need to throw someone else under the bus is a colleague worth avoiding at all costs. There is no end to the damage that this kind of nonsense can do to crucial work relationships – and there is no telling how much good will you build when you own up to your mistakes and tell everyone you will do better. 

The dangerous thing about heroes

In US society, particularly, the legendary status of the solo-preneur has a kind of intoxicating power. We all celebrate Edison, Steve Jobs, Michael Bloomberg, and others who have stood at the top of wildly successful brands and organizations. Among other things, they were or are brilliant at building their own hero stories and marketing themselves as geniuses – and, in the process, gave their brands foundational stories that can inspire customer loyalty.

But this focus on the hero obscures the truth of achievement: That nothing complex can be created, launched, and sustained without help – usually a lot of it. So, as much as the hero story may be appealing, tread with great care in this area; it is better to sow the seeds of future, continuing success by recognizing your team than succumbing to the desire to claim all the glory yourself.

David Stanton is CEO of The Marketing Solver and a Marketing leader with over 20 years of experience. Contact him at this address.

The thinker & the doer

In today’s world, staying “lean and mean” is the order of the day for B2B marketing teams. Even companies that are thriving are, at best, holding marketing budgets steady — or, more likely, making cuts by leveraging AI, automation, and other digital resources.

According to a 2024 Gartner survey of CMOs, marketing budgets now account for 7.7% of total revenue at the average firm, compared to 9% in 2023 — and 11% in the years before the pandemic. 

Stepping in to fill many shoes in this era of consolidation are “fractional” leaders — CMOs, creative chiefs, and other “freelance” department heads who bring needed expertise and guidance, but often work 20 or even fewer hours a week. They usually do not earn benefits but help deliver (or should) some of the focus and consistency that on-staff leaders would. 

But to be a marketing leader — fractional or on-staff — in today’s environment, it is not enough to say “I just do strategy.” It’s true that CMOs need to focus on the big picture — continually aligning marketing strategy to brand and product goals and synching up all of the department’s many activities. 

But because teams are thin and budgets tight, marketing heads also need to be able to switch gears, roll up their sleeves, and get stuff done. It is popular these days to say “multitasking is impossible” — but today’s marketing leaders need to find a way to make multitasking a way of life; otherwise, they will be letting precious opportunities fall thru the cracks.

What could and should a marketing leader do? Here are some thoughts:

• Talk to CMOs at your top three clients to find out their marketing plans for the rest of the year — and how your companies can partner.

• Help your COO or CTO prepare for a LinkedIn live interview on the ways that AI is helping your company raise its game.

• Develop a survey for clients on how they would like to see your company improve customer service in 2025.

• Host a podcast series on ways that your company is helping employees develop their personal brands. 

• Hold lunch meetings with the sales team to develop new techniques for making your conference booth truly irresistible and impactful.

Does it sound like a lot? In a world of shrinking marketing budgets and teams, “a lot” is the new “just about enough.” The marketing leader cannot afford to be a behind-the-scenes player exclusively, presenting to leadership and tweaking the same planning deck from quarter to quarter. If you are not visible and seeing the sun (physical or metaphorical) shine on your head every day, you are missing too many opportunities and letting your company down.

The truth is that the marketing leader has unique power in the organization to straddle departments and reach out to other C-suite leaders for … whatever might seem like a good idea! Making things happen and driving innovation is always the marketer’s purview — and if it isn’t, something is broken and needs to be fixed.

Is this a call to become a Superman? Maybe — and maybe that is what is needed. It’s not about keeping your job; it’s about making sure your company has what it needs to thrive in a truly tough marketplace.

If that is not the CMO’s mission, what is?