Only 34% of senior executives (CEOs and CFOs) agree with their CMO about how marketing supports growth.
Just 22% of senior executives say their CMO has significantly clarified marketing accountabilities.
Those are staggering numbers from a Gartner report published in January 2025 called “How CMOs Overcome the C-Suite Expectations Gap.”
Yet, they’re not entirely surprising if you follow research about the CMO role.
“Some of these are evergreen challenges for CMOs,” said Chris Ross, vice president and analyst at Gartner, who co-authored the report.
“Expectations of CMOs are higher,” said co-author Sharon Cantor Ceurvorst, vice president research at Gartner. “CEOs and CFOs expect them to take more responsibility.”
You heard right. More responsibility.
It’s not enough that there are more channels than ever, more ways to reach customers, more levers to pull, more applications to manage and more data to analyze.
Here’s an example of more responsibility. More than two-thirds of the CMOs in Gartner’s research are accountable for retaining existing customers, not just acquiring new ones. But do they have the tools and team to do that? Gartner found only 36% have ultimate accountability for the customer experience.
Here’s another depressing number from Gartner’s report: 57% of CMOs fell short of at least one of their growth objectives in the most recently completed fiscal year. That’s not going to endear them to their leadership colleagues.
Do CMOs struggle with business acumen?
There’s a problem here that seems to run deeper than the actual marketing strategy and tactics.
According to the Gartner report, a lack of alignment on growth initiatives, which are CEOs’ top priorities, often sparks skepticism about the relevance and value of marketing investments.
On a more personal level, Gartner found that CMOs who aren’t viewed as effective collaborators struggle to gain support from other senior executives and functional leaders, damaging their reputation.
And finally, CMOs who struggle to communicate the value and impact of marketing are making it more difficult to secure budget and resources.
Mark Stouse, CEO of Proof Analytics and a MarTech contributor, interviewed hundreds of Fortune 2000 CEOs and CFOs about go-to-market (GTM) strategies for a book he’s writing.
“What I heard was, ‘I don’t have any understanding at all that is reliable about how all of the piece parts work and move together, how they synergize or what keeps them from synergizing. How much money am I actually getting for the money I invest?’” said Stouse.
Stouse said that if GTM strategies (which cover sales and marketing) are an investment, a whole set of assumptions is attached to them. Senior executives will want to understand the S-curve, which identifies the point of diminishing returns (at the top of the curve) and the gap between the current spending and the performance if spending increases.
But if it’s an expense instead of an investment, then a department like marketing will be seen as a service-delivery organization. In that case, Stouse said, senior executives will not expect value and will simply try to get the services as inexpensively as possible.
So which is it?
“No one can give them the answers to those questions,” Stouse said. “And so they tend to write it off or ascribe it to a fundamental lack of business acumen, among marketers and salespeople in particular.”
Dig deeper: What do C-level execs think of their GTM strategies? A conversation with Mark Stouse
What CMOs need to do now
According to Gartner’s Ross and Ceurvorst, CMOs must elevate their leadership profile and take on a more prominent role. They need to be cross-functional and seen as innovators.
Yes, the best CMOs have a deep understanding of their customers, but they also have the real-life experience to build relationships and understand how the needs of the CFO, for example, differ from those of the CEO and the sales leader.
“Really good CMOs are really good at contextualizing marketing in terms of the business,” Ross said. “They can apply a marketing orientation to enterprise thinking.”
That means good CMOs need to understand enterprise thinking, such as how marketing can make an impact, then relay that information to their team and have their team send results back up the chain of command.
Behind every good CMO is an all-star team
If you’re an aspiring CMO, hopefully you’re taking notes.
Whether you aspire to the role or not, this is where you, as a marketer, come in.
Ross said there are two things, in particular, CMOs need from their teams: First, they need other people to step up and take care of the operational work. And second, they need (what else?) data and insights.
“CMOs are going to rely on marketing operations and insights and analytics leaders,” Ross said.
And we all know you have the data.
“Most marketers are swimming in data,” Ross said.” Data doesn’t make decisions. It informs decisions. At the end of the day, data has never been perfect.”
And that’s why those who might be best positioned to help the CMO are those working with the data. According to Ceurvorst, CMOs need to trust the people working in data, not just their math. CMOs need to trust their reasoning skills.
Marketing leaders can’t simply present numbers. They need to present conclusions — the correct conclusions to the right people. They need to get the what, why, when and how right.
Marketers with practical data and reasoning skills can do that. Those skills make you and your CMO look good in today’s world. And they can help put you on stage if that’s where you want to be.
After all, as Ross said, “The highest functioning CMOs have rock stars working for them.”
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