CMO

About CMO

Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) is a corporate title referring to an executive responsible for various marketing in an organization. Most often the position reports to the chief executive officer.

With primary or shared responsibility for areas such as sales management, product development, distribution channel management, public relations, marketing communications (including advertising and promotions), pricing, market research, and customer service, CMOs are faced with a diverse range of specialized disciplines in which they are forced to be knowledgeable. This challenge is compounded by the fact that the day-to-day activities of these functions, which range from the highly analytical (eg. – pricing and market research) to highly creative (advertising and promotions), are carried out by subordinates possessing learning and cognitive styles to which the CMO must adapt his or her own leadership style.

Beyond the challenges of leading their own subordinates, the CMO is invariably reliant upon resources beyond their direct control. That is to say, the priorities and/or resources of functional areas outside of marketing such as production, information technology, legal, and finance have a direct impact on the achievement of marketing objectives. Consequently, more than any other senior executive, the CMO must influence peers in order to achieve their own goals. Clearly, this necessity to lead peers compounds the complexity of challenge faced by the CMO.

[edit] Challenges

Ultimately, the CMO is responsible for facilitating company communications internally and externally. In-line with other c-level objectives, the CMO must work towards building a profitable company. The unpredictable impact of communications efforts coupled with the need to drive profits often leads to a short tenure for most CMOs. Forbes cited the average CMO tenure has grown to just over 28 months in 2008.^[1]

Coupled with innovative thinking, the CMO must find practical solutions.^[2] Often times, CMOs are challenged by the status quo. Deviations without monetary results can be misunderstood as incompetence and misguided thinking. Further, the CMO must align marketing efforts with other c-level executives, which can create creative conflicts.

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Mentioned In 25 Articles
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Explore Article Social Media B2B (Mar 3 2010)

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Explore Article Trevor Eade's Blog (Feb 12 2010)

...It is becoming the connecting thread that links all points of the Value Chain. Re-post – The Social CMO Blog (Read Full Article)

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Explore Article starwebdesigner.com (Jan 25 2010)

...s tactics… they just make them easier and more credible * Increase colloquial “voice” of the CEO/CMO/CTO/Social Marketing specialist. Finding and amplifying the voice of the company/fou... (Read Full Article)

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Learning From the Best of the Best in Online Marketing

Explore Article ClickZ (Jan 21 2010)

...d Social Commerce In the column, "Social Commerce," that launches next month, Bazaarvoice CMO Sam Decker will examine how brands can tap customer insights about products and services into a str... (Read Full Article)

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Spikes In Sales, Pipeline Activity Point To 2010 Emerging As ...

Explore Article demandgenreport.com (Jan 19 2010)

...e break-out year for marketing automation. But as I’ve been saying for quite some time, if you’re a CMO running a B2B shop and you’re not planning on implementing automation, you might want to reconsider... (Read Full Article)

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Explore Article semls.org (Jan 13 2010)

...list as a middleman to produce their message and are instead producing it themselves. Mike Sprouse, chief marketing officer at Epic Advertising, started a 28-page monthly (printed) magazine called Winning the Web. The magaz... (Read Full Article)

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Fire your Director of Social Media!

Explore Article Buzz Marketing for Technology (Dec 22 2009)

... fired!" and after thinking about that I can’t help but agree with him. The theory here is as CMO’s appoint a head of social media in their organizations, it fosters silo-like behavior and departme... (Read Full Article)

Comment on Article Mentions: Social Media HubSpot B2B
Social Media 201: How To Use Social Media Sites To Increase Traffic

Explore Article Resources for Online Business Owners (Dec 9 2009)

...he Demand Generation and Conversion efforts at HubSpot. Her previous experience includes serving as Chief Marketing Officer for MarketingExperiments, MarketingSherpa and InTouch, leading marketing research and publishing or... (Read Full Article)

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Explore Article The CMO Club (Dec 6 2009)

... thought of softer demographic segmentation as yesterday's idea is coming up more frequently at CMO CLUB dinners. So what real thought leadership is out there? I heard about Tom Cotton and the crew a... (Read Full Article)

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Social Media and Digital Marketing Blog: Posting / Month - How to ...

Explore Article Social Media and Digital Marketing Blog (Nov 17 2009)

...ating a thought leadership over Virtual Marketing Ecosystems. In my past avatar: I have worked with CMO Axis the first MPO of the world as Marketing program Specialist and Account manager and have specia... (Read Full Article)

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Anything Goes Marketing: B2B Marketing Trends From Eloqua ...

Explore Article Anything Goes Marketing (Nov 15 2009)

...ge: what do we contribute to the pipeline, how many sales accepted oppty do you need? paynejoe: Avg CMO tenure 22 mnths. BUT if the CMO has a demand generation or sales enablement background he/she is 2 times liklier to make 5yrs #ee09... (Read Full Article)

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What are the challenges CMOs are wrestling with?

Explore Article The CMO Club (Nov 12 2009)

Peter Krainik, founder of The CMO Club, kicked off the 2009 CMO Thought Leadership Summit in San Francisco today. Krainik asked the group of 100+ to introduce them... (Read Full Article)

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Thought leadership marketing and news media consumption

Explore Article Thought Leadership Times Blog (Nov 8 2009)

When speaking with a prospect of HiveFire, I received and noted the following objection from a Chief Marketing Officer: “What’s the point? Why would we ever want to have our customers or prospects read industry news f... (Read Full Article)

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Twitter as a Marketing Tool

Explore Article The Business Image (Nov 6 2009)

...ccess the followers of others, such as your clients, your peers and your competitors. If I find the CMO of a company, for example, I check their followers and click on them. They are directors of marketi... (Read Full Article)

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CMO Council Teams With Custom Publishing Council to Create Content ROI Center

Explore Article Marketwire (Nov 5 2009)

The Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council is dedicated to high-level knowledge exchange, thought leadership and personal relationshi... (Read Full Article)

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