CMOs Could Be In For A Rough Ride In 2023 According To Gartner

Gartner has released its 2023 CMO Leadership Vision and has defined three key themes that will require CMO action in order to stride forward in an uncertain year. According to Garter analyst Ewan McIntyre, “It's not necessarily going to be an easy year in 2023, or even heading into 2024. There's a bunch of pressures right now coming from inside and outside of the organization. If you have a CMO who is absolutely laser focused on how they create value for the enterprise, how they are thinking about the kinds of capabilities that are material to success, and how they're thinking about their brands shifting in volatile brand environment, there will be major opportunities for CMOs. But if you're going into 2023 thinking that you're in the same situation as you were pre-pandemic, then then you're in for a bit of a rough ride!”

The three themes Gartner has defined may challenge CMOs who have been primarily focused on brand storytelling as the recommended actions require pulling other levers that impact demand. McIntyre elaborated, “If we look at the Gartner CEO and senior business executive survey that we run annually, CEOs are looking for marketing absolutely to build a strong and sustainable brand, but they are looking for growth as well. What's different about 2023 than 2020 is that there's not necessarily the sense that the sword of Damocles is hanging over marketing and that there's a an easy move for the CFO to make, which is to slash away marketing's budget. We're hearing from CEOs and CFOs is that they're willing to fund marketing if marketing can prove to be a growth engine for the enterprise. That puts the brand and comms focused CMO at somewhat of a disadvantage, if they've not worked out how they are in control of the direct levers for driving that growth.” Here are Gartner’s three action themes for CMOs in 2023.

1. CMOs must provide mutual value on digital channels across the full customer journey

As buyer’s behavior has evolved and has increasing involved using digital channels to explore and buy, marketers need to understand the buyer’s journey and add value at each stage of the process. McIntyre shared, “In the past, marketing has perhaps been guilty of putting messages out there or creating experiences that are helpful to marketing, but not necessarily helpful to the customers or prospects. There needs to be a genuine appreciation about what the different stages are in those customer journeys and genuine efforts around creating some sort of value exchange at each stage, whether that is helping somebody who doesn't know what they need yet, helping somebody who is further down choosing what options are available to them, or helping somebody understand that they've made the right choices. Now, that sounds like an easy thing to do. But it requires a set of integrated technologies and data and also requires something of a mindset shift, which is how can I place myself in the shoes of my customer.”

There are also structural barriers to fully connected customer experiences as McIntyre explained, “Enterprises have done a great job of embracing customer experience. But the CX team tends to be that team over there and they're not deeply embedded with the team that does multi-channel marketing. We’ve talked about customer journey orchestration and the set of techniques and technologies that need to be implemented to do this at scale and the challenges of understanding and responding to those journeys. But you then need to create these scaled experiences, getting the right content, to the right customers, on the right channel. There are a number of different challenges and none of them are insurmountable, but it does require a shift of perception about why are we doing this. How do we make sure that we are focusing on the customer, rather than focusing on the technology and data, to create genuinely helpful customer engagement.

2. CMOs must adapt their teams to advance new cross-functional operating models

Driving growth is not an individual player sport but inherently a multi-player team sport which requires collaboration in order to generate successful outcomes. McIntyre expanded on this reality, “We talked about CMOs who drive growth and the difference between them and the brand focused CMOs. A big part of that is how they understand the parameters of the function, and of the other functions that are material to success, and how to collaboratively build a plan that is laser focused on success.” He believes marketing organizations not only need to evolve the “lines and boxes” structure, but also their operating models for working with other functions. “What are the competencies and capabilities that are material to success? Some of those competencies are around collaboration, and how marketing can work better with its counterparts in sales and supply chain, and indeed, all of the various functions that are material to your success.”

Collaboration isn’t easy and requires an understanding of “how things get done” within a company according to McIntyre. “There's a great piece of research in our library, which is a diagnosis of what is what is not working right now for organizations. Some of those things are about the structures and the operating models, but many of them are about the culture. The underappreciated element is, of course, culture. But the super underappreciated element is the actual culture, how things really get done within the organization. It’s difficult at the CMO level to tap into that, the real politics of how work gets done within the organization. But they absolutely need to do that, because this collaboration is both hard and soft collaboration. It is about understanding the networks and sub-networks within the enterprise. CMOs should go back to the root cause analysis about what is stopping them from being successful, and map out where it sits within the mix of organization, operating model and culture. Once you identify that, then you can start to home in on the specific cultural challenges that are the most material to success rather than wasting time and energy on big cultural change initiatives that might not actually move the needle.”

3. CMOs must connect brand strategy to experience and business outcomes

Today, brands are built not simply through messages delivered by marketing, but by experiences customers have at every stage of the buying and using journey. McIntyre echoes this perspective, “CMOs need to move away from the viewpoint that investing in brand is a net good, and everybody will understand that that's the right thing to do. They need to move towards being laser focused on those points of brand measurement that can be used to prove the value of your brand, and to hone and optimize that value as well. A brand measurement frameworks can guide you all the way through each of those points from awareness through to engagement and to purchase so that you can understand those points of value and where those points of value are being disrupted. You can be much more agile in your management of brand.” He cited research that indicated marketers can achieve a 52% lift in brand commitment after a buyer has meaningful experience with an unfamiliar brand. That has significant implications on the importance of delivering great digital experiences at the moment of truth for challenger brand who are discovered by buyers late in the exploration process. It serves as a reminder on the importance delivering great post-purchase experiences to strengthen brand commitment.

These three imperatives will be a challenge for many marketing leaders but essential for becoming successful growth leaders at their firms. McIntyre’s summarized his advice for CMOs, “You must be focused and absolutely clear about what your essential priorities are for the year ahead. These themes are really about focus, about building the minimum viable strategy and cutting away that extraneous stuff which will not be valuable to help you win in 2023.”