“CMOs struggle to make the ‘big bets’, those single significant initiatives that have a major impact. This is because, instead of being able to identify one key priority to pursue, everything is a priority. CMOs need to be radical when it comes to prioritization.”

“Not addressing prioritization can create very real issues. Teams end up working on so many competing priorities that they struggle to make progress on anything. Teams become burnt out and CMOs struggle to create real impact.”

“Radical prioritization differs from regular prioritization in three key areas:

• Narrow focus on a small number of initiatives rather than broad business support

• Active deselection of initiatives, rather than juggling a large volume of requests

• Objective-focused, not service focused”

“To prioritize effectively, CMOs need to ‘purge the zombies”: those middling initiatives that are positive, but mediocre, and fail to drive exceptional results. Focus instead on those initiatives that provide disproportionate value to the organization.”

“Communicate that marketing is a finite resource, but expect some pushback. Rally executive-level support, be explicit about your team’s need for extreme focus, and set expectations. Actively, consistently purge initiatives that don’t have impact and continuously recalibrate your function’s priorities.”

“CMOs face three hard truths in 2024:

• Stakeholders still don’t really understand the value of marketing: proving the impact of marketing’s value is one of the most urgent priorities for CMOs.

• Value perception gaps hurt. It matters whether stakeholders view marketing as a cost center, or a profit center that drives value creation for the organization.

• Proving value is not a data challenge. 9.8% of CMO budgets are spent on marketing data and analytics, yet CMOs still struggle to prove marketing’s value, because it’s not a data problem.”

• It’s time to face down the hard truths about marketing’s value:

  • Understand why your stakeholders don’t understand marketing’s value

  • Prioritize campaigns that focus on marketing’s enterprise value

  • Create value narrative that focuses on changing perceptions”

• “From a CFO’s perspective, marketing has a messy value case: its scope is complex and varied, and its value is intangible and ephemeral.”

• “Imagine value as a negotiation - marketing campaigns should be laser focused on aiding your negotiating position. They need to create messages that:

  • Motivate - make it worth it for your audience to invest

  • Challenge - prompt reappraisal of assumptions or biases

  • Minimize - area easy for the audience to process"

“CMOs are still reeling from the waves of change impacting customer data in recent years, from data privacy regulations to technological developments such as customer data platforms (CDPs).”

“Marketing will begin to lose control of customer data and technology as IT centralizes enterprise ownership. CMOs should increase their focus on data purpose rather than data management and guide the organization with their insights and experience.”

“Gartner predicts that by 2026, 75% of businesses will use GenAI to create synthetic customer data, up from less than 5% in 2023.”

“Machine customers will drive change. To prepare, CMOs should ensure their customer data model can identify and categorize machine customers.”

“To prepare for future disruptions, CMOs should conduct scenario planning with cross-functional stakeholders and ensure their vision for customer relationship, data exchange and use-cases is ready for these changes.”