I'm Gen X'er, who started my marketing career in Silicon Valley. I lead my team through the rise of SaaS, the pivots to Video, the heyday of performance marketing, and now through the Ai-Everywhere Era. They also stare at more dashboards than humans should. So when the CEO says he's ready to let go of the CMO, I ask if they're firing the real issue or if they're the only person in C-Suite without the tools to protect themselves.
Let's start with the uncomfortable facts. CMO Tenure stubbornly drags C-Suite averages and remains the shortest of the common company roles. Recent data shows that the Fortune 500 CMO is about 4.3 years in seating, and is significantly lower than most peers. Some people move to CEO roles or to CMO positions in large companies. But for many, especially in the consumer category, churn is a reality.
Why is that so? For one thing, the effectiveness of marketing spending is notoriously difficult to prove or defend. At the same time, when revenue targets are overlooked, marketing leaders are the leaders who remain on the ground, particularly in online retail, trying to revive patients who have not had a chance.
But the deeper problem lies beneath it all. The enterprise system for marketing is broken and continues to pretend to be a talent issue.
Below are four factors that can impair CMO performance:
1. Tool Sprol Paradox
As seen as a series of incremental advancements, new marketing information systems are too cheap and too risky, rather than buying. However, all the next steps we take to expand and deepen our insights are to have the paradoxical effect of undermining our effectiveness and reliability.
Marketing has historically been behind Enterprise Systems Party, which has led to us getting caught up in this DOOM loop. It only emerged as a distinct functional unit when Tech first first made other, then-established features possible. Since then, marketing has been competing to catch up. This issue was only exacerbated by the advent of SaaS, and therefore, we were unable to purchase yet another point solution using corporate cards rather than C-level approval.
Today we are “optimized” but we don't have a holistic enterprise-class solution. Each tool speaks its own dialect, reports on its own timeline, and has an incentive to justify its own existence.
2. Data problems
The net effect of tool sprawl is that all key operating functions have a well-established platform of records that produce coherent and timely views of performance.Exclude marketing. Finance has EPM feeding ERP. Sales are deeply composed of CRM. Operations include work management and supply/fulfillment systems related to resource planning. However, marketing operates a patchwork of point solutions. Here, here, heroic marketing open teams, including Martech there, half-customized automation platform, social scheduler, event apps, PR trackers and more, will paste tapes in a spreadsheet. In fact, sewing them into a unified, unified, almost realistic field of vision exceeds the capabilities of ad hoc teams on the Fortune 2000 scale.
Therefore, marketing does not have a single source of truth, and only a stack of systems layered above each other creates proxy indicators and truth derivatives. You cannot report your budget, results, or overall without looking at the big picture. AI is now threatening to exacerbate the issues as a swarm of agents rewrites traffic rules across digital channels, eroding the tidy, short-term performance signals that digital native marketing leaders have become dependent on.
3. Attribute Trap
We trained the board to expect all click-through accuracy reports, including brands, PR, events, communities, partnerships, content syndication, and even channels with long or spread tails, such as on-premises signage. These investments affect the outcome, but each one is on its own time horizon and there are rarely any direct lines to buy. As a result, we will continually reexplain the proxy indicator to executives who are stuck with a defensive attitude and who need (very reasonably) respond to apples that the current stack cannot provide.
Due to attribution issues, marketing leaders sound like we are hiding behind jargon. In fact, we're swimming there so there's no choice. Brand sentiment, reach, search visibility, followers, unique monthly visitors. Will any of these be converted into actual revenue? No, yes. perhaps. The real answer: it depends.
4. Budget integration
Throughout the cycle and sector, the marketing investment benchmark remains concentrated on single-digit earnings stocks. And recent research shows that many organizations are cutting back Below That line. It's a dangerous game. The combination of constrained budgets and increased complexity ensures a very infrastructural underinvestment that makes spending more productive.
What does this look like within your company? CMOs, which need to do forensic financial analysis every time someone asks for a “just one more” report, adjust dozens of campaign types to keep their brand love high and attack pipeline targets.
If something slips elsewhere in the business (stock, pricing, service level), marketing is a simple scapegoat. On the surface, marketing and marketing data is intended to supply every stage of the process, but that's an illusion. A unified view, useful attribution, and lack of resources means that sales cannot respond promptly or reliably to questions that are reliable. Was this lift driven by that marketing spending? Was that mistake caused by non-market constraints? Over time, frustration becomes sales.
So, before firing a CMO, consider giving them the support they deserve. They are heading for the sake of heaven. Do you deny weapons and telemetry to the public during the war? Here is the punch list I hope every board gives to the CEO:
- Establish a record platform for marketing. It's not a “another dashboard.” A real enterprise-grade system for lining up plans, budgets, commitments, campaigns in flight, and channel-wide results on a consistent clock. Build it or buy it. However, don't expect CMOs to supplement the large number of spreadsheets.
- Get the data pipe correctly. All departments require that CMOs provide the necessary input and output to be provided to them to make it easier to integrate form and format marketing. This includes finance (budget, performance, POS) and sales (account, opportunity, closure won), as well as feeds from key channels and agents. Standardized taxonomy (campaigns, audiences, geography, offers) can be standardized to improve results and drill without the need for manual or offline translation. These are your supply lines and should be funded that way.
- Define the North Star and Guardrail. I agree with a short list of enterprise metrics (e.g., revenue growth, margins, CAC/LTV by segment, brand considerations), and a handful of marketing KPIs for ladders that clean them. Requests simple and repeatable top down/bottoms up adjustments: This is what we plan to spend. This is what was done. This is what moved. This is what we are moving next. Remember: Every time you or your C-Suite Cohort appears with an extraordinary request that requires custom data analysis, you are far from the forefront of your marketing team.
- Respect your time perspective. Some channels are fast signals (search, paid social). Other complexes (brands, PR, content, community). Establish a squirrel of decisions that match reality: weekly for quick optimization channels. Durable lever monthly or quarterly. We take responsibility for that cadence to the CMO and support the easiest thing to count what actually drives the market, rather than arbitrary “everyday” updates. Understand that payoffs will soon require sustained efforts that are not clear.
- It funds not only the media, but also the mix. If your budget only buys impressions, you get an impression. This is a fluff metric that CMOs can't fully adhere to, as it means someone may have seen something. Invest in smarter features such as audience research, creative iteration, testing frameworks, content OPS, and analysis/engineering muscles that turn noisy data into management signals.
- Gives authority that is commensurate with accountability. If marketing is on the hook for pipeline or revenue contributions, make sure your CMO has a say in pricing, packaging, channel strategies, and customer experience touchpoints. Otherwise, you are asking your general to win the war with only infantry.
- Create space for judgment. If 70-80% of the portfolio are consistently attributable and reported in rigor, 20-30% can (and should) be allowed on informed bets, sponsors, breakthrough creatives, and category building moves. That's where the momentum and brand equity of the category are fake. This also tells the CMO that his or her instincts are important.
Strong CMOs don't want free passes. They want the same thing their C-Suite peers already have: a consistent system where they can confidently see, decide, act and report. Provide a recording platform and a unified data spine, and quickly separates signals from the noise. It reflects people who can actually act as growth leaders and those who are good in the room.
Alternatively, fire the CMO and start the clock again.
