Chief Marketing Officer: Roles and Responsibilities

John Kling^*
*Correspondence: John Kling, Department of Economic Studies, Walden University, USA, Tel: + 17468958124, Email:

Editorial

A chief marketing officer (CMO), also called a worldwide marketing officer or marketing director, may be a business executive liable for marketing activities in a corporation. Whilst historically these titles may have signified a liability, for instance at Companies House within the UK, the titles are less strict/formal within the 21st Century and permit companies to acknowledge the evolving and increasingly significant role those marketers can play in an organization, not least due to the inherent character of successful marketers. The CMO leads brand management, marketing communications (including advertising, promotions and PR), marketing research, product marketing, channel management, pricing, customer success, and customer service.

The CMO may be a member of the C-suite and typically reports to the chief military officer. Variety of senior vice presidents, vice presidents, directors, and other senior marketing managers liable for various parts of the marketing strategy may report on to the CMO. The chief marketing officer has traditionally been a full-time, in-house position. However, in recent years there has been an emergence of the part-time CMO or Fractional CMO.

Challenges

The CMO is liable for facilitating growth, sales and marketing strategy. They need to work towards objectives like revenue generation, cost reduction, or risk mitigation. The unpredictable effect of selling efforts, including the necessity to drive profits, often results in a brief tenure for many CMOs. Forbes reported that the typical CMO tenure in 2008 was just over 28 months.

CMOs see customer loyalty as their top priority within the digital era; their second priority is to style experiences for tablets and mobile apps.

A study from consulting company Spencer Stuart in 2021 showed that ladies made up 47% of CMO positions in 2020, a rise from the 43% reported in 2019. 13% of CMOs had racially or ethnically diverse background in 2020, down from 14% in 2019.

Roles and Responsibilities

The day-to-day tasks are often categorically different from each other, thanks to the fluid nature of the CMO's skill set: language is required to stitch together all aspects of the corporate. Thus, during a given day the CMO completes tasks that fall under many various categories: Analytical tasks, like pricing and marketing research.

Creative tasks, like graphic design, advertising and merchandise, and repair promotion.

Interpersonal tasks, like coordinating with other company executives in creating alignment on strategy and execution plans. The CMO must quickly react to the changing market conditions and competitive dynamics and must reshape, as needed, the company's strategy and execution plans supported real-time market scenarios. Each of those products comes from a special department; therefore the CMO must be a nexus of information: it's a highly receptive role, with involvement in departments like production, information technology, corporate communications, documentation, public relations, law, human resources, and finance.

In the 21st century, digitalization and therefore the rise of consumercentric marketing have changed the role of the CMO. They’re now typically finding themselves handling customer-facing technology implementations additionally to the above tasks. One analyst predicted that within the future CMOs will spend more thereon than their counterpart CIOs. Consistent with another analyst firm, few senior-executive positions are going to be subject to the maximum amount change over subsequent few years as that of the chief marketing officer. Peers to the CMO include chief human resources officer, chief technology officer, chief treasurer, chief communications officer, chief procurement officer, chief information officer, and general counsel.