Sense of Urgency: 3 Things CMOs Need On Their 2024 To-Do List
It’s not surprising that readying for artificial intelligence is at the top of the checklist for marketers, but are today’s CMOs prioritizing the right skills to achieve their AI-fueled initiatives?
Gartner laid out the three priorities that CMOs should focus on for 2024, as the marketing function becomes what Ewan McIntyre, chief of research and VP analyst in the firm's marketing practice, termed “ground zero” for cross-functional collaboration.
“With a wave of major disruptions apparent in the year ahead, CMOs must have a sense of urgency to ride this wave by utilizing emerging technologies and helping to orchestrate profitable growth across functions, or risk being swamped by it,” said McIntyre in a statement.
The top three bets for most effective marketing priorities include:
1. Build AI-Enabled Marketing Teams
Nearly three-quarters (73%) of cross-functional leaders are currently piloting or using generative AI, according to a Gartner summer survey, with just 8% reporting that they aren’t planning to use it.
The rapid advancement of this and other emerging technologies mean CMOs should rank soft skills like analytical thinking over hard data skills like coding, said the firm.
Sharon Cantor Ceurvorst, VP, research at Gartner’s marketing practice, said the introduction of generative AI has placed talent plans at the crossroad of adapt/realign and obsolescence.
“If the latter were to occur, CMOs risk losing influence over those plans,” she said. “In anticipation of this, they must have an answer that blends the best of both technology and human capabilities.”
2. Recast Marketing’s Value for an Evolving Enterprise
Today’s CMOs would be wise to build business-wide alignment on new customer growth strategies lest they lose influence. As part of this, leaders should improve how they reinforce marketing’s connection to enterprise strategy; how it accelerates transformation; and how it empowers other leaders to deliver customer impact.
“CMOs must apply their strategic influence to scale marketing's commercial impact and drive profitability,” said Cantor Ceurvorst. “Because no function drives growth in isolation, CMOs must help guide the enterprise toward a new era of collaborative customer success via a compelling and clearly understood strategic narrative.”
3. Orchestrate Profitable Growth Across Functions
Finally, CMOs need to get better at cross-functional execution and making decisions via guidance instead of control from senior executives, which is something less than one-third take an empowering posture toward, said Cantor Ceurvorst, despite those teams being more likely to exceed their business objectives.
Marketers spend 17% more of their time collaborating on cross-functional initiatives than non-marketers do, but cross-functional complexity is holding back the pursuit of growth opportunities, stressed the research firm.
Indeed, working in silos was listed as the No. 1 top roadblock to sales and marketing success in CGT’s 2023 Sales & Marketing Research Report, cited by 39% of respondents.
Progress won’t be slowed by technology but rather “people getting in their own way,” said Cantor Ceurvorst. “What’s required is a new form of collaboration that cascades productively across teams.”
