As 2025 approaches, Gartner has identified three critical priorities for Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) to deliver marketing excellence amid increasing pressure to drive growth and support cross-functional initiatives.
These priorities focus on transcending disruption, elevating enterprise-wide impact, and maximising marketing yield.
Ewan McIntyre, VP Analyst and Chief of Research for the Gartner Marketing Practice, emphasised the urgency of transformative change:
“Marketing faces extraordinary expectations heading into 2025, and CMOs cannot risk incremental change when the enterprise expects transformative results. A sharp focus on marketing excellence is key. By applying the resources CMOs have with ever greater vision and discipline, they will earn the confidence of the business to expand their leadership and stewardship of resources.”
Bridging Marketing Strategy and Operations
A Gartner survey of 395 CMOs conducted in early 2024 revealed that 40% of budgets are allocated to change and transformation activities. However, constant disruption often leads to a lack of focus on long-term objectives. CMOs need to ensure tactical thinking does not overshadow strategic discipline.
McIntyre highlighted the importance of strategy management as an essential organisational capability that supports long-term success:
“A strategy management capability is a self-funding investment. While managing strategy is a core part of the CMO role, it cannot happen without a supporting organisational capability.”
By investing in strategy management tools, training, and staff time, CMOs can align their operations with overarching goals, fostering resilience and adaptability in times of disruption.
Elevating Marketing’s Role in Differentiation
In a 2024 survey of 125 CEOs and CFOs, only 14% of CMOs were deemed effective at market shaping—defined as influencing market dynamics through identifying and fulfilling unmet customer needs. Yet, organisations with market-shaping CMOs are 2.6 times more likely to exceed revenue and profit goals.
Sharon Cantor Ceurvorst, Vice President of Research in the Gartner Marketing Practice, explained the unique capabilities that set market-shaping CMOs apart:
“This is a different skill set than merely understanding or empathising with the customer. With customer data increasingly available to all functions, the CMO edge lies in knowing how to synthesise insight from an array of different sources to find opportunities for differentiation.”
Market-shaping CMOs leverage advanced skills in data-based decision-making, strategy management, and market knowledge to craft innovative, impactful strategies that drive business growth.
Prioritising Customer Journey Investments
Gartner’s consumer survey, conducted in mid-2024, found that 58% of U.S. consumers felt brands failed to understand their needs and preferences. This disconnect has led to underperforming marketing campaigns and wasted resources.
McIntyre addressed this challenge by emphasising the need for focused AI initiatives:
“What’s perplexing about this is that marketing has never had more access to data, or more technology tasked with building customer understanding and targeting messages. Right now, technology-driven customer engagement is at an inflection point. The vast majority of marketing teams are accelerating AI initiatives; 95% of CMOs in 2024 reported that GenAI investments are a priority.”
To maximise economic returns, CMOs must take a hypothesis-driven approach to customer journey investments, focusing on areas that rebuild emotional connections and enhance customer understanding.
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