CMOs Are No Longer Just Marketers

The Gist

• The CMO’s role is transforming. Modern CMOs are expected to drive growth, align with cross-functional teams, and prove marketing’s impact on revenue.
• Data and tech are core to success. Marketing leaders must be fluent in performance metrics, martech platforms, and AI-powered decision-making.
• Brand and performance must coexist. The most effective CMOs run dual-speed strategies that prioritize both long-term equity and short-term ROI.
• Team dynamics are evolving fast. Marketing organizations are becoming more agile, interdisciplinary, and aligned with product and customer success teams.
• Examples prove the new model works. CMOs at companies like Dell, Adobe, and HubSpot are delivering business-wide impact through full-funnel, insight-led strategies.

Once seen primarily as brand stewards and creative visionaries, CMOs are stepping into a far more expansive role—one that blends data fluency, revenue accountability and cross-functional leadership.

As customer expectations evolve and digital channels continue to expand, CMOs are seeing a shift from brand builder to growth architect. It's redefining what it means to lead marketing in a modern business.

This article explores how the CMO role is evolving, what skills are now essential, and how leading CMOs are dealing with the pressure to deliver both creativity and commercial viability.

Table of Contents

• Introduction to the Role of CMO
• The Traditional CMO: Brand, Awareness, and Campaigns
• The Catalyst for Change: Data, Tech and Customer Empowerment
• The New Mandate: CMOs as Growth Architects
• The CMO-Tech Stack Connection
• Organizational Dynamics and Talent Strategy
• Real-World Examples of the Modern CMO in Action
• Driving Full-Funnel Growth and Long-Term Loyalty
• Challenges and Pushback: Are CMOs Pushing for too Much Change?
• The Pitfalls of Overcorrecting Toward Short-Termism
• Conclusion: Embracing the Growth Architect Mindset
• Core Questions on the Evolving Role of CMO

Introduction to the Role of CMO

The CMO's Historical Role as Brand Steward

The chief marketing officer has long been seen as the guardian of brand identity—the executive responsible for shaping perception, managing advertising budgets and creating the narratives that bring a business to life. Traditionally, CMOs focused on creative leadership, media strategy and customer engagement through channels such as television, print and event sponsorships. Success was often measured in brand recognition and market share rather than hard numbers tied to revenue.

But the role has undergone a profound transformation. Today, CMOs are expected to do far more than build brand awareness—they’re being called upon to drive growth, align with sales and prove marketing’s contribution to the bottom line. This evolution hasn’t happened in a vacuum. Digital disruption, changing consumer expectations, the explosion of data and the rise of AI have all reshaped how businesses connect with customers—and redefined what it means to lead marketing.

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The Traditional CMO: Brand, Awareness, and Campaigns

Before digital disruption, the role of the CMO was largely centered on storytelling and brand perception. Marketing was the engine behind glossy campaigns, catchy slogans, and high-profile sponsorships—efforts designed to shape brand identity and generate awareness at scale. CMOs managed agency relationships, oversaw creative direction, and made high-stakes decisions about where to invest in mass media: television, radio, print, and later, digital display. 

How the CMO Role Has Evolved

This comparison highlights how the expectations and responsibilities of CMOs have shifted from traditional branding to cross-functional, data-driven leadership.

Measuring Success Before the Digital Shift

Success in this era was often judged by how well a brand resonated in the marketplace. Metrics were softer—share of voice, impressions, brand recall—and harder to tie directly to revenue. The CMO was the steward of image and message, not necessarily the driver of measurable business outcomes.

The Limits of Legacy Marketing Models

That’s not to say the traditional model lacked strategy or impact, but it was operating in a world where attribution was murky, and marketing was seen more as a cost center than a growth engine. The tools simply didn’t exist to track every touchpoint or personalize every message. The focus was broad reach, not precision. This legacy of brand-first marketing still holds value, but it no longer defines the full scope of what modern businesses demand from their CMOs.

The Catalyst for Change: Data, Tech and Customer Empowerment

The digital era didn’t just give marketers new tools—it rewrote the rules. The emergence of performance marketing, search engines, social platforms and ecommerce created a measurable, trackable ecosystem where every click, scroll and conversion could be analyzed. Suddenly, marketing wasn’t just about creative messaging—it was about outcomes. Campaigns could be tested in real time, A/B variants could be deployed on the fly, and ROI could be calculated down to the decimal.

This shift put pressure on CMOs to move beyond brand storytelling and embrace growth accountability. Leadership wanted proof: not just impressions, but pipeline. Not just awareness, but acquisition and retention. In response, CMOs began leaning into digital channels that delivered data—search, email, paid social, content marketing, and increasingly, AI-powered personalization.

Shifting Customer Expectations

At the same time, customer expectations were evolving just as quickly. Empowered by technology, consumers became more informed, more demanding, and less tolerant of one-size-fits-all messaging. They expected personalized experiences, pain free cross-channel journeys, and immediate responses. Loyalty began to hinge less on branding and more on relevance, trust, and convenience.

The New Mandate: CMOs as Growth Architects

With data-rich channels and heightened accountability, the CMO's role has expanded far beyond traditional marketing. Today, the most effective CMOs operate less like campaign managers and more like growth architects—cross-functional leaders who align marketing with revenue, product development and customer success. 

The Modern CMO’s Strategic Priorities

These priorities reflect the shift from traditional marketing execution to enterprise-wide influence and measurable business contribution.

Key Capabilities of the Modern CMO

This table outlines the essential skills today’s CMOs must master to lead performance-driven, cross-functional marketing organizations.

Aligning With Revenue and Cross-Functional Teams

This means building tight partnerships with sales to co-own pipeline targets, collaborating with product teams to inform go-to-market strategies, and working alongside customer success to reduce churn and expand lifetime value. The modern CMO isn’t just measured by brand visibility or lead volume—they’re increasingly held accountable for outcomes that span the full customer journey, from first touch to renewal.

Modern marketing leaders are increasingly embedded across business units—from product and finance to operations and customer success. Marketing is no longer confined to top-of-funnel awareness; it’s integrated into nearly every strategic lever for growth.

Miruna Dragomir, CMO at social media management platform provider Planable, told CMSWire that she is no longer just leading campaigns or managing creative output, but rather, is deeply involved in product strategy, revenue forecasting, customer lifecycle analysis and cross-functional alignment. "Marketing today sits at the intersection of data, technology, and storytelling," she says. The evolving mandate requires CMOs to be fluent in the language of both performance metrics and customer experience, combining analytical insight with strategic influence.

Full-Funnel Thinking as Standard Practice

Full-funnel thinking is now the expectation. That means designing strategies that not only attract new customers but also convert, retain and expand them. It’s about integrating demand generation, lifecycle marketing and customer advocacy into a cohesive engine for sustainable growth.

As marketing becomes more embedded across the enterprise, the boundaries between departments are blurring. Marketing is no longer a silo—it’s an engine that drives alignment across sales, product, and finance.

Fergal Glynn, CMO and AI security advocate at automated red teaming and security testing service Mindgard, told CMSWire, "The CMOs of today align creativity with data and technology in order to inform strategy. They collaborate with product, sales, IT and finance organizations to connect brand development with measurable business outcomes." Modern CMOs are being evaluated not just on brand strength but on their ability to integrate with other departments and deliver business-wide impact.

The Stakes and Rewards of Expanded Leadership

For CMOs willing to embrace this broader mandate, the opportunity is significant: greater influence, stronger alignment with the C-suite and a central role in shaping the future of the business. But it also comes with higher stakes—because with ownership comes responsibility for results.

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The CMO-Tech Stack Connection

As marketing became increasingly data-driven, the CMO’s relationship with technology was no longer optional—it became essential. Martech stacks have grown from simple email tools into sprawling ecosystems that span CRM, customer data platforms (CDPs), analytics, content management, automation and now, AI.

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To lead effectively, CMOs must understand not just how these tools function, but how they interconnect and drive business outcomes.

From Tools to Insights: Using Martech Effectively

Making better, faster marketing decisions isn’t just about having access to the right tools—it’s about knowing how to use them effectively. In a tech-centric environment, operational speed and strategic insight go hand in hand.

Amanda Zarle, fractional CMO at marketing firm Marketri, told CMSWire, “Today’s CMOs need to be fluent in both brand and performance. You can’t operate solely in one camp…It’s not about the tech stack alone—it’s about how you use it to make better decisions and move faster." Success now depends on hybrid fluency—understanding performance metrics without losing sight of creative impact, and taking advantage of tools to support insight-driven execution.

Strong execution depends on connecting product, content and performance around a single narrative. When teams align on customer outcomes instead of tactics, marketing becomes more than a lead-gen engine—it becomes a revenue catalyst.

"Within 12 months, this approach drove 72% of the company’s MQLs at a positive ROI," explained Zarle. By unifying brand and demand under one strategy, CMOs are turning marketing into a system that drives growth across the entire customer lifecycle.

Blending Analytics With Storytelling

High-performing marketing leaders are defined by their ability to synthesize data, systems, and human insight. Success now depends on the capacity to shift seamlessly between dashboards and storytelling.

"Today’s CMO needs to be analytically capable, but also capable of narrative. They need to be performance metric-literate, understand their attribution models, and be able to work a martech stack—and also be able to tell a wonderful brand story that resonates," said Dragomir. Technical literacy is essential, but it’s not the whole picture—what sets great CMOs apart is their ability to turn insight into a compelling narrative that drives action.

The ability to interpret, create and communicate information in data, aka data fluency, has also become a core competency. CMOs are now expected to extract insights from complex datasets, orchestrate personalized experiences across channels and measure performance in ways that satisfy both CFOs and customers. The ability to connect marketing activities to revenue requires a strong grasp of attribution models, customer segmentation, and predictive analytics.

AI’s Growing Influence in the CMO Toolkit

AI has added a new layer of opportunity—and complexity. From real-time personalization and journey orchestration to generative content and intelligent automation, AI enables scalable, dynamic engagement.

But it also demands a strategic approach to adoption, governance, and ethics—an area where CMOs must often collaborate closely with CTOs, CIOs, and data officers.

This shift doesn’t mean CMOs need to code. But they do need enough technical literacy to evaluate tools, ask the right questions, and ensure that technology serves strategy—not the other way around.

Organizational Dynamics and Talent Strategy

As the CMO role evolves, so too must the structure of the marketing team. The traditional hierarchy built around brand managers, copywriters, and media buyers is giving way to more fluid, interdisciplinary teams that blend creative talent with data-driven roles such as marketing analysts, RevOps specialists and customer journey strategists.

New Friction at the Intersection of AI and Leadership

As AI becomes central to marketing strategy, it’s also creating new friction across businesses. Decision-making is increasingly shared between marketing, IT, and innovation leaders, making internal alignment critical.

Brandon Keenen, founder and CMO at AI-powered marketing service ViVV LABS, told CMSWire, "They are still trying to be expert generalists, but the rise of AI has brought possibility and anxiety…Internal conflict has become more noticeable as CTOs and 'innovation' experts start weighing in on what’s best for marketing." CMOs must now navigate not only their own function, but also overlapping domains—and build teams equipped to collaborate, adapt and experiment in real time.

Modern marketing brands are being designed with agility in mind—built to respond quickly to shifting customer behaviors, evolving technologies, and real-time performance signals. That means integrating skill sets that didn’t traditionally fall under the marketing umbrella: data science, CRM architecture, experimentation, and lifecycle automation, to name a few.

Balancing this technical depth with creative excellence is one of the CMO’s greatest leadership challenges. It’s no longer about choosing between art and science—it’s about building teams that excel at both. And that takes a thoughtful approach to hiring, upskilling, and culture.

Recruiting talent with hybrid skills is increasingly a priority. So is continuous learning, as marketers adapt to new tools, platforms, and AI capabilities. CMOs must also build and encourage cross-functional collaboration—not just within marketing, but across sales, product, IT, and finance—to ensure that messaging, measurement, and execution are fully aligned.

Real-World Examples of the Modern CMO in Action

The shift from brand builder to growth architect isn’t just a theoretical evolution—it’s already playing out in boardrooms and marketing departments around the world. CMOs who embrace the expanded scope of their role are delivering measurable impact and reshaping how businesses define success.

Cross-Channel Campaigns: Turning Strategy Into Real-World Business Results

Real traction comes from aligning marketing with real-world usage—not just messaging. When marketing helps customers solve practical problems, product adoption and retention naturally follow.

"We didn't simply sell the product—instead, we created playbooks, use cases and assets that tackled actual workflow issues. This shift in strategy resulted in a significant increase in conversion and product activation," said Dragomir. This shift toward value-led content and CX alignment helped the business scale dramatically, proving that growth doesn’t have to come from spend—it can come from substance.

Cross-channel campaigns that unify brand and performance are showing the strongest returns. By identifying untapped platforms and integrating strategy across the stack, marketers are accelerating growth on multiple fronts.

"Within six months, the brand saw a 300% surge in overall sales. A significant bonus was the reduction in CPAs on their other platforms, directly attributable to the increased brand awareness generated by TikTok," said Keenen. This case highlights the power of strategic diversification—where efforts in one channel create ripple effects that improve ROI elsewhere.

The Unification of Sales and Marketing

Take Allison Dew, CMO at Dell Technologies. Under her leadership, Dell’s marketing function has been transformed into a data-powered engine for growth. Dew helped unify marketing and sales efforts through a shared focus on customer insights and revenue accountability. Dell’s embrace of performance metrics, content personalization and predictive analytics has played a major role in improving both conversion rates and customer retention.

Shift Toward Data-Driven Marketing

At Adobe, Ann Lewnes, CMO and executive vice president of corporate strategy and development, led one of the earliest and most notable shifts toward digital-first, data-driven marketing. She was instrumental in transitioning Adobe from packaged software to a subscription model—an effort that required complete alignment across product, sales and customer success teams. Marketing became a key growth driver, contributing directly to recurring revenue and lifetime customer value.

Full-Funnel Marketing Adoption

And at HubSpot, CMO Kipp Bodnar has consistently emphasized full-funnel marketing—ensuring that branding, demand generation and customer advocacy operate as one cohesive system. His team uses real-time data to fine-tune campaigns and personalize engagement across channels, helping the company scale efficiently while maintaining high NPS scores and long-term customer loyalty.

What unites these leaders isn’t just the tech they’ve implemented—it’s the mindset. Each has embraced a broader, more strategic mandate and made marketing inseparable from business growth. Success is no longer defined by impressions or reach, but by metrics that matter: revenue, retention, and customer lifetime value.

Driving Full-Funnel Growth and Long-Term Loyalty

Modern campaigns are also moving beyond acquisition to include trust-building, qualification, and retention—creating a full-funnel approach that meets customers at every stage.

"The campaign boosted new sign-ups and long-term loyalty by engaging with customer needs at every step," said Glynn. The outcome reflects a deliberate shift toward lifecycle thinking, designing marketing systems that deliver both immediate conversions and long-term value.

Full-funnel success often starts with understanding how product and lifecycle touchpoints impact conversion, usage, and retention. Marketing’s role has become not just promotional—but foundational to the entire experience.

"Beyond lifecycle and product marketing, the CMO also oversaw performance channels such as SEO and SEM, along with brand initiatives aimed at long-term growth," Gangreddiwar shared. The marketing function now serves as a growth engine that connects short-term campaigns with long-term loyalty—anchored by a unified, customer-first strategy.

Challenges and Pushback: Are CMOs Pushing for too Much Change?

For all the progress modern CMOs have made, the transition hasn’t been without tension. As the role stretched to encompass both brand stewardship and revenue ownership, many marketing leaders found themselves caught between competing demands—and sometimes, unrealistic expectations.

Balancing Brand Investment With Performance Pressure

One of the most persistent challenges is balancing long-term brand investment with the pressure for short-term performance. CEOs and boards increasingly expect marketing to deliver quick, measurable results—often in the form of leads, pipeline, or revenue contribution. But great brands aren’t built overnight. Investing in awareness, trust, and emotional resonance still matters, even if the payoff takes quarters, not weeks.

Marketing success today often hinges on the ability to run dual tracks—investing in the brand as a long-term asset while delivering short-term performance outcomes that move the needle.

"We understand how to leverage brand and performance as two sides of the same coin, two complementary levers, not enemies… We rely on numbers to guide our decisions but refuse to allow them to limit our vision," said Dragomir. When brand and performance efforts are designed to feed into each other, the result is sustainable growth that aligns with both vision and metrics.

Marketing is facing a dual challenge: prove performance quickly while building a brand that endures. Navigating these opposing forces has become one of the defining tensions of the modern CMO role.

Aboli Gangreddiwar, director of lifecycle marketing at loan rate comparison service Credible, told CMSWire, "The most effective CMOs are building dual-speed marketing engines—one that invests in long-term brand equity and emotional connection, and another that is optimized for short-term performance and measurable ROI." The key is treating brand and performance as complementary efforts, not competing priorities—each feeding the other over time.

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The Pitfalls of Overcorrecting Toward Short-Termism

Common CMO Challenges and Mitigation Strategies

This table outlines recurring friction points faced by modern CMOs and the strategies used to navigate them.

This tension can lead to common pitfalls. Over-rotating toward short-term tactics—like excessive paid media or hyper-targeted lead gen—can create diminishing returns and erode brand equity. On the other hand, failing to connect marketing activity to business outcomes can weaken a CMO’s influence in the C-suite.

Short-term tactics often deliver measurable results—but they can also erode differentiation when overused. Brand equity, by contrast, may not be immediately quantifiable, but it compounds in value. "Boards are now pushing for unrealistic efficiency…There’s a growing belief that easily measurable, surface-level tactics are all that matter, making it harder to create essential, less tangible areas like branding, strategic partnerships, and experiential marketing," explained Keenen.

Redefining Success and Embracing Ambiguity

Many CMOs are adapting by redefining how success is measured. That means establishing shared metrics with sales and finance, building dashboards that connect brand health to pipeline velocity, and articulating how creative efforts support the business strategy. It also means getting comfortable with ambiguity—acknowledging that not everything can be attributed, but that doesn’t make it any less essential.

Despite growing pressure to chase performance metrics, brand relevance and trust remain essential to lasting growth. In fact, they often unlock better outcomes throughout the funnel. "It’s a false narrative that you have to choose one or the other…companies that invest in distinctive brand experiences while maintaining disciplined performance benchmarks consistently outperform their more generic peers," said Zarle. Marketers who position the brand as a multiplier—not a distraction—are better equipped to win both short-term gains and long-term loyalty.

Conclusion: Embracing the Growth Architect Mindset

The shift from brand builder to growth architect isn’t just a new job description—it’s a new way of thinking about what marketing can do. It’s about finding that balance between creative instinct and data-backed decisions, between long-term brand building and the need to show results now.

CMOs who can move fluidly between those worlds—and work closely with sales, product, and customer teams—are the ones turning marketing into a true engine for growth. 

Core Questions on the Evolving Role of CMO

What is the modern role of a Chief Marketing Officer (CMO)?

Today’s CMO goes beyond brand awareness and creative strategy—they’re responsible for driving growth across the entire customer journey. The modern CMO is a cross-functional leader who collaborates with sales, product and customer success teams, uses data and technology to guide decision-making and is accountable for revenue, retention and measurable business outcomes.

How has the CMO role changed in the digital era?

The CMO role has evolved from a focus on brand-building and media buying to one centered on data-driven growth. With advancements in marketing technology, real-time analytics, and AI, CMOs are now expected to lead full-funnel strategies, prove marketing ROI, and align closely with the business’s overall revenue goals.