CMOs' Top Challenges

• According to The CMO Survey of 320 professionals, the top four challenges faced by CMOs today include driving growth, cutting through the clutter by delivering a powerful brand, securing marketing budget, and proving ROI of marketing activities: 37.9, 13.7, 13.4, and 10.8, respectively.
• Additionally, 64% of CMOs believe that their main role is to ensure business growth and 55% believe the primary efforts should be toward investing in market penetration.

Communication Challenges

• The top three communication challenges that CMOs face within the C-Suite include demonstrating how marketing impacts finances, incorporating the customer's opinions into business decisions, and expressing the brand's role in business decisions: 63.8%, 39.5%, and 37.3%, respectively.

Brand Marketing Challenges

• As brand identity increases in importance, there are challenges that are faced by established ones. These challenges include managing a global brand, maintaining relevance, measuring the impact of brand investments: 35%, 35%, and 31%, respectively.

Future

• Although there are some measures that CMOs believe they should take today for tomorrow's success, there is a significant gap created. Here, we see how some aspects of this department are thought to be important for the future, but not a priority today.
• One gap is the need for creativity; 85% of CMOs believe that it will be critical for future success and yet only 54% believe that they are addressing this today. Additionally, 84% consider data management and analytics are important for future success and yet only 49% are addressing these today.

Summary of our Early Findings

• Our initial one-hour research was able to identify four challenges faced by CMOs based on a survey. These insights are also supported by other sources. Additionally, we provided insights into future challenges/concerns. Here, we demonstrate how the steps they take today are mitigating future challenges.
• Our research team was unable to provide future insights within the scope of 5-10 years from now. For this reason, our research team will provide future insights within the scope limit of 5-10 years.
• Following our analysis of this public information, we have scoped out the research paths below.