Gartner Identifies Top Three Priorities for CMOs  in 2025

With increased pressure to deliver growth and support cross-functional work, Gartner has identified three priorities for chief marketing officers to deliver marketing excellence in 2025.

These priorities include the following:

• Transcending disruption by bridging the gap between marketing strategy and operations
• Elevating enterprise-wide impact by leading marketing to deliver differentiation
• Maximizing marketing’s yield by prioritizing customer journey investments

"Marketing faces extraordinary expectations heading into 2025, and CMOs cannot risk incremental change when the enterprise expects transformative results," said Ewan McIntyre, vice president analyst and chief of research for the Gartner Marketing Practice, in a statement. "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."

Earlier this year, Gartner research found that CMOs devote almost 40 percent of their budgets to activities focused on change and transformation. The problem is that constant disruption diverts attention from long-term goals. CMOs must identify where tactical thinking has replaced strategic discipline and dedicate resources to ongoing strategy management, such as staff time, training and tools, the firm concluded.

"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 organizational capability," McIntyre said.

Gartner also found recently that many CMOs are not fulfilling their growth potential, with executive leaders reporting that only 14 percent of CMOs are effective at market shaping or influencing market dynamics by identifying and fulfilling unmet customer needs. Companies where CMOs are effective at market shaping are 2.6 times more likely to exceed revenue and profit goals, it found.

Market-shaping CMOs distinguish themselves from C-suite colleagues with their exceptional skill level in data-based decision making, strategy management, and market knowledge. These skills help CMOs make meaning from data and convert trends into visionary strategies, according to Gartner.

"This is a different skill set than merely understanding or empathizing with the customer," said Sharon Cantor Ceurvorst, vice president of research in the Gartner Marketing Practice. "With customer data increasingly available to all functions, the CMO edge lies in knowing how to synthesize insight from an array of different sources to find opportunities for differentiation."

With customer understanding driving marketing-led growth, CMOs should be concerned that many customers feel misunderstood, according to Gartner, which found that 58 percent of consumers say the companies trying to sell them something don't have a good understanding of their needs and preferences. The consequence is that many marketing campaigns underperform, wasting budgets, resources, and opportunity.

"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, McIntyre said. "The vast majority of marketing teams are accelerating AI initiatives; 95 percent of CMOs in 2024 reported that [generative artificial intelligence] investments are a priority."

But, CMOs must avoid the pitfalls of AI-driven excess and prioritize customer journey investments with the greatest economic return, according to Gartner, which said that a data- and hypothesis-led approach will help rebuild emotional connections with customers who are feeling misunderstood and drive a mutually productive growth engine.