Gartner to CMOs: Incremental Improvement Won’t Cut It in 2025
CMOs are beset by challenges high and low. At the strategic level, more than 80% of marketing executives tell Gartner in a recent report that they need to lead a significant overhaul of their institution's identity in the next five years. Meanwhile, day-to-day marketing activities are foundering, with almost 50% saying that campaigns rarely or never return their investment. How can marketing leaders navigate this gauntlet in 2025? Garner argues CMOs need to go big.
By David Evans, Chief Content Officer
The report: Top 3 Strategic Priorities for Chief Marketing Officers
Source: Gartner
Why we picked this report: The role and responsibilities of CMOs in the banking industry will face new and increasing stresses in 2025; roadmaps that can help executives plan their next moves will be critical.
Executive Summary
Chief Marketing Officers will face unprecedented challenges heading into 2025, with increasing pressure to deliver transformative growth despite ongoing disruption and budget constraints. Gartner’s latest research reveals that while 84% of companies will also need significant identity transformation in the next five years, many CMOs struggle to fulfill their growth potential, with only 14% considered highly effective at what Gartner calls ‘market shaping’.
The report outlines three strategic priorities for CMOs: bridging the gap between marketing strategy and operations, leading marketing to deliver differentiation, and prioritizing customer journey investments. Gartner argues that success will require dedicated resources for strategy management, enhanced market orientation, and data-driven customer experience optimization.
Key Takeaways
- Marketing leaders facing high levels of organizational change are twice as likely to experience burnout, with 55% reporting 3 to 4 major changes in their institution in the past year.
- CMOs who excel at market shaping are 2.6 times more likely to exceed growth targets, yet only 14% of CMOs are considered very effective in this area.
- Most consumers (58%) feel companies don’t understand their needs and preferences, while 55% of marketing campaigns fail to justify their investment.
What we liked about this report: The report doesn’t shy away from laying out a checklist of priorities that many CMOs may find daunting on its face.
What we didn’t: The report argues that, in order to succeed, CMOs must take on an expanded control of more strategic functions in their organizations. But the report skirts whether many institutions are actually willing to hand over these reins to their CMOs.
Breaking Down the CMO’s Strategic Imperatives for 2025
1. Bridging strategy and operations
Gartner recommends that CMOs systematically align their organization’s strategic vision with tactical execution through a three-tiered planning framework. At the highest level, business goals and marketing strategy focus on competitive positioning and long-term outcomes over a three-to-five-year horizon. This includes defining how the business will compete and win, along with determining how various functions will contribute to success.
The middle tier consists of strategic plans with 12-to-36-month objectives. These functional plans outline key initiatives for achieving objectives and often require cross-functional collaboration.
The operational tier focuses on three-to-12-month results through detailed plans for specific programs and deliverables. Success requires dedicated resources for strategy management, including:
- Specialized roles like chief of staff or marketing operations leaders to maintain alignment.
- Implementation of OKRs and performance goals to track progress.
- Strategic thinking training and external research support.
- Work management platforms and strategy software to coordinate efforts.
Regular calibration between strategy and execution ensures tactical activities support strategic priorities while strategic plans remain responsive to operational realities. This helps avoid the common pitfall of mistaking tactical execution for agile planning.
Dig deeper:
- Five Bank Profitability Challenges and the Strategies to Overcome Them
- Turbulence in Marketing Roles Forecast for 2025
- 2025 Strategies: Excelling at the Basics & Striving for Digital Maturity
2. Leading market differentiation
Market-shaping CMOs excel by operating across four key dimensions that span both current capabilities and future opportunities:
Current state focus:
- Bridging gaps between existing market needs and business capabilities
- Differentiating product value propositions in the current marketplace
Future state focus:
- Developing product innovations that anticipate emerging customer needs
- Identifying and preparing for disruptive market forces
To enhance company-wide market orientation, CMOs must develop and demonstrate three critical skills:
- Data-based decision making that converts customer insights into actionable strategies
- Strategic management capabilities to guide long-term transformation
- Deep market knowledge to identify emerging trends and opportunities
This expanded influence requires CMOs to move beyond traditional brand strategy to drive improvements in:
- Product and service development
- Sales channel innovation
- Customer experience enhancement
Successful market differentiation depends on the CMO’s ability to influence market dynamics by systematically identifying and fulfilling unmet customer needs while maintaining strong alignment between business capabilities and market opportunities.
3. Prioritizing customer journey investments
CMOs must implement a systematic process for optimizing customer journeys that combines rigorous analysis with strategic technology deployment:
Initial assessment:
- Conduct comprehensive audit of existing customer touchpoints
- Collect and analyze relevant performance data
- Define clear hypotheses about improvement opportunities
- Quantify the size and potential impact of each opportunity
Technology integration:
- Strategically acquire AI-driven technologies aligned with identified needs
- Define specific use cases based on customer journey analysis
- Integrate new technologies into existing processes
- Ensure proper staff training and adoption
Implementation:
- Develop detailed orchestration plans
- Establish cross-functional collaboration frameworks
- Focus on delivering measurable catalytic value
- Monitor and optimize performance
The goal is to create catalytic experiences that fundamentally change customer behavior in commercially productive ways. This requires careful balance between technological innovation and practical execution, avoiding both over-investment in AI and under-utilization of existing capabilities.
Success metrics should focus on:
- Customer journey completion rates
- Conversion at key touchpoints
- Return on technology investments
- Cross-functional collaboration effectiveness
- Customer satisfaction and engagement levels
CMOs must maintain focus on delivering tangible value through customer interactions while building the organizational capabilities needed for continuous journey optimization.
Looking Ahead
The path forward for CMOs requires careful balance between managing immediate pressures and driving long-term transformation. Success depends on building robust strategy management capabilities, enhancing market orientation across the organization, and making smart investments in customer journey optimization. While the challenges are significant, CMOs who effectively execute across these three priorities will be better positioned to deliver the transformative results their organizations expect in 2025 and beyond.
Editor’s note: This article was prepared with AI language software and edited for clarity and accuracy by The Financial Brand editorial team.
