How CMOs earn a seat at the board table

CMOs today have an amazing opportunity. Armed with abundant data and powerful technology, leading creative and talented teams, they are in a better position than ever to drive profitable growth, develop winning strategies, and help create superior customer experiences for their companies. It’s a great time to be in marketing.

So why is it that, according to Deloitte, only about 26% of CMOs regularly attend their companies’ board meetings? Perhaps it’s because those who do attend have managed to prove to their CEOs and boards how integral marketing is to driving growth, rather than just being a cost center or budget line, and that they need to be sitting at the table in most major strategy discussions.

We meet daily with CMOs from top companies around the world, many of whom are in the 26% who have earned that spot at the board table. Here’s how they did it.

Prove marketing is driving growth

As most advertising goes digital — around 60% of global ad spend will be digital by 2024, helping make advertising more measurable and accountable — marketers can measure the business impact of their programs much more accurately, allowing them to draw a direct line from marketing investment to profits. Today’s machine learning–powered platforms equip advertisers to set and achieve business goals with confidence. This means CMOs can prove to their boards how the investments with which they’ve been entrusted turned into profitable growth, putting them in a good position when they want to ask for more.

The CMO’s first step is to set the expectation, across the marketing team and with partners, that campaigns should be measured in terms of business impact (such as revenue and profits) and not media or marketing metrics (like reach) alone. To get internal buy-in, collaborate with the CFO to develop a dashboard that tracks, in near real-time, the business impact of marketing investments. Then use the dashboard to constantly refine marketing investments, putting more money in the programs with proven results.

To overcome any…

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