Is Marketing Transformation Stalling in the Middle?

One in three chief marketers say marketing is viewed internally as tactical support rather than a strategic driver, and only a quarter believe their MarTech and data foundations are truly advanced. While widely claimed, personalization has been inconsistently delivered. These are just a few findings from the “Assess Where You Need to Progress” online self-assessment developed by the CMO Council in collaboration with Zeta Global.

The CMO Council’s research is part of a CMO at the Crossroads thought leadership program aimed at engaging senior marketers in a benchmarking process to determine their company’s level of digital marketing maturity, organizational capacity and performance predictability. It looks at where and how modular, progressive and selective investments in MarTech are improving marketing campaign effectiveness, market competitiveness, and overall business growth. 

By mapping where marketing organizations actually sit across strategy, MarTech effectiveness, data readiness, personalization, and go-to-market execution, the online self-assessment exposes gaps between perceived maturity and operational reality. (Take the self-assessment here to see how you compare.)

Respondent Profile Data

Analytics show nearly 50% of online audit respondents (120 to date) were from companies of $500 million or more in annual revenues, 25% with annual revenues of $250 — $500 million, and a further 25% from companies with annual revenues of less than $250 million. Seventy percent of these companies are in the B2C and hybrid sectors and the balance in the B2B market. All major industry sectors are represented, and early half the companies are based in North America versus Rest of World (ROW). Respondents were heavily skewed to chief marketing, revenue, growth and experience officers (56%), senior vice presidents (10%), vice presidents (16%) and the balance (11%) at the senior director or director level. 

Moving from a Cost to a Command Center

• Nearly 37% of chief marketers (one in three) believe marketing is still seen internally as being focused on execution and a tactical cost center in support of sales rather than a strategic growth driver. This compares to 35% who say marketing is a now a strong growth driver in their business. Another 27% report marketing is noticeably producing more business results.
• Marketing leaders give themselves relative high marks on collaboration with other functional teams, including IT, sales, product and finance. Thirty-two percent say this is constant, with good outcomes and results. A further 36% indicate moderate improvements in aligning and combining. And 32% are still struggling to further relationships across siloes.
• There is a noticeable preference to allocate spend for short-term performance marketing versus brand equity building. Some 36% lean heavily towards performance, in contrast to 25% who say investments are well-balanced, and a further 31% who are moving to even out investments.
• The types of measures and metrics used to evaluate marketing are evenly distributed across multiple performance indicators. Most valued are frontline contributions to pipeline and pre-sales, campaign impact and ROI, and to a lesser extent, customer growth and profitability, as well as customer retention and loyalty. Other factors count, most noticeably market share and brand equity gains. Surprisingly, revenue and margin improvements, along with customer lifetime value, were the last picks.

Mastery of the MarTech Stack

• Only one in four chief marketers report they are highly advanced, adaptable and agile in embracing emerging MarTech solutions and innovations. While 40% say they are experiencing good traction and early deployment, a noticeable 35% say they are both challenged and lagging in identifying, specifying, integrating and deploying solutions.
• Most senior marketers (44%) believe their marketing stacks are functioning but could be better. Some 26% are advanced, rating their marketing stacks as highly performing, tightly integrated and manageable. In contrast, more than one-third (35%) are struggling to integrate and manage marketing applications or are in a shocking “Frankenstack” state.
• In the area of data preparedness and AI skills to elevate performance and outcomes, there appears to much optimism. Nearly 20% of marketing leaders say they have deep and capable teams, and nearly 40% believe they are good, but still have gaps. A further 31% note they have growing capabilities. Just 11% say they lack proficiency in data preparation and AI.

Doing More with Data, But Still Big Deficiencies

• Only a quarter of marketing leaders say they are highly advanced in using marketing tools to generate real-time insights and enable data-driven decision-making. On the plus side, a sizable 45% indicate that this capability is growing. However, nearly 30% have limitations in current platforms, databases and legacy systems.
• Unifying data across customer touchpoints and the demand chain remains a big challenge for marketers. Some 26% say their data sources are improving but limited, while 15% rate their data as fragmented, siloed and not readily accessible. Less than a quarter believe they have excellent data quality and a real-time data foundation.
• When it comes to the utilization of first-party customer data by marketing teams, a discouraging 73% of chief marketers give their teams very poor marks in terms of effectiveness. Only 27% believe they are very effective, while the majority say somewhat, mostly or totally ineffective.
• The same applies to the sourcing and integrating of third-party customer data, such as buyer intent signals. Over 37% are not doing this well or are still at an early stage. Only 18% are doing it very well, compared to 44% who believe they are getting better.