Marketing Skills for CMOs and Future Marketing Leaders

“The nature of marketing has changed. It’s time to reboot the CMO role.”  —Redefining the CMO, Deloitte Insights

I’m not a job consultant, nor am I a resume writer. I’m a CMO staring the future of marketing in the face and contemplating the skills a high-level marketing professional will need to stay relevant, employable, and successful this year and beyond.

At the risk of stating the obvious: the 2020s have arrived. And there’s no denying they’re propelled by technology. You can surf the wave like a champ, or sail off into the sunset.

You’ve read the articles claiming organizations have started to part ways with CMOs, reallocating their responsibilities to leaders such as the CIO. In the C-suite, CMOs have the highest turnover by far. The average tenure is 3.5 years, according to Winmo, and top CMOs have their job for 43 months, on average, and their median tenure is 27.5 months, according to Spencer Stuart.

It appears it’s time to think about what is or should be on your resume—whether you’re in job acquisition or job preservation mode.

In the words of Jennifer Cannon, senior editor at Third Door Media, “2020 is predicted to be a critical year for CMOs to deliver seamless customer experiences with their martech investments and, crucially, generate attributable revenue from those martech-enabled experiences.”