What Is A Chief Marketing Officer

A CMO (chief marketing officer) is a C-level corporate executive accountable for activities in a company that must do with creating, communicating and delivering choices which have worth for customers, clients or business partners.

A CMO's main mission is to facilitate progress and increase sales by developing a complete marketing plan that will promote brand recognition and assist the organization achieve a competitive advantage. With a purpose to achieve their own goals and effectively shape their firms' public profile, CMOs must be distinctive leaders and assume the voice of the shopper across the company.

Chief marketing officers typically report to the CEO or chief operating officer (COO) and hold advanced degrees in each enterprise and marketing. A CMO who has a robust background in information technology may additionally hold the job title chief marketing technologist (CMT). In some larger organizations, however, these positions are separate and the CMT reports to the CMO.

Chief marketing officer job description
More specifically, the CMO is the executive in charge of developing the strategy for corporate advertising and branding, as well as customer outreach. Because the senior most marketing position in the group, he or she oversees these functions across all firm product lines and geographies.

It is the CMO's job to:

understand the corporate's position in the marketplace, utilizing traditional strategies, as well as newer applied sciences resembling data analytics;
decide how and the place the company must be positioned in the future;
develop the strategy to drive the organization to that future market position; and
execute on that strategy.
The CMO's work is expected to produce top-line outcomes, with marketing efforts raising the brand awareness, recognition and loyalty that will in the end lead to elevated sales.

As such, the CMO is expected to work closely (or in some organizations even lead) the sales unit.

Wage and pay construction
In accordance with PayScale, total compensation for a U.S.-based mostly CMO ranges from nearly $eighty five,000 to about $315,000.

The CMO's experience level and the geographic location of the position influence the pay, as does the scale of the organization.

PayScale puts the median compensation for a CMO within the United States at $170,000.

CMOs make that money by means of an annual salary, individual bonuses, profit sharing and commission.

Chief marketing officer roles and responsibilities
The CMO has a breadth of roles and responsibilities to help its overall mission. Those embody:

overseeing the development and placement of the artistic parts that position the company within the marketplace;
researching and assessing the market and the company's position in it;
supervising or collaborating with sales to turn marketing insights into sales; and
directing the corporate's public relations efforts, or working in conjunction with inner and external public relations groups to create a coordinated message.
Why the CMO position has gained prominence
The technology advancements of the twenty first century have elevated the importance of the CMO position in lots of organizations. The internet, the ubiquity of mobile computing, the internet of things, analytics, artificial intelligence and social media platforms all have created new ways to succeed in prospects and understand their thoughts on products, providers and brands.

They also have given a new, a lot more prominent voice to consumers who can instantaneously broadcast their opinions to potentially thousands, if not millions, of people.

On the similar time, CMOs and their groups are able to faucet those applied sciences to succeed in and influence prospects, position their products and problem competitors at the identical speed and scale as the customers.

As it has been with other C-suite executives in this new technology-driven enterprise paradigm, the CMO must collaborate much more extensively with his or her executive friends in an effort to keep pace. CMOs also should be capable of adaptation and innovation, as applied sciences evolve and markets shift in response.

Qualifications
CMOs, who may also have the title of vice president of sales and marketing, typically have at least a bachelor's degree in marketing (though an MBA is commonly preferred, if not also required). They often have at the least a decade of expertise in marketing and/or advertising and a number of years of expertise in a managerial role.

They're expected to have robust leadership skills, experience in project development, wonderful communication skills and a high level of enterprise acumen.

In addition, the CMO position as we speak requires a high level of technical aptitude to maximise the tools and leverage the social media platforms which can be essential to marketing efforts.

As an illustration, CMOs are expected to oversee the corporate's use of analytics platforms to understand customer preferences, priorities and patterns particularly by means of person-generated media and the way that insight can drive sales.

They're additionally anticipated to direct marketing campaigns and customer outreach by way of current -- and rising -- social media sites, as well as via traditional channels.

To that finish, CMOs have to be highly inquisitive and modern, able to establish emerging technologies that might disrupt their business or business and in addition then able to reply to that by directing his or her C-suite colleagues on tips on how to reposition the corporate in light of that change.