Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Job Description 2020: Role, Responsibilities, Salary
The Chief Marketing Officer role in 2020 drives and unifies customer experience, brand purpose, creative communication, and marketing technology. However, this leader may no longer be called a CMO, and new titles are being crafted to better express the strategic direction and execution responsibilities involved. The Chief Marketing Officer now has ownership of growth strategies and the customer experience across all brand touchpoints.
Marketers have been somewhat jolted by the string of announcements about companies eliminating the role of the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). Some of the best-known companies in the world – Coke, Unilever, Johnson & Johnson, Uber, Lyft, Taco Bell and Hyatt Hotels, made announcements to this effect.
It’s not that marketing suddenly became headless in these organizations, nor is it that it’s no longer important enough to merit a senior leader. But these changes do indicate the many ways in which the CMO role is being transformed. So as we start 2020, let’s look at what the Chief Marketing Officer job will entail this year.
Starting with the mystery of the disappearing CMOs.
Edward Nevraumont analyzes the contributing factors in his blog post Is the CMO role obsolete? and finds that, while many of the reasons are quite unique to each organization, there is one trend that’s visible:
Upon closer inspection, though, many of these companies simply adopted new names. For example, Hyatt eliminated the CMO role, but created a “Chief Commercial Officer” who will be responsible for marketing, franchises, and services. In similar fashion, Coke replaced its CMO position, with a “Chief Growth Officer” – a move that was repeated by Mars-Wrigley. When Beam Suntory’s CMO left, they created a similar role (with added P&L responsibility), bearing the newly crafted title of “President of Brands.”
These new titles are proof that the role of marketing leader has not been diminished in any way. In fact, marketing now has a far larger sphere of influence. A CMO in 2020 is expected to drive growth, deliver the brand vision and manage the customer experience across all touchpoints and intersections: print, digital, retail, mobile and more. Marketing no longer ends at a sale, but must focus on the relationships with existing clients in order to drive further growth.
Forrester’s Predictions 2020 Guide describes the transformation in the Chief Marketing Officer job description as: “in 2020, the top CMOs will be responsible for all that surrounds the customer. They’ll recognize that the best mechanism to drive growth is a strategically planned ecosystem that delivers value to customers throughout their lifecycle. To establish a successful ecosystem, CMOs will thread the needle between employee experience, customer experience, brand purpose, creative, and technology, imbuing all these crucial areas with customer obsession.”
Learn More: The Changing Role of the CMO: Collaboration will be a Catalyst for Change in 2019
Chief Marketing Officer Job Description in 2020
A typical job description for a CMO starts by listing expectations about strategic leadership, such as ‘driving the growth of the business’ and ‘build a brand strategy to increase visibility and drive business across all platforms…’ The CMO job description includes specific performance metrics, which may be campaign effectiveness, channel creation, campaign ROIs and lead generation.
The job description also includes people-leadership related responsibilities, as the CMO leads the team of in-house or outsourced marketing and creative resources. The chief marketing officer job description usually also includes responsibility for the effective use of marketing technology and digital channels.
In addition to the above, in 2020, a CMO needs to know how to lead and drive collaboration among team members and consultants who could be anywhere in the world. As organizations seek out experienced professionals with specialized expertise, they are quite open to working with teams and individuals who are geographically spread. The marketing workforce is likely to be a combination of onsite staff, remote employees, consultants, and freelancers. The CMO must have the expertise to lead such a geographically dispersed team working across different time zones.
Diversity is another important aspect of teams today, and the CMO must know how to bring out the best performance in such teams. Many organizations today are creating teams that consist of individuals from diverse backgrounds, and with good reason – the more diversity there is in a creative and marketing team, the greater its ability to innovate and create campaigns that resonate with audiences. As a leader, the CMO needs to create an inclusive atmosphere that accommodates the different needs and working styles of each individual to achieve the collective purpose.
Additional Resource: Chief Marketing Officer Job Description Template
Learn More: How CMO Trends Drive the Industry
Chief Marketing Officer Salary Guide
With such a challenging set of expectations from the CMO role, let’s look at the rewards. What are CMOs earning in the United States? According to data published by The Creative Group: Salary Guide 2020, the typical Chief Marketing Officer salaries range between $136,000 to $247,000 per year. For CMOs who are new to the role, or organizations that are quite small, the average salary is $136,000 per year.
When the CMO has an average level of experience and a majority of the expected skills, in midsized organizations and moderately complex operations, the average is $164,000. CMOs with more than average level of experience and most of the skills that are relevant, in larger organizations and complex operations draw an average of $196,000.
The highest paid CMOs are those with a high level of experience and expertise, fulfilling roles that are uniquely complex in larger organizations and complex operations, and these CMO salaries go up to $247,000 per year.
Learn More: 3 Pivotal Ways CEOs can Facilitate CMO Success in 2020
CMOs Will Disrupt and Will Be Disrupted!
2020 will be the year when the CMO role undergoes even further transformation, going far beyond the traditional expectations from this role. The Chief Marketing Officer will need to focus continually on the needs of the customer, the growth of the business, and the aspirations of their team, and define how marketing will help to achieve all these.
The Chief Marketing Officer role in 2020 drives and unifies customer experience, brand purpose, creative communication, and marketing technology. What do you think will help CMOs to deliver? Let us know on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter.
