The Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) role is the most important position in the C-suite, after the CEO. It is also the most difficult to hire for correctly, which leads to CMO’s having the shortest tenure of any C-suite role. Studies show that CMOs often have the briefest tenure compared to other executives. An article in Forbes reported that in 2020 the average tenure of a CMO was a short 25 months; overall for the past 20 years, CMO tenure has averaged 2.5 years, well shy of other C-suite positions. This raises the question: why is this role so difficult to get right?
Today, we will talk about why CMOs often do not last long in their roles and what contributes to their short tenure. We will also talk about how your organization can avoid this scenario and ensure that the CMO you hire has what it takes to stand the test of time.
Why Is The Role Of CMO So Different From Other C-Suite Executives?
The path to becoming a Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) is much different than for other C-suite roles. The role of Chief Financial Officer, for instance, usually follows a clear path through accounting or financial management, and the responsibilities of the role are similar regardless of the industry. This is not true for the CMO role, because the field of marketing is so diverse.
An individual can work their way into the CMO role through many different paths depending on where they started in their career. Some start in creative fields like advertising or brand management, and others may come from an analytics, digital, or communications background. There are even CMOs who begin their careers in product-related roles. Even though they may have years of experience, because the field of marketing is so broad and diverse, being a successful CMO at one company does not guarantee they will fit the needs of another. This is a serious dilemma because the CMO is the most important direct report any CEO will have. If you are not doing a good job marketing, does anything else even matter?
CMO Tenure Is Short Due To A Flawed Hiring Process
In my role as President of MarketPro, the premier CMO executive marketing recruitment firm, I have observed the CMO role having the shortest tenure in the C-Suite for about 25 years. There are a few reasons for these statistics, but it basically comes down to the fact that the process that is used to choose the individual who will fill this ultra-critical role is typically flawed.
Reason #1 – The Knowledge Gap
In the vast majority of CMO searches, the individuals conducting the interviews and vetting the candidates do not have the knowledge required to determine if an individual would be a good fit for the role. Marketing candidates are great storytellers, but this does not make them qualified for a CMO position, and most non-marketers are unable to discern the difference.
Unfortunately, most organizations use the same process to hire their CMO as they do for other executive roles, and it looks something like this.
- The CEO is spearheading the hiring process who is not a marketer.
- The HR executive who is great at their role but will not have any experience in marketing.
- A group of peers, such as the CFO or COO, are tasked with helping to vet potential candidates, but these individuals are also non-marketers.
- The partner and senior associate at the executive search firm hired also have no marketing experience. So forget about are we screening appropriately, they do not even understand which candidates they should be interviewing..
The candidates are taken through several rounds of interviews, and not once are they interviewed by someone who knows and understands marketing, let alone the particular expertise needed for the current position.
Reason #2 -They Lack The Knowledge To Identify The Type Of CMO They Need
The pace of change currently going on in marketing is mind-boggling. This makes hiring for a CMO complex, and most companies’ executive teams would not be expected to understand all these changes and how this will impact the necessary background, experience, and track record of the best possible candidates.
Because of the pace of change currently going on in marketing, most senior executives are behind the curve when it comes to data, analytics, performance marketing, attribution and ultimately maximizing ROI. Then you also need a candidate who understands digital, customer experience, brand, etc. All of this factors into the type of candidate you need but who do you have in the interview process who can appropriately assess these qualifications? ,
The type of CMO needed is dependent upon the industry, company size, audience, and company-specific growth goals. If no one in the hiring and vetting process is a marketing expert, how will they know what questions to ask?
The Top Two Issues That Result From This Broken Process
The lack of marketing expertise present during the CMO executive recruitment process typically leads to a catastrophic failure. Without this knowledge in the process, you are simply hoping to get lucky. The big issues include:
- Hiring a candidate that is not suited for the role needed by your organization. Which is actually two failures. The candidate was not able to move the company forward and then you have to go about replacing them in 18-24 months time.
- You also get into a process where the best candidates will see the disconnects in the search and walk away from the opportunity out of concern for being set up to fail.
How Can Organizations Succeed In Hiring The Right CMO The First Time?
The challenges organizations face when hiring the ideal CMO to lead their marketing strategy could be easily overcome by working with an executive search firm with a deep understanding of marketing. At MarketPro, we are the industry leaders in CMO executive recruitment and have been placing top marketing talent in executive marketing positions for over 25 years.
MarketPro has recently celebrated placing our 300th Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). As a team of former marketing professionals and a 25-year track record of success, we have the ability to help you understand how to find the right CMO in ways you never thought possible.
A Marketing Executive Should Be Interviewed By Expert Marketers
The MarketPro process starts with meticulous vetting of candidates, which would involve each candidate going through at least two separate interviews, both facilitated by former marketing executives who have years of experience and an extensive understanding of the industry. We speak the language, we understand the requirements of the different marketing niches, and we know when a candidate has what it takes. Our intense vetting process rules out 85% or more of the initial candidates before they were ever sent to meet the client.
MarketPro Will Guide You Through The CMO Executive Search Process
Understanding the type of CMO an organization requires is not something that most executive teams have expertise in. Most CMO searches hire someone without ever having a marketing expert interview the future marketing executive, which is a recipe for disaster and the main contributor to the high turnover rate of this role.
Marketing has so many caveats that it is impossible for a novice to understand that in addition to considering the industry and the size of your organization, it is also critical that those tasked with hiring the ideal candidate know the type of CMO the company needs. MarketPro has years of experience helping organizations evaluate and determine their needs and then finding the ideal candidate to fill the role.
Utilizing MarketPro’s expertise during your CMO executive search is an investment in your organization’s growth and an exercise in risk mitigation. It maximizes the upside potential of landing a qualified top-tier CMO while minimizing the downside of making a bad hire.
Our Expertise Shows
The other big challenge we see is search failure. We hope companies find us the first time. However, about twenty percent of our CMO searches come our way after a previous search failed to end with a successful hire. This ends up being very costly as our client ends up paying two search fees.
We recently worked with a company on an executive search, and they are overjoyed with their new CMO and thrilled with their partnership experience with us. In fact, the CEO made a special point to congratulate the head of HR, telling them what a great job they did in finding and partnering with MarketPro. We sent them seven ultra-qualified candidates that they had a difficult time choosing between. By the time they got down to the final three, they would have been ecstatic to have any one of them.
Another Fortune 500 company we worked with had a unique situation because the president of the company was the former CMO and knew exactly what the company needed. They hired MarketPro after the previous executive search firm sent them nine candidates that he refused to even take the time to interview because not one of their profiles reflected the qualifications he knew the job required. MarketPro sent them eight qualified candidates to interview, and they had a tough time making a choice between the two finalists.
MarketPro leads the executive search industry when it comes to finding and placing top-notch marketing talent. The difference is that our entire team is made up of former marketing executives, so we not only have an intimate knowledge of the nuances of the industry, but we also know where to find the brightest and most qualified talent.
Our recruitment team has the expertise to identify the type of CMO your company needs and will partner with you to guide you through the process to ensure a successful outcome. Trust your CMO executive search to MarketPro.