Many startups try to do marketing on the cheap, giving the CMO job to an inexperienced and inexpensive person or hiring a “fractional” CMO. However, saving pennies now will cost you many dollars later. 

As Loren Shumate points out, new promotions don’t have the experience to handle crises or scale up. A fractional CMO means there’s no consistency and no long-term vision. Find out why running lean means running away from growth.

Constantine von Hoffman
Managing Editor

Marketing management

The high cost of undervaluing experienced marketing leadership

Hiring a junior marketer to lead GTM? You’re not being lean — you’re betting against growth. Here’s why it rarely works.

Marketing management

Marketing gains from AI begin with governance

To scale AI in marketing responsibly, brands must embed ethics, transparency and oversight from the start.

Digital advertising

TransUnion data shows importance of good targeting for ROAS

An analysis by TransUnion shows good targeting has an exponential effect on return on ad spend.

Agencies

When clients ask "Did it work?"—here’s your answer

The Cross-platform Measurement in 2025 How-to-Guide helps agencies turn campaign metrics into client-ready insights. Prove brand impact with insights clients understand and value.

Search marketing

Latent semantic indexing: Why marketers don’t need to worry about it

What Is latent semantic indexing and does it matter for search engines? Understand how it differs from NLP and what semantic optimization tools to use.

Marketing artificial intelligence (AI)

The latest AI-powered martech news and releases

Here are all the new products, platforms, updates and much more.

MarTech webinar

Turn Real-Time Data into Smarter Customer Journeys

Learn how teams are using Customer Data Platforms to unify data, eliminate waste, and drive real, measurable results—without adding more tools or headcount.

HubSpot

HubSpot announces deep research connector to ChatGPT

HubSpot is putting doctorate-level research into its CRM with a connector to ChatGPT.

What else we're reading

• AI advertising hitting agencies’ stock prices
• Big brands’ sales drop as ICE raids keep Latino customers at home
• X: Advertise with us or we’ll sue
• Businesses sticking with humans for customer service
• The new marketing job description?
• AI search is killing news sites. Who’s next?

MarTech research

• NEW! Get the 2025 State of Your Stack Survey report by downloading the PDF, flipping through a carousel, listening to a discussion of the results or watching the keynote session from the Spring 2025 MarTech Conference — all without registration.

MarTech Intelligence Reports are in-depth, independent and indispensable. They’re designed to help marketers navigate the martech landscape with questions to ask during the buying process, vendor profiles and more.

Download your Intelligence Report today:

• NEW! Enterprise Digital Asset Management Platforms
• Generative AI for Content Creation
• B2B Data Enrichment and Hygiene
• Email Marketing Platforms
• Identity Resolution Platforms 
• Marketing Work Management Platforms 
• Marketing Automation Platforms 
• Customer Data Platforms.
• Call Analytics and Conversational Intelligence

What they're saying

• “When startups build without senior marketing leadership, they gamble on short-term activity over long-term strategy. It rarely pays off and is certainly not a sustainable pipeline strategy.” – Loren Shumate in The high cost of undervaluing experienced marketing leadership.

• “The future belongs to marketers who recognize that responsible AI implementation is a catalyst for building resilient and customer-centric capabilities. In the age of AI, the most successful will be those who prove that productivity, efficacy and responsibility can scale together.” – John Premkumar in Marketing gains from AI begin with governance.

From Search Engine Land