CMOs say lack of resources is hurting growth opportunities

A lack of resources in several key areas is hindering the ability of marketing teams to drive revenue, growth and customer acquisition, according to a new report from the CMO Council.

The inaugural Marketing Vitality Index found 86% of CMOs said a lack of resources or capabilities was holding their teams back. 

The areas most impacted by these resource gaps are:

• Campaign performance: 37% of CMOs indicated their campaign performance needed improvement. 
• Operational efficiency: 51% of CMOs sought improvement in operational efficiency and reduced costs.
• Digital skills: While progress is being made, gaps remain in fully utilizing digital marketing tactics such as paid social, personalization and advanced targeting. 
• Martech adoption: B2B marketers face challenges in gaining organizational adoption of tools and platforms due to siloed data, difficulty proving ROI, lack of digital skills, legacy systems, and challenges in making a business case.

The Marketing Vitality Index concludes CMOs are operating in a high-risk, high-reward environment, which puts them under pressure to grow revenue, meet rising customer expectations, create operational efficiencies, improve campaign performance, rein in costs and address challenges in martech. 

While those pressures present a great deal of risk for organizations and marketing leadership, the reward is also significant. The report suggests that the marketing’s rising influence in the enterprise should continue in 2025, with high-profile CMOs becoming CEOs.

Additional takeaways for marketing leaders found in the report include:

Embrace data-driven decision making: Marketing leaders need to transition to a “command center powered by business-centric, real-time data-driven decisioning.” Iterative decisions should be informed by generative research and real-time market feedback.

Optimize marketing spend with revenue science: With 65% of CMOs agreeing that marketing must optimize revenue generation, according to the report,  it is critical to use revenue science to guide marketing spend. This approach ensures resources are allocated to channels that actively engage target customers, visibly and measurably.

Capitalize on chat commerce: Chat commerce presents a significant opportunity. The report found companies that include chat experience reporting 75% year-over-year growth in annual revenue. Chat commerce also shows a 61% higher conversion rate than email and 87% higher than other mobile apps.

Leverage AI and automation strategically: While AI presents vast opportunities, 57% of CMOs believe that martech investments in genAI are likely to create the most value and ROI, the report found. As AI continues to develop, CMOs should integrate AI into brand strategy.

Prioritize brand protection: With increasing threats such as brand hijacking and data breaches, CMOs and functional leaders need to team up to assure brand value, trust and reputation by creating new strategies, tools and methods to mitigate and recover from costly incidents.

Re-evaluate loyalty programs: Traditional loyalty programs may not provide enough value beyond discounts, the report found.. CMOs should strive to be more inventive to encourage people to sign up, and provide real value to build customer affinity.

Balance short-term and long-term goals: Marketers need to allocate resources effectively between immediate performance metrics and brand-building activities. The report found upper-funnel strategies deliver 40% greater overall impact compared to lower funnel efforts, demonstrating their critical role in driving both short- and long-term performance.

The CMO Council Marketing Vitality Index (registration required) is an annual assessment of the forces and factors impacting functional performance. In it, the CMO Council curated Marketing Performance Indicators (MPIs) from trusted third-party sources, centers of domain knowledge and proprietary data to inform an analysis on marketing vitality for each of the five major marketing categories: marketing mix and spend, organizational dynamics, market outlook and trends, customer affinity and attachment and technology adoption and execution.