6 days ago
Breaking The Mold: How To Become A Transformational CMO, Part 1
Meghan Keough, Chief Marketing Officer, C1.
The chief marketing officer (CMO) is no longer just the voice of the brand. Or at least, we shouldn't be. Today's CMO should be the driving force behind business transformation—influencing how companies position themselves, go to market, adopt technology and serve customers.
CMOs are uniquely positioned to lead this change. We sit at the intersection of product, positioning, sales, voice of the customer, market insights, competitive intelligence, experience design, storytelling and data.
We understand the market, the buyer and the story that connects the two. Yet too often, marketing is relegated to a cost center, boxed out of the strategy room. But with the most comprehensive view of the business, marketing is often best positioned to lead transformational growth.
Throughout my career, I've led brand overhauls, go-to-market (GTM) pivots and platform reinventions. What I've seen is this: When marketing is brought to the front of the transformation agenda, the business moves faster, aligns better and grows smarter—all leading to increased revenue and overall growth.
Five Keys To Making Marketing A Transformation Engine
Too often, marketing is seen as merely 'serving' other functions through the stories we tell. But the stories we tell—and the people we tell them to—won't matter if there isn't near-perfect alignment with product strategy, customer journey design, partner ecosystems and digital operations.
Transformation starts when marketing breaks out of its silo. At 8x8, for example, I saw the need to reposition our solutions from point applications to a platform—but I didn't own the roadmap. To drive change, I had to build credibility with product and sales through market data and customer insight. Influence precedes impact.
CMOs can't transform anything alone. We must lead across functions, shaping a common understanding of what's next in the market, the roadmap and customer demand.
This requires listening widely, connecting dots others don't and making the complex feel simple. To achieve this, I've leaned into a leadership style shaped in part by being a middle child. I listen, facilitate and build bridges. It's served me well, especially as the pace of change accelerates.
We hear a lot about AI, automation and the power of a modern martech stack. However, none of that works without the right people and processes in place.
Think of the buying journey as a manufacturing line for commercial outcomes. Along the way, we must be deliberate about the conversion of the opportunity, with technology facilitating the buyer and seller journey, not complicating it. Whether marketing drives most of the pipeline or just part of it, at a point in the process, a business development team has to be engaged to convert interest to intent. Once we have established the right process, then the right technology makes these teams and data more connected, relevant, responsive and successful—and enables the organization to make the most of the martech stack. It's not revolutionary, but too often it's overlooked.
Customers aren't just references. They should also be your strongest signals when making trade-offs and determining the viability of new ideas. I've built voice-of-the-customer-like engagements, including customer reference and advocacy programs, from the ground up multiple times in my career, and going back to my early technology consulting days, I am a firm believer in working closely with customers. This takes many forms, such as advisory boards and customer summits, and experience has taught me that this input can sharpen your product roadmap and positioning, accelerate deals and improve conversions.
The transformation-ready CMO can't be defined by any one specialty. We're strategists, technologists, storytellers and people leaders, often all at once.
Early in my career, I moved between roles that didn't squarely fall within marketing: I started as a technology consultant, led product management and marketing at a startup and later took on an alliance role to move closer to sales. It looked nonlinear, but it built the foundation for how I lead today. I don't just run campaigns. I drive business.
If you're building your marketing career today, don't just go deep. Go wide. Step into product. Learn partnerships. Get close to the tech. These aren't detours. They're preparing you to lead.
Marketing today is more complex than ever. But complexity isn't a burden—it's our opportunity. The CMO has never been better positioned to drive change.
In my next post, I'll explore strategies CMOs can use to develop their ability to lead a transformation, and in future posts, I'll expand on some of the topics I've laid out here and take up other key topics, such as the CMO as system integrator to business innovator, the new AI-powered content supply chain and turning the voice of the customer into a competitive advantage.
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