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THE CMO’S AGENDA, 2016: FACING THE
FACTS ON WHAT’S EFFECTIVE AND WHAT
NEEDS FIXING
February 2016
 Andrew Moravick, Senior Research Associate,
Marketing Effectiveness & Strategy
Report Highlights
p2
Acquiring new
customers remains
the top pressure
among marketers,
but what’s changed
for 2016?
p4
Learn how Best-inClass marketers
average a 66%
higher return on
marketing
investment (ROMI).
p8
Best-in-Class marketing
organizations are 95%
more likely to make
aiding their
organizations’ HR efforts
an integral part of their
overall marketing
activities.
A new year, a new laundry list of marketing pressures, initiatives,
“next-big-thing” temptations, derailing expectations, and everchanging situations. In this dizzying, disorienting world of modern
marketing, CMOs and other marketing leaders must still find a
way to orient themselves and align their marketing efforts in the
right direction to move their businesses forward. In this report,
Aberdeen’s findings will help to map out and make sense of
modern marketing trends and identify where CMOs and other
marketing leaders have the greatest opportunities for competitive
differentiation.
p12
Discover the impact of
data/analytics
solutions on lead
management.
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The CMO’s Agenda, 2016: Facing the Facts on What’s Effective and What Needs Fixing
Setting the Marketing Scene for 2016
For all the talk being
talked on modern
marketing
sophistication, there’s
still a lot of walk left to
be walked.
For better or worse in marketing, pressures often dictate
priorities. When Aberdeen surveyed 223 marketing professionals
between September and October of 2015, the top pressures
identified have painted a rather interesting picture of what CMOs
and other marketing leaders are focusing on. In Figure 1, we see
these pressures plotted out pretty clearly, but collectively, these
data points reflect how CMOs believe they must operate in 2016
(but not necessarily how they should).
Figure 1: What’s Keeping CMOs Up at Night? The Top Marketing
Pressures of 2016:
Outright, it’s clear that new customer acquisition is the most
common pressure reported by 56% of marketers. With a 41%
disparity between the fourth highest pressure of retaining existing
customers (15%), however, there’s already an explicit inefficiency
with what marketing leaders are setting out to do. When customer
acquisition takes priority, but customer retention is not prioritized
in tandem, acquisition efforts must also make up for any
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inevitable customer attrition that may occur. On paper, the math
might work out well enough that customers acquired does make
up for losses in customers retained. However, when paired with
the additional pressure of executing marketing initiatives with
limited resources, this environment of marketing pressures
becomes rather unhealthy. Marketing becomes a tightrope walk
across two towering expectations of business results and wellmanaged resources.
It's easy to imagine a CEO or board member telling a CMO, “Great
new customer wins this year Jennifer, but if you do the same next
year with half the budget and headcount, we’ll see twice the
returns.” Some CMOs might concede, but smart CMOs are
standing their ground against such business cases and proposing
even more beneficial alternatives.
For example, Aberdeen’s report, The State of Marketing
Technology 2016: Controlling the Chaos (December 2015), showed
that the top source of competitive advantage cited by marketers
is the personnel on their marketing teams. Thus, accepting
headcount cuts isn’t a good option. The report also showed that
Best-in-Class marketing organizations (see sidebar) generally tend
to drive more marketing returns from more strategic investments
— both of time and money. Particularly, it’s noted that Best-inClass marketers dedicate 10% more of their time to manage and
maintain their marketing systems, compared to All Others (22% vs
20%). Yet they also have 2.2-times the aptitude for tracking
specific marketing objectives in order to optimize their results
over time, compared to All Others (56% vs. 25%). The result? Bestin-Class marketers average a 66% higher return on marketing
investment (ROMI), compared to their peers (74% vs 45%).
Aberdeen's Maturity Class
Framework
Aberdeen's research defines Best-inClass performance by benchmarking
organizations against several key
performance metrics. In this case,
three metrics were used:
•
•
•
Percentage of company
revenue attributed to
marketing campaigns: Best-inClass: 50.7% vs. All Others:
24.4%
Year-over-year improvement
(decrease) in customer
acquisition cost: Best-in-Class:
10.8% vs. All Others: -0.8%
Year-over-year improvement
(increase) in customer
retention rates: Best-in-Class:
3.9% vs. All Others: 0.8%:
By looking at organizational
performance, we then break the
survey respondents into three
maturity classes, as described below:
•
•
•
Best-in-Class: top 20% of
performers
Industry Average: middle
50% of performers
Laggard: bottom 30% of
performers
Sometimes, a fourth maturity class, All
Others, is used to describe Industry
Average & Laggard combined.
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Best-in-Class marketers
average a 66% higher
return on marketing
investment (ROMI),
compared to their
peers (74% vs 45%).
The CMO’s Agenda, 2016: Facing the Facts on What’s Effective and What Needs Fixing
The critical takeaway here is that in response to a high-pressure
and unstable marketing environment, savvy CMOs are
establishing stability, competency, and quality in their marketing
efforts as a foundation. Then, from this position of strength,
they’re building out marketing plans that incrementally grow
marketing’s performance by building on what’s already working.
These marketers first secure measurable marketing effectiveness,
and then they work toward efficiency, but without sacrificing
performance.
The Marketing Competency Reality Check
When it comes to marketing performance, however, it’s critical for
marketers to know what efforts are actually effective, and where
they need to improve. Aberdeen uncovered that overall, the
average marketer is responsible for seventeen individual
marketing activities. Those activities roll up into eight overarching
marketing initiatives under the purview of a CMO or comparable
marketing leader.
Of note, for example, while 63% of all marketers report a
responsibility for managing leads, in Figure 2 below, we see that
only 38% of all marketers are actually effective (reporting a 4 for
“effective” or 5 for “very effective” on a 1-5 scale) at the related
competency of managing, scoring, and prioritizing leads based on
behavioral and demographic data. Essentially, of the 63% of
marketers managing leads, 62% of that cohort are just going
through the motions ineffectively. This is the kind of “doing stuff
just to do stuff” that CMOs need to clear out in 2016.
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The CMO’s Agenda, 2016: Facing the Facts on What’s Effective and What Needs Fixing
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Figure 2: What Are Marketers Doing… Both Effectively and
Ineffectively?
Although Figure 2 could be taken as a bit of a downer — after all,
for six out of the eight competencies shown, marketers have a
below par (under 50%) level of effectiveness — there is hope.
Paired with the context of Best-in-Class marketers, there are clear
opportunities for not only attainable, but also impactful
improvement.
For one, looking at the wide margin in the ability to measurably
connect marketing efforts to revenue between Best-in-Class
marketers and the average level of effectiveness for all marketers,
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The average marketer
has the same chances
of converting a netnew visitor into a
closed-won deal as an
average golfer has of
hitting a hole-in-one!
the data suggests that this competency is strongly correlated to
Best-in-Class marketing performance. Marketers who find
themselves chasing the Best-in-Class can make significant strides
forward by more effectively connecting their efforts to revenue.
With such effective revenue attribution, a CMO can also justify
otherwise costly or time-consuming marketing technologies or
processes that eclipse expenses with revenue outputs. For
retaining or even promoting talented marketing team members,
this kind of revenue attribution also helps to make a clear
business case and cut down on negotiation or approval time.
Speaking of revenue, it’s also worth highlighting how marketers
are performing within the specific stages of the lead-to-revenue
cycle overall. When CMOs have such a benchmarked breakdown
as shown in Table 1, they can identify where exactly their
marketing strategies are performing well, and where it is
necessary to make improvements.
Table 1: Marketing Performance in the Lead-to-Revenue Cycle
Lead-to-Revenue Stage Conversion Rates
(n=223)
Unknown visitor to marketing response
Marketing response to marketing qualified lead
(MQL)
MQL to sales actioned lead (SAL)
SAL to opportunity
Opportunity to closed-won deal
Best-in-Class
3.96%
21.38%
Average
Marketers
3.54%
20.36%
38.51%
35.92%
30.89%
33.57%
30.08%
28.88%
Source: Aberdeen Group, January 2016
Table 1 highlights that, for average marketers, the marketingcontrolled stages are the strongest, which, assumedly, means
that’s where these marketers invest most of their time and effort.
For the Best-in-Class, however, the elevated performance levels
continue on into the more sales-controlled phases of the lead-towww.aberdeen.com
The CMO’s Agenda, 2016: Facing the Facts on What’s Effective and What Needs Fixing
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revenue cycle — after a marketing qualified lead (MQL) has been
actioned by sales, qualified as an opportunity, and closed as a
won deal. In other words, the perceived “handoff” from marketing
to sales is becoming less and less of an actual release, and more
of a joint “hand-holding” session. Best-in-Class marketers don’t
give up on their buyers when they’re in sales’ hands, and they
don’t leave sales empty-handed when it comes to managing their
buyers. Firstly, this is because 92% of Best-in-Class marketing
organizations report that supporting the sales team is an integral
part of their marketing strategy. Secondly, the ability to optimize
and enhance every stage of the lead-to-revenue cycle can make a
sizable difference on marketing’s ability to source and drive
revenue for the organization. As Table 2 shows, overall,
marketing’s performance in the lead-to-revenue cycle still has a
long way to go, so every little bit counts. When the average
marketer has the same chances of converting a net-new visitor to
a closed-won deal as an average golfer has of hitting a hole-inone, we’re not exactly looking at professional-grade performance.
92% of Best-in-Class
marketing organizations
report that supporting
the sales team is an
integral part of their
marketing strategy.
Table 2: High Reward, Low Probability — Completing the
Buyer’s Journey is a Hole-in-One
Lead-to-Revenue Success & Comparable Events
Average marketer converting a buyer from initial interest
to closed-won
Best-in-Class marketer converting a buyer from initial
interest to closed won
An average golfer hitting a hole-in-one
A pro golfer hitting a hole-in-one
Getting struck by lightning
Probability:
1/5,000
1/2,500
1/5,000
1/2,500
1/3,000
Source: Aberdeen Group, January 2016
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The CMO’s Agenda, 2016: Facing the Facts on What’s Effective and What Needs Fixing
The CMO’s Responsibility is to Make Marketing Better
Best-in-Class marketing
organizations are 95%
more likely to make
aiding their
organizations’ HR
efforts an integral part
of their overall
marketing activities,
compared to All Others
(31% vs. 16%).
Aberdeen Definition:
Recruitment marketing consists of
the strategies and tactics an
organization uses to find, attract,
engage, and nurture talent before
they apply for a job. This
happenstance is also known as the
pre-applicant phase of the
recruiting process.
Thus far in this report, we’ve explored key components of the
modern marketing environment, and some humbling realities on
where marketers stand in it. In short, for all the talk being talked
on modern marketing sophistication, there’s still a lot of walk left
to be walked. Fortunately, CMOs have a fairly clear-cut path to
moving marketing forward from aspirational sophistication, to
actual, attainable success and improvement. It all comes down
to people, process, and technology.
CMOs Get Power from Their Marketing People
As noted earlier in this report, the most cited source of
competitive advantage for marketers comes from the talent they
themselves bring to the table. It’s why Best-in-Class marketers are
27% more likely to support their marketing teams with project
management and collaboration technology (33% vs. 26%),
compared to All Others. It’s why Best-in-Class marketers are also
18% more likely to operate in an environment where staffing is
not a hindrance to marketing execution, compared to All Others
(40% vs. 34%). And with these trends in mind, it should also come
as no surprise that Best-in-Class marketing organizations are 95%
more likely to make aiding their organizations’ HR efforts an
integral part of their overall marketing activities, compared to All
Others (31% vs. 16%).
In Aberdeen’s report, Recruitment Marketing: Converting
Candidates, Winning Talent (February 2016), it was shown that
when HR and marketing work together for talent acquisition in
the form of recruitment marketing (sidebar), these organizations
average 1.5-times the year-over-year increase in revenue per fulltime equivalent (9.2% vs. 6.1%), compared to organizations
without such alignment. In other words, these organizations are
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The CMO’s Agenda, 2016: Facing the Facts on What’s Effective and What Needs Fixing
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generating more revenue per employee each year than their
peers. While it may have gone without saying that a CMO would of
course be able to drive top marketing performance by sourcing
and maintaining top marketing talent, these findings take it a step
further. When the organization can also bring in top sales talent,
sales performance increases, and performance in the sales-owned
stages of the lead-to-revenue cycle also improves. When customer
service and experience has top talent, customer retention and
satisfaction rates can be improved. When other lines of business
perform well too, that also provides marketing with more subjectmatter experts, internal brand advocates, or otherwise nonmarketing marketers to further expand the organization’s voice
and reach. The point? Savvy CMOs are using marketing for more
than just marketing. They target and attract the most valuable
people — not just in leads and net-new customers, but also in
talented employees across multiple lines of business.
Organizations where
marketing & HR are
aligned for recruitment
marketing average 1.5times the year-overyear increase in
revenue per full-time
equivalent (9.2% vs.
6.1%), compared to
organizations without
such alignment.
Improving Marketing Processes: Where Data-Driven Marketing Gets
Real
Having the right people organizationally, however, is not a silverbullet secret to better marketing alone. An effective CMO must
also ensure the right people are executing in the right ways.
Naturally, this is where process comes in. Nevertheless, as
Aberdeen’s findings in Figure 2 have shown, seemingly standard
marketing processes like lead management, benchmarking
marketing performance, and connecting efforts to revenue are all
sore spots in terms of the average marketer’s reported
effectiveness. How can CMOs change the process proclamations
like “we’ve always done it this way,” or “this worked at my last
company, so it’ll work here” that lead to such underwhelming
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The CMO’s Agenda, 2016: Facing the Facts on What’s Effective and What Needs Fixing
levels of effectiveness? The difference is in data. With the rise of
data-driven marketing, and the complementary marketing
technology solutions that support it, marketers (even the most
creative, un-scientific ones), can measurably apply the scientific
method to their marketing processes. In this way, marketing
processes become a series of tested experiments that can be
measured, optimized and most importantly, duplicated in a
predictable fashion.
Aberdeen’s report, The Data on Data-Driven Marketing: Where Data
& Analytics Make a Difference (January 2016), showed that Best-inClass marketers are 56% more likely to use analytics and data
visualization platforms, compared to All Others (51.5% vs. 33%).
When these solutions are applied to tracking and optimizing
marketing processes, like lead management, for example,
marketers can empirically identify where leads are breaking down
in the buyer’s journey, what criteria comprises the most likely-tobuy lead profiles, and what actions most significantly impact
sales-readiness. In this way, lead generation, lead scoring, and
lead routing can all be empirically tested and improved over time.
Related Research:
The Data on DataDriven Marketing:
Where Data & Analytics
Make a Difference;
January 2016
Process development and deployment is a powerful tool in a
CMO’s arsenal. Yet, while process implementations may have
been a shoot-from-the-hip art of experience in the past, it is now
becoming a highly targeted, and especially precise science of data
in the modern landscape. As intimidating as this may sound, it’s
actually fairly good news. In these internal, controllable, and basic
applications of data & analytics for marketing, CMOs can develop
a high-value competency for data & analytics with a low level of
risk and complexity. By applying data-driven marketing to
produce measurable process improvements, CMOs can change
the game from the underwhelming performance and
unpredictable marketing results of old.
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The CMO’s Agenda, 2016: Facing the Facts on What’s Effective and What Needs Fixing
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Amplifying People and Processes with Technology — Best-in-Class CMOs
Crank It Up to 11
In effective marketing content and effective marketing research alike, form should
often suit function. In that regard, it’s worth noting why people and processes were
highlighted prior to this introduction to technology. Namely, because effective people
and process management competencies are vital to have in place before leaning on
technology. It is never wise to rely on technology alone to solve specific business
challenges.
With that said, now let’s look at how marketers are actually driving improvement with
marketing technology in Figure 3.
Figure 3: What Happens When the Right Marketing Technology Addresses the Right Problem?
In Figure 2, between the 32% of average marketers who are
effective at earning positive social media mentions, word-of-
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Marketers using project
management
technology report an
18% higher level of
effectiveness at
benchmarking and
improving upon
marketing performance
(52% vs. 44%).
The CMO’s Agenda, 2016: Facing the Facts on What’s Effective and What Needs Fixing
mouth referrals, and media coverage, and the 36% of Best-inClass who were effective at this competency, the social sphere,
overall, seems to be a significant weak spot for all marketers.
When social media management technology is used, however, as
shown in Figure 3, the needle starts moving in the right direction.
When marketing technology is applied to solve specific marketing
problems, there’s clear progress.
For marketers who struggle at benchmarking and improving upon
marketing performance, the application of project management
technology allows marketers to better track and manage
everything that’s going on. Thus, we see marketers using project
management technology reporting an 18% higher level of
effectiveness at benchmarking and improving upon marketing
performance (52% vs. 44%).
Similarly, while only 38% of all marketers reported being effective
at managing, scoring, and prioritizing leads based on behavioral
and demographic data, when a data/analytics solution is used,
the level of effectiveness rises to 55%. Essentially, these
data/analytics users achieve a 45% higher level of effectiveness
(55% vs. 38%) because these solutions allow marketers to make
better sense of how the data actually applies to the lead
management process and put that insight into action.
Then, of course, there’s the issue of managing the right amount of
marketing technologies. Aberdeen’s findings have uncovered
that, for the majority of marketers (50% and above), there are
only five marketing-specific technologies that are regularly used.
For the Best-in-Class, that number only slightly increases to seven.
The problem, as noted by the meager 47% of marketers who are
effective at increasing productivity with integrated marketing
technologies, is that only so many solutions can be used
productively at a time. Figure 3 shows, however, that the right
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The CMO’s Agenda, 2016: Facing the Facts on What’s Effective and What Needs Fixing
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marketing technology, in this case, a marketing automation
platform (MAP), even when applied to what is a marketing
technology shortcoming, can make a positive change. Here, we
see that MAP users report a 40% higher attainment of improved
productivity through integrated marketing technologies than the
average level of effectiveness among typical marketers (66% vs.
47%). While there are additional advantages to marketing
automation detailed in Aberdeen’s Managing Marketing
Automation Expectations: How to Win with the Right Approach
(January 2016), in this case, the advantage is that a platform can
actually serve to bring together multiple other marketing
technologies while nonetheless improving productivity.
Data/analytics users
achieve a 45% higher
level of effectiveness
at managing, scoring,
and prioritizing leads
based on behavioral
and demographic data
(55% vs. 38%).
Revisiting Aberdeen’s The State of Marketing Technology 2016:
Controlling the Chaos (December 2015), the CMO’s ultimate role
when it comes to technology is in taking control. Specifically, as
the report found that Best-in-Class marketers are 31% more likely
to have complete control of their marketing technology decisions,
compared to All Others (42% vs. 32%), it falls on the CMO to make
this kind of marketing technology independence possible. From
there, the CMO can easily apply and integrate the right marketing
technology to address the most pressing marketing challenges.
Key Takeaways:
The CMO’s agenda in 2016 is simple yet challenging. There is a lot
of necessary level-setting, planning, and prioritizing to be done,
but the basic rundown is:
 Balance pressures and expectations for stable,
improvable marketing initiatives. While 56% of
marketers worry about net-new customer acquisition, only
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The CMO’s Agenda, 2016: Facing the Facts on What’s Effective and What Needs Fixing
15% are concerned with retention. The CMO must
challenge short-sighted objectives and augment them with
long-sighted and sustainable efforts.
 Identify the marketing competencies that must be
improved to drive further increases in marketing
performance. When the average marketer has the same
chances of converting a net-new visitor to a closed-won
deal as an average golfer has of hitting a hole-in-one, for
example, the CMO needs to step in and plot out a path
toward improvement.
 Maximize the value of the organization’s personnel
(marketing and otherwise), to maximize marketing’s
overall returns. Best-in-Class marketing organizations are
95% more likely to make aiding their organizations’ HR
efforts an integral part of their overall marketing activities,
compared to All Others (31% vs. 16%) because talented
team members are a marketing asset no matter where
they exist in the business.
 Make process development and implementation a
science for success. Best-in-Class marketers are 56%
more likely to use analytics and data visualization
platforms, compared to All Others (51.5% vs. 33%) because
these solutions can take documented actions and metrics,
and turn them into actionable insights that can
measurably improve the utility of marketing processes.
 Take everything up a notch with technology. Best-inClass marketers are 31% more likely to have complete
control of their marketing technology decisions, compared
to All Others (42% vs. 32%) because they know that the
best results come from the best uses of marketing
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technology to solve marketing problems. The CMO who is
master of marketing technology is the master of his or her
own destiny and success.
For more information on this or other research topics, please visit www.aberdeen.com.
Related Research
Recruitment Marketing: Converting Candidates,
Winning Talent; February 2016
The Data on Data-Driven Marketing: Where Data
& Analytics Make A Difference; January 2016
Managing Marketing Automation Expectations:
How to Win with the Right Approach; January
2016
The State of Marketing Technology: Controlling
the Chaos; December 2015
Author: Andrew Moravick, Senior Research Associate, Marketing Effectiveness & Strategy
([email protected])
About Aberdeen Group
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Best-in-Class organizations from primary research conducted with industry practitioners. The resulting research
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This document is the result of primary research performed by Aberdeen Group and represents the best analysis
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