You Don’t Create Marketing Results

There is a myth out there—that you as a company or a marketing department create marketing results. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but it’s simply not true.

I wrote a post a while back about the emerging trend of redefining CMO from “Chief Marketing Officer” to “Chief Metric Officer”. In that post I also addressed how the tenure of the majority of CMOs is around 18 months. The reason for this is many companies, boards and stakeholders are under the misconception that CMOs get burned out so they need to be replaced.

This misconception is tied to the myth. The results that are generated from marketing are not dictated by your CMO—they are dictated by your customers and the market. If they were dictated by your CMO, wouldn’t every company have 100% marketing success? Why would a CMO not want customers to buy? It simply doesn’t make sense.

Until you come to the realization that the only control your marketing has is the ability to influence the opportunity for your market to buy from you—preferably at that time, your results will continue to be less than stellar and your company will always be in state of flux.