If you’ve burned through three CMOs in two years, congratulations. You’ve just spent £500,000 learning that the problem isn’t your marketing hires. It’s your understanding of what marketing can and can’t do. And frankly, that’s a more expensive problem to solve than just hiring better people.

A Vicious Cycle

I’ve watched talented marketing leaders get fired for “failing” at unrealistic tasks across every sector I’ve worked in. Having reported to CMOs, CROs, and CEOs throughout my 20-year career, managing marketing through major upturns and difficult budget cuts, I’ve seen this pattern repeat with depressing regularity.

The cycle is predictable and expensive. Month one brings demands to transform the entire go-to-market strategy. Month three comes with increasingly pointed questions about why hockey stick growth hasn’t materialised. Month six arrives with the inevitable conclusion that “this isn’t working.”

Here’s what that cycle actually costs you: You’re looking at £150,000-300,000 per hire when you factor in search fees and onboarding. Then there’s the strategic disruption – it takes 6-12 months to rebuild marketing momentum after each change, while your team grows cynical about leadership stability and the market gets confused by your constantly shifting messaging.

Most of these “failed” CMOs go on to tremendous success elsewhere. The difference isn’t their capability – it’s whether you actually understand what you hired them to do.

What Marketing Actually Does (Beyond the Lead Factory Myth)

Marketing is a revenue system, not a lead factory. Yes, we generate leads, but that’s like saying finance “processes invoices” when their real work involves strategic planning and capital allocation.

The Strategic Work You Don’t See

Market research and competitive intelligence informs product development and positioning decisions affecting every department. Customer journey optimisation improves conversion at every stage, directly impacting sales productivity and customer acquisition costs. Brand positioning and messaging strategy differentiates your solution in crowded markets where buyers struggle to distinguish between options.

The Long-Term Reality

Marketing is a long-term investment, not a quarter-to-quarter fix. The best strategies require 6-12 months to show impact, creating tension with quarterly reporting cycles demanding immediate results.

Patience is a Virtue

Why does marketing take time? Brand awareness builds incrementally through consistent market presence. Content marketing compounds as educational resources build trust and credibility over months, not weeks. Sales cycle improvements happen gradually as processes mature, and market education requires consistent reinforcement before prospects change how they evaluate solutions.

What Marketing Can’t Do

Understanding marketing’s limitations prevents the unrealistic expectations that doom CMOs from day one.

Marketing Can’t Fix Fundamental Product Problems

I’ve seen CEOs hire marketing leaders to solve retention problems caused by poor product experiences. Marketing can communicate existing value more clearly but can’t manufacture value that customers aren’t experiencing.

Marketing Can’t Overcome Structural Sales Problems

If your sales team significantly underperforms industry averages in close rates, that’s not a lead quality issue, it’s a sales execution issue. Marketing can’t solve poor sales processes, inadequate training, or misaligned compensation structures

Marketing Can’t Generate Sustainable Demand for Unwanted Solutions

We can educate markets about problems and solutions, but can’t create sustainable desire for products solving problems people don’t recognise as priorities.

The CEO Behaviours That Destroy Marketing Functions

Impatience with Timeline Reality

Expecting positioning changes to show results within weeks ignores the time required for market perception shifts and customer journey completion. Brand perception changes and buying behaviour shifts happen over months, not weeks, regardless of how urgently leadership wants to see results.

Micromanaging Tactical Execution

Focusing on email colours whilst strategic initiatives receive no attention wastes expensive marketing leadership on low-impact activities. You’re essentially paying strategic-level salaries for tactical execution whilst wondering why marketing isn’t driving business growth.

Quarterly Strategy Changes

Switching between different marketing approaches before any can demonstrate effectiveness ensures nothing works well. Marketing strategies need time to mature and show results, but constant pivoting prevents any approach from reaching maturity.

Cost Centre Treatment

Cutting marketing first during budget pressure, then wondering why pipeline dried up months later creates predictable revenue problems. Marketing requires consistent investment to deliver consistent results, but treating it as discretionary spending undermines long-term growth.

Setting Your Next CMO Up for Success

Give Them Time to Diagnose

The first 60 days should focus on understanding customers, competitive dynamics, and internal processes, not launching new campaigns that may address wrong problems or miss critical market insights. Proper diagnosis prevents expensive strategic mistakes later.

Agree on Success Metrics Upfront

Define what success looks like at 6, 12, and 18 months with measurable criteria both parties understand. Write it down and stick to it – avoid moving goalposts that make success impossible regardless of how well marketing performs.

Protect Strategic Time

Your CMO should spend 60% of time on strategy, 40% on execution oversight. All-day campaign creation meetings waste their strategic expertise and prevent the high-level thinking that drives real business impact.

Invest in Marketing Operations

Great marketing requires proper tools and analytics infrastructure for accurate measurement and optimisation. Expecting sophisticated results without proper technology is like asking your finance team to manage budgets with spreadsheets from 1995.

The Questions You Should Ask Instead

Rather than demanding tactical explanations, focus on strategic insights informing broader business decisions:

• “What market trends should inform our product roadmap?”
• “How are customer buying behaviours changing?”
• “What’s our competitive advantage in messaging?”
• “Where should we invest marketing budget for maximum ROI?”

A Success Pattern I’ve Observed

The most effective CEO-CMO relationships I’ve witnessed share common characteristics. These CEOs ask different questions from the start, focusing on what marketing leaders need to succeed rather than just what they expect to deliver.

They’re honest about timeline requirements and realistic about what marketing can achieve within given constraints. They protect strategic time and provide organisational support when other departments push back on strategic changes.

Most importantly, they measure marketing success based on business outcomes rather than just marketing metrics, whilst understanding that meaningful change takes time to materialise.

In these environments, marketing leaders consistently deliver stronger business results, stay longer, and contribute more strategically to overall company success. I’ve seen it work, and the difference is night and day.

Key Takeaways for CEOs

If you’ve cycled through multiple CMOs, examine your expectations, timeline pressures, and organisational support rather than just hiring different people.

Your success framework should include strategic focus (hire marketing leaders for strategy, not just tactics), realistic timelines (expect 6-12 months for meaningful impact), organisational alignment (ensure marketing can coordinate across functions), business outcome focus (measure results that matter to overall success), and consistent support (maintain commitment during quarterly pressure).

The right marketing leader can transform your business, but only if empowered to do strategic work they were hired for. That’s considerably cheaper than hiring new CMOs every 18 months.