Why CMOs need to rethink marketing effectiveness

The uncomfortable truth facing marketers today? Marketing effectiveness is waning fast.

Musa Kalenga says effectiveness is under pressure

According to a recent study from the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) and marketing effectiveness expert Peter Field, the proportion of campaigns delivering long-term business growth has dropped by nearly 50% over the last decade. Even as marketing budgets rebound and channels proliferate, the business impact of marketing investment is eroding. This should trigger alarm bells in the c-suite.

Marketing is increasingly scrutinised by finance teams, procurement officers, and impatient boards. Yet, even the most seasoned CMOs often struggle to demonstrate that their efforts consistently drive measurable outcomes. In short, marketing is losing its seat at the table.

Part of the problem is a growing over-reliance on short-term activation at the expense of long-term brand building. Field’s data suggests the most effective campaigns balance emotional brand storytelling with rational sales triggers – a 60:40 split in favour of brand. However, in reality, most marketers today are overemphasising short-term metrics, such as clicks, conversions, and cost per acquisition. These can be optimised to death without ever building meaningful customer equity.

This isn’t just a marketing problem. It is a business problem. In a volatile economy, effectiveness is no longer a luxury; it is a necessity. It’s a multiplier. When CMOs can prove their contribution to growth, it validates marketing’s strategic role. When they can’t, marketing gets treated as overhead.

Understanding data is non-negotiable

To reverse the decline in effectiveness, CMOs must urgently rethink their relationship with data, not just as a reporting tool, but as a foundation for insight, decision-making, and learning.

The DIKW Pyramid, a framework from knowledge management theory, offers a valuable lens. It describes the hierarchy from data to information to knowledge to wisdom. Many organisations are awash in data. But data alone doesn’t make anyone smarter. It must be structured, contextualised, and analysed before it becomes useful.

A Salesforce State of Marketing Report found that 78% of high-performing marketing teams have a unified view of customer data, compared to 23% of underperforming teams. This matters because effectiveness depends on clarity – what worked, what didn’t, and what to do next.

To improve marketing effectiveness, CMOs should ask:

• Do we know what success looks like, beyond vanity metrics?
  
• Can we measure the incremental impact of our marketing, not just correlation?
  
• Are we learning fast enough to improve with every campaign?

Too often, teams become bogged down in dashboards without drawing meaningful conclusions. Or worse – they track what’s easy, not what matters.

Establishing a culture of marketing effectiveness requires cross-functional alignment around meaningful KPIs. That includes brand metrics like mental availability, customer lifetime value, and share of search, not just media efficiency.

This also demands better data literacy inside marketing teams. The CMO of today must be as fluent in analytics as they are in creativity. Gut instinct still has a place, but it must be informed by evidence.

There is no silver bullet – only learning cultures.

Tempting though it may be to search for a single solution like an AI platform, a new attribution model, or a magic metric, the reality is that marketing effectiveness is a complex phenomenon. It defies quick fixes. As Forrester notes, effectiveness is not a project. It's a mindset.

This is especially true as AI reshapes the marketing landscape.

AI can optimise targeting, generate content, and surface insights at scale. But it can’t set strategic direction, interpret nuance, or understand context. In other words, it’s an enabler, not a substitute.

What teams need more than ever is a culture of testing and learning. This means running controlled experiments, documenting what works, and sharing learnings across silos. It means being comfortable with failure, provided it’s fast and affordable. It also means developing a marketing operating model that values iteration over perfection.

The World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) echoes this in its Global Media Charter: “Advertisers must invest in measurement and learning systems that help them make better decisions in complex environments.” The most effective marketing teams aren’t those with the most significant budgets, but those that learn the fastest.

There are examples to follow. Unilever’s People Data Centres integrate insights across digital, retail, and social to help brand teams make better decisions. Adobe conducts thousands of marketing experiments annually to optimise campaigns and customer journeys. These companies treat marketing effectiveness not as an outcome, but as a process.

AI only adds to the urgency. As generative AI commoditises content and media placement, brands must differentiate through more profound insights, faster learning, and sharper strategy. Effectiveness becomes the great differentiator.

CMOs must lead the charge

Marketing effectiveness cannot be relegated to the insights team or become a problem that your ad agency solves on its own. This is a core leadership responsibility that connects brand ambition to business reality. Moreover, it is an opportunity for CMOs to gain respect from the c-suite, the board, and all shareholders.

The path forward is clear:

• Rebalance your mix to focus on long-term brand building.
  
• Build teams that are literate in data, not just fluent in reporting tools.
  
• Encourage learning and experimentation as core capabilities.
  
• Align stakeholders around meaningful, business-linked KPIs.

Effectiveness is under pressure. However, for CMOs who lead with clarity, courage, and curiosity, it’s also the most significant opportunity to prove marketing’s actual value, now and into the future of AI.