835 Chief Marketing Officers share their priorities
In this article, I analyze the results of a survey conducted among 835 Chief Marketing Officers worldwide. You’ll find out what trends they’re anticipating and their priorities for 2025.
What will Chief Marketing Officers’ priorities be in 2025? That’s the complex question a survey conducted among 835 Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) has just answered. We detail the results for you in this article so that you can anticipate the marketing trends of the next 12 months.
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Chief Marketing Officers 2025 survey: key figures
- 25% of Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) believe that the economic situation in their sector will improve in 2025, versus 23% who think it will worsen.
- Dutch and Mexican CMOs are the most optimistic: 48% and 42% think the situation will improve.)
- French and Austrian CMOs are the most pessimistic: 39% and 38% think the situation will worsen.
- 37% of CMOs think their marketing budget will increase, and 27% think it will decrease.
- For 48% of CMOs, artificial intelligence is the most important topic in 2025. In 2024, it was 32%.
- While environmental sustainability was the 2nd most important issue in the previous survey, it is now relegated to 7th place.
What responsibilities will Chief Marketing Officers have in 2025?
The survey team had a good idea of asking the 835 Chief Marketing Officers about their responsibilities. The 4 most important responsibilities (see chart below) can also be read as follows:
- Building brand awareness (71%)
- Go-To-Market (61%)
- Building customer loyalty (59%)
- Market research (58%)
Inbound and outbound marketing activities are at the core of CMOs’ work. These activities are also found in the second task (planning, presenting, and launching new services).
The 3rd most important task is to look after existing customers and build loyalty. This, of course, includes customer satisfaction measurement activities. As far as customer experience is concerned, I’m still skeptical because it’s a term that few marketing managers understand. Customer experience is often equated with differentiation/satisfaction when it’s a specific construct.
Finally, in 4th place, we find market research. In today’s environment, market research is becoming increasingly important:
- they enable us to anticipate market changes
- they enable companies to reduce risks while developing a new product or service
CMO’s view of the 2025 economic outlook
Our market research agency conducts company morale surveys throughout the year. In this case, we talk to the head of the company or, as in the case of hiring prospects, to human resources managers. It is unique to ask marketing managers for their opinion on the economic situation. But there’s a point to it. After all, the marketing department must, by definition, be as close as possible to customers’ needs. As we saw in the previous question, it is also responsible for conducting market research. It is, therefore, perfectly placed to anticipate trends.
What do the figures tell us? Despite the current economic situation, Chief Marketing Officers remain optimistic. 25% think the economic situation will improve, and 24% think it will deteriorate. All in all, it is a fairly balanced picture.
However, results vary widely from country to country. Dutch CMOs, for example, seem extremely optimistic (48% expect an improvement), while English CMOs are very negative(52% expect a deterioration). English CMOs are affected by Brexit, which has had a rather mixed effect on the British economy. If you have an explanation for the Austrians and Spaniards, please share your thoughts in the comments.
The table below shows the full results, measured on a 5-point Likert scale. In the graph above, positive and negative results have been grouped.
| Country/Region | Significant improvement (%) | Improvement (%) | Stable (%) | Deterioration (%) | Significant deterioration (%) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Germany (DE) | 2% | 20% | 51% | 25% | 2% |
| Austria (AT) | 0% | 9% | 52% | 35% | 4% |
| Switzerland (CH) | 0% | 19% | 58% | 22% | 1% |
| Belgium/Lux. | 2% | 20% | 55% | 22% | 1% |
| Netherlands (NE) | 16% | 32% | 32% | 18% | 2% |
| Spain (ES) | 0% | 17% | 45% | 37% | 1% |
| France (FR) | 0% | 16% | 57% | 26% | 1% |
| Italy (IT) | 4% | 18% | 68% | 10% | 0% |
| United Kingdom (UK) | 0% | 16% | 32% | 52% | 0% |
| Middle East (ME) | 11% | 32% | 32% | 26% | 0% |
| Overall average | 4% | 21% | 51% | 23% | 1% |
How will marketing budgets evolve in 2025?
An important finding of this survey is that the outlook for marketing budgets in 2025 looks positive. While the economic outlook is not positive, 37% of Chief Marketing Officers think their budgets will increase, and only 27% think they will decrease. How do you explain this paradox?
One explanation lies in the advent of generative AI, and another in the complexity of markets.
Artificielle Intelligence
Generative artificial intelligence took the marketing world by surprise in 2022. Nobody expected the revolution it would bring about in marketing departments: blog post writing, image creation, voice cloning, videos, etc. All areas of inbound and outbound marketing would be affected. After initial experimentation, which saw a flood of poor-quality written content on the Internet, the time has come for professionalization. We need to find the right use cases and tools, test, measure, and improve. All this requires budgets that were not even foreseeable in 2021.
Market Research
The other source of expenditure will be market research. Whether it’s to anticipate the adoption of a product/service, to test the possibilities of expansion into a foreign market, or to gather information on your competitors through mystery shopping, analyzing the market will never have been so important. Just a few months ago, some predicted the end of market research. It has never been so important. Generative AI has further accelerated business dynamics, making anticipation even more essential.
The most important marketing topics for 2025
Unsurprisingly, artificial intelligence (AI) and marketing automation are the priorities for Chief Marketing Officers in 2025. This new marketing practice cannot be ignored, as it revolutionizes every aspect of marketing. Its influence can be seen everywhere, as respondents in association with AI mainly cite the 3 topics in 2nd, 3rd, and 4th place.
The other lesson to be learned from this survey is that aspects linked to environmental sustainability are now relegated to the bottom of the ranking. Environmental sustainability was the second most important topic in the 2023 survey; it is now relegated to 6th place. There may be several explanations for this:
The legal framework surrounding ESG reporting came into force in July 2024. Therefore, efforts to respond to it may have passed, and the subject has fallen off the radar.
Ongoing political changes have reduced the pressure on companies to address environmental issues.
A few concluding words
In conclusion, I’d like to offer my reading of the survey results.
Artificial intelligence has become the central topic for CMOs. As it quickens the pulse of marketing, it also increases the pace of business, making anticipation more essential than ever. Even in a complicated economic climate, marketing budgets must be maintained or increased to prevent the company from stalling completely. This is an interesting paradox since marketing used to be the first to suffer from budget cuts. Top management is beginning to understand that marketing is one of the company’s driving forces and that depriving it of fuel is counter-productive.
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