CMOs sometimes struggle to explain the costs of marketing as well. As one marketing executive at a beverage company observes, “I have to justify my spend every year, and if I can’t communicate that to finance, I won’t get the funding that I need to reach my target customers.” This lack of alignment can hurt CMOs, CEOs, CFOs, and, ultimately, customers. Marketing is disconnected from the growth engine Best-in-class marketing organizations deploy sophisticated systems that provide agreed- upon performance measurements to better understand the financial impact of their marketing investments. The ability to translate a range of functional KPIs (for example, awareness, brand, consideration, and action) into business metrics (for instance, new customers or EBITDA) is critical. Without this, marketing teams can’t quantify their contributions and therefore can’t effectively demonstrate themselves as credible owners of growth that can deliver value to the business. The key here is alignment on critical measurements, methodologies, and testing protocols and on how those will be used to propel important business decisions. No more black boxes. Unfortunately, many CMOs have yet to earn the trust of their peers in demonstrating marketing’s business impact. Others in the C-suite may ask, “Are we driving new sales? Are they just incremental?” Of the CEO respondents in our survey, 70 percent say they measure marketing’s impact based on year-over-year revenue growth and margin, but only 35 percent of CMO respondents track this as a top metric (Exhibit 3). CMOs may also be looking at different time horizons when it comes Exhibit 3 Web <2025> Exhibit <3> of <4> Share of CEOs who measure marketing impact based on year-over-year revenue growth and margin, % Share of CMOs 1 who track year-over-year revenue growth and margin as a top metric, % 1 Chief marketing officers. Source: McKinsey CMO Growth Research Survey, 2023 (n = 101) and 2024 (n = 77) CEOs and chief marketing officers are often not aligned about how to measure marketing’s impact. McKinsey & Company 50 70 33 35 2023 percentage points +20 2024 2023 percentage points +2 2024 6 The CMO’s comeback: Aligning the C-suite to drive customer-centric growth