Full Form of CMO – Chief Marketing Officer

The full form of CMO is Chief Marketing Officer. CMO is personnel who is responsible for managing the ROI or return on investment of the marketing efforts of the organization in which he or she is employed along with taking care of the activities communication and generation of opportunities that help in the maximization of value for clients, customers as well as business partners.

Roles and Responsibilities

The roles and responsibilities include:

Proper surveillance of the market.
Assessment of the market as well as the current positioning of the company in it.
Management of the ROI or return on investment derived as a result of the marketing efforts of a company.
Pre-planning as well as overseeing the development and execution of the company’s marketing initiatives that help the company to strengthen its positioning in its industry.
Alignment of teams responsible for brand management, sales management, product development, marketing communications, pricing, distribution channel management, market research, and marketing training, etc.
He is also responsible for strategic planning. CMOs take use of the SWOT analysis for the purpose of defining microeconomic factors which can affect the management techniques as well as the success of a company. A Chief Marketing Officer is responsible for the preparation and communication of marketing strategy, development of market segmentation, prospectus, pricing strategies, competitive analysis, etc.
He is even responsible for data analysis in order to forecast business trends and consumer behavior, preparation of technical reports on the basis of data that is sourced, and construction of significant questions in order to take appropriate business-related decisions.
Chief Marketing Officer is also responsible for understanding the product or services that the company offers in order to prepare a roadmap for the products or services and evaluate the development of upcoming products, assess the performance of the sales and marketing team, and predict sales for the future and prepare budgets accordingly.

Career Path

The businesses are now becoming more customers oriented as the customers have the ultimate power to decide the future of an organization. This sudden shift has made CMO career as one of the highest sought after jobs for a marketer. Marketers today aim at achieving the designation in order to hold interactions with various business departments and units for acquiring a bigger and a better perspective, achieving the leadership in different areas other than marketing and considering the perspectives of the targeted audiences i.e. the customers into activities concerning strategic planning and tracking a record of success in maximizing profits earned by the company in a shorter span of time.

Skills and Requirements

An individual must possess the following skills and requirements to be hired or promoted in an organization:

#1 – Bachelor’s Degree:

An individual must have a bachelors’ degree in either marketing or business to apply for the post of a Chief Marketing Officer. However, an individual who is already a marketer but does not hold the bachelors’ degree in marketing or business subject would still be considered eligible to apply for the post of a CMO as most entities are of the belief that a good experience in marketing and a bachelors’ degree in any subject or a diploma obtained from a good institute would be of more importance as compared to having a relevant bachelors’ degree.

#2 – Excellent Communication Skills:

A CMO must be excellent in both oral and written communication skills.

#3 – Customer Handling and Marketing Skills:

A CMO gets to interact directly with the clients and customers of the company and this is why it is always substantial for him or her to have excellent customer handling skills. CMOs must also have excellent marketing skills to drive in more customers, sales, and revenues for the company.

#4 – Experience Counts:

An individual with a good marketing experience is always preferred over individuals who have the required degrees in terms of qualification.

#5 – Other Skills:

An applicant must also have the skills pertaining to strong leadership, brand management, digital marketing, search engine optimization or SEO, sales management, experience pertaining to project development, analytical skills, etc to apply for the designation.

Qualifications

An applicant applying for the post of a CMO should have a bachelors’ degree in either marketing or business subject. This could be optional in cases where applicants hold a good experience in marketing and have a degree in subjects other than marketing or business. An applicant must have a good experience in advertising or marketing and must also have a good experience in a managerial profile.

Salary

The salary offered and paid to CMO highly depends on companies to companies, experience to experience, geographic location and various other factors. A CMO is entitled to receive a yearly salary, profit sharing plan, bonuses, and commission as well. The minimum salary offered to a CMO in the U.S. is $85,000 while a maximum salary is $315,000 as per the data available from PayScale.

Chief Marketing Officer vs Marketing Director

An applicant applying for the job of a CMO can get through the job solely on the basis of a bachelors’ degree in marketing or business subjects whereas an applicant applying for the job of a marketing director will need to have a bachelor’s degree along with relevant work experience. A Chief Marketing Officer is paid higher compensation as compared to a marketing director of an entity.

He is the one who communicates the vision i.e. the marketing strategies whereas a marketing director is the one who implements the same. He is responsible for enhancing the profits earned by an entity through the development of a comprehensive marketing strategy whereas marketing directors are responsible for implementing the marketing strategies.

Conclusion

A CMO is the one who makes use of the traditional as well as new methods like data analysis for understanding the positioning of the company in the industry and determining the positioning of the same in the nearing time. Chief Marketing Officer is responsible for designing and executing the marketing strategies in order to help an organization in attaining the pre-decided position in the industry in the future.

Full Form of CMO