A recent survey conducted by Gartner has revealed that only 52% of senior marketing leaders feel successful in demonstrating the value of marketing and receiving credit for contributing to enterprise objectives.

The survey, conducted in April and May of 2024, included 378 senior marketing leaders. The results suggest a significant perception gap in the value of marketing within organisations.

The survey found that Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) ranked Chief Financial Officers (40%) and Chief Executive Officers (39%) as the top executives most sceptical of marketing's value at their company. This suggests a disconnect between the perceived value of marketing by those in the marketing department and those in other senior leadership roles.

In a separate Gartner survey conducted from February through March 2024, 47% of CMOs said marketing is viewed as an expense rather than a strategic investment.

“Taking a wider perspective of value can mean measuring marketing’s effect across other functions, such as sales, customer experience and operations,” said Senior Director Analyst in the Gartner Marketing practice, Joseph Enever.

Senior marketing leaders who communicate marketing’s value through a long-term, holistic view have greater success in proving value and getting credit for it. Gartner experts highlighted three metric types that can provide a deeper understanding of marketing’s value: Relationship metrics, Return on transactional metrics, and Operational metrics.

“Leaders can get more bang for their buck by leveraging more complex metrics to communicate value,” Enever said.

Senior marketing leaders who incorporated two or more of these ‘high complexity’ metric types were up to 1.8 times more likely to prove value and get credit than those who used none of them. This suggests that a more nuanced approach to metrics can significantly improve the perception of marketing's value.

However, the survey also identified significant barriers to proving marketing’s value. The three biggest barriers were all talent-related: lack of necessary soft skills/competencies, lack of analytical talent to analyse data and generate insight, and lack of talent to integrate and analyse data.

“CMOs must address these talent-related barriers to successfully prove marketing value and secure the recognition and investment it deserves,” Enever said.