Good marketing makes people notice. Great marketing makes people act. But, exactly defines great? Well, the mechanisms behind the scenes. And the first step is securing a capable sergeant to make all the tough calls. That’s the Head of Marketing or Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). As digital platforms multiply and audiences grow more discerning, brands need strategic leadership at the helm — and a marketing leader delivers.
Whether you’re eyeing up the position yourself or weighing how this role fits into your business, it pays to know what this job entails, what it takes to succeed and how it drives business growth.
Here’s your complete guide.
What Does a Head of Marketing Do? Roles and Responsibilities
A Head of Marketing is the visionary and the figurehead of a brand’s marketing operations. They’re the people cooking up campaigns and writing the strategies that launch them. Before we sink our teeth into it, let’s first acknowledge how the evolution of marketing over time has changed the shape of a CMO’s role.
Back in the day, around the early 20th century, marketing aimed to inform potential customers about a product’s existence. It moved into a sales era around the ’30s, when brands began to associate imagery more heavily with their products. After that, a new marketing era was born in the ’80s, which was all about ads and icons.
Throughout each of these stages, engaging customers and positioning products was a largely one-sided conversation. The Head of Marketing was tasked with responding to the market and leaning into what worked at the time. Now, we’re in the age of relationships, where two-sided conversations with audiences are prominent.
A CMO’s duty to engage consumers and position brands hasn’t changed — the market has. Through that lens, let’s look at what a Head of Marketing gets busy with on the job.
Overseeing Marketing Activity
A CMO acts across the entire department’s strategy and campaign activity. They decide why a brand would funnel energy into emails rather than SEO, or paid social ads rather than short-form video. Here, they have a responsibility to:
- Define and execute the brand’s market positioning.
- Allocate resources where they’ll generate the most substantial return.
- Ensure every tactic ties back to marketing objectives.
A broad experience of success and failure tells them when to push harder or pivot entirely.
Brand Positioning
An audience’s perception of a brand depends on a Head of Marketing’s ability to understand consumer behavior, competitor movement and cultural moments, and translate them into a strategy that puts the brand in the right place with the right message. This is the foundation of lead generation and audience engagement — without which, brands wouldn’t generate revenue.
Marketing Analytics, Budgets and KPIs
Marketing budgets typically account for 10% of a company’s revenue. It’s a nice slice, but the board wants to know it’s producing profits. Marketing heads, therefore, have a firm grip on budgets, forecasts, pipeline metrics and ROI. They use these numbers to inform decisions.
Managing Cross-Functional Teams
Digital marketing, PR, graphic design, UX, social media and the content marketing team are all spokes in the same wheel. The Head of Marketing makes sure that wheel keeps spinning. To achieve this, they must be fluent in multiple creative dialects and possess the people skills to secure buy-in at critical junctures.
Collaborating With Sales, Product and Executive Teams
If both feet walk in opposite directions, you’re more likely to stumble and fall than get to where your brain wants to go, right? It’s the same with multiple departments in a company. The Head of Marketing must translate business goals into strategies that align with the company’s bigger-picture vision.
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What Skills and Knowledge Does a Head of Marketing Need?
A marketing head needs a colorful selection of hard and soft skills to execute creative ideas and achieve results. In fact, creative execution was among the top three skills for marketers in 2024.
So, whether you’re an aspiring CMO or you’re structuring a marketing team, here are the non-negotiables to look out for:
- People management and leadership: The ability to build, motivate and lead a team. Any analytics or specific projects to back this up would help.
- Marketing strategy, trends and analytics: From SEO to marketing automation to Google Analytics 4, technical competency is increasingly necessary to keep up with marketing trends.
- Brand management: Building a brand’s reputation and disseminating consistent messaging means strategic positioning in a competitive market.
- Financial acumen: You should be as comfortable making decisions about budgets, margins and ROI as you are in a brainstorming session.
- Clear communication: This role involves reporting up to execs and across to peers and teams. Accuracy and clarity come first.
- Adaptability: Marketing is reactive and evolutionary by nature. Competitors pivot, algorithms shift and pandemics happen. You need to be able to move with the tides.
Head of Marketing: Education, Experience and Expectations
If you’ve got kids, you’ll know that no amount of advice imparted while you’re expecting can truly prepare you for what happens when they actually arrive. The same goes for marketing. So, use this section as a guide. But remember: A healthy balance of theory and practice is still the fastest route to the CMO chair.
Degrees and Qualifications
It’s not strictly mandatory, but most marketing heads hold some tertiary qualification in marketing, communications or business administration. Postgraduate study can sharpen your knowledge, but experience usually edges out academia.
Marketing Experience
A high-level marketing leader has generally worked their way up in the marketing department. They might’ve started as interns and shifted through roles like Marketing Copywriter, Marketing Manager, Digital Marketing Director or Brand Manager. Broad experience across different marketing channels helps. Think digital, social, PR, product marketing, events, etc.
Salary Expectations
Your pay varies significantly depending on location, industry, company size and, of course, experience. Here’s a rough annual comparison of averages from different parts of the world:
Who Typically Becomes a Head of Marketing?
Think you’ve got what it takes? Here’s a basic checklist to see whether you’re on the right path. Ask yourself: Am I …
- An experienced marketing professional who can balance creative instincts with commercial outcomes?
- A senior marketer who seeks a bigger challenge?
- A marketing leader who’s proven yourself across multiple marketing disciplines?
- A strategic thinker with a data-driven approach?
If you’re hitting green light after green light, you may be on a home run. Here’s a final glimpse into what you may be in for as you lead your team’s overall marketing operations.
Head of Marketing: A Day in the Life
Morning
When I sign on, it’s 7:45 a.m. The first thing I do is pull up the latest analytics dashboard. I want eyes on how yesterday’s campaigns performed, what’s moving in the pipeline and whether any surprises need my attention before this morning’s meetings.
By 9 a.m., it’s time for the strategy huddle. Some days, it’s a Teams meeting with our content marketing consultant about SEO and socials. Other times, it’s an in-person meeting with the digital, PR and lead gen teams to figure out what we’re betting on this month. During these meetings, we align ideas and pressure-test assumptions so we can hit targets by the end of the quarter.
Midday
Before lunch, I present the state of play to the C-suite. This could mean justifying why we doubled spend on a high-performing paid search campaign or diplomatically explaining why we’re pivoting our marketing channels.
Afternoon
During the afternoons, creative comes in — campaign visuals, social copy and video edits — so I’m proofing and adding my sixpence. My teams are reliable, which means I need an extra sharp eye to spot gaps between assets and marketing objectives.
I’ll use lunch, space in the afternoons and the occasional evening for networking. Usually, it’s mentoring junior marketers or catching up with peers over coffee. A friend told me about this new AI platform last week, so I’m running tests to see whether it’s viable for an upcoming campaign.
I’m still undecided — that’s my cue to set up a think tank session and bring a few extra minds in. This job isn’t done well from a bubble — you need context, diverse opinions and a good sense of where the market’s moving.
The Takeaway
The role is as much about reactive problem-solving as proactive strategizing. No two days (or decades) look the same, and that’s why those who perform well in this chair tend to be fast and agile thinkers.
Why a Head of Marketing Shapes Business Growth
Marketing is how a business talks to the world. A Head of Marketing controls the conversation — and the conversation is always changing.
This role nurtures brand health, steers creative and financial growth and lines up business objectives with marketing outcomes. Not every company has a Head of Marketing, nor should it. In some cases, outsourcing to an experienced agency or partner delivers the results you need without the overhead.
But where you do have one, they should be a professional with a strong grip on your market and a clear view of your bottom line.