Marketing is changing faster than ever. Today, companies around the world spend over 1 trillion dollars on marketing every year, and nearly 70% of that budget is now digital.
Several major trends are driving this shift. More money is being invested in digital channels, content creation has become the key to staying visible, and brands now have access to many free or low-cost platforms to reach their audiences.
At the same time, the sheer volume of content needed to engage customers consistently has grown tremendously, making marketing more complex and fast-paced than ever before.
All this is changing the role of marketing. It is no longer about managing campaigns or agencies, it’s about scale, speed, and specialization.
At a macro level, the role is splitting into two key responsibilities:
- Content Marketing Leaders: Focus on organic growth, social media, and content creation.
- Data-Driven Growth Marketing: Specialize in performance and data analytics to drive sales and growth.
Recently, on the latest episode of Dil Se Omni Talks, Saurabh had a deep and thoughtful conversation with Sasha Chhetri about this very shift, how the traditional CMO mandate is being redefined by data, technology, performance accountability, and changing consumer behavior.
This blog defines how these shifts are reshaping marketing and what it means for modern CMOs and teams.
Table of Contents
1. How is the Role Changing?
For years, the CMO role looked simple from the outside. Build the brand, run campaigns, manage agencies, and track budgets. That was enough to be seen as a strong marketing leader.
But marketing today is very different. Customers move across platforms, compare options instantly, and expect value before they trust a brand. At the same time, CEOs expect marketing to show business results, not just visibility.
Because of this, the CMO role is no longer one single function. It is slowly splitting into two strong responsibilities: growth marketing and content marketing.
In some organizations, these two roles exist independently, with clear ownership and focus. In others, they operate as specialized functions reporting to the CMO, or sometimes directly to the founder. Here’s what they mean:
1.1 Growth Marketing
Growth marketing is the performance side of the CMO’s role. This part is focused on data, numbers, and outcomes. It looks at how users are acquired, how much money is being spent, what returns are coming in, and how customers are retained over time.
A growth-focused CMO pays attention to:
- Where customers are coming from
- Which channels drive revenue
- Cost per acquisition
- Retention and repeat purchase
- Lifetime value of customers
Here, marketing is treated like an investment. Every rupee spent is expected to bring measurable value. Campaigns are tested, scaled, or stopped based on performance.
This has happened because marketing budgets are large and highly visible today. Leadership teams want clarity. They want to know what is working and what is not.
So the CMO must now be comfortable with data, ROI thinking, and performance conversations. Growth marketing ensures marketing contributes directly to business growth, not just activity.
But, growth does not happen only through ads and numbers. It needs a structure that connects communication to outcomes.
That is where CDA comes in.
CDA means Content, Distribution, and Action. First you create content, then you make sure it reaches the right people, and finally you guide customers to take a clear action like buying or signing up. This loop helps CMOs turn marketing from just communication into real business results.
1.2 Content Marketing
The second part of the modern CMO role is content marketing.
This side is about storytelling and meaning, not just promotion. It focuses on how people understand the brand, how they remember it, and whether they trust it over time.
A content-focused CMO pays attention to messaging, narratives, and thought leadership. They ensure the brand communicates clearly and consistently across channels. Because when customers see the same voice and value everywhere, the brand feels reliable.
Good content marketing does not push sales all the time. It educates, helps, or inspires the audience. This builds trust first, and trust is what eventually turns into preference and loyalty.
2. 4 Skills That Define the Modern CMO
The role of a CMO has changed quietly but deeply. Earlier, a CMO could succeed by being great at branding, campaigns, and agency management. Today, that is not enough. Marketing has expanded into technology, data, performance, content, and customer experience.
Because of this, the modern CMO is no longer defined by one core strength. They are defined by how well they balance four very different worlds: creation, data, money, and people.
A strong CMO today is someone who can move between creative thinking and analytical thinking, between storytelling and spreadsheets, between vision and execution. That balance is what separates a traditional marketing head from a modern CMO.
The modern CMO succeeds by balancing four key worlds: Content, Analytics, Budget, and Leadership — the CABL framework.
2.1 Content Creation (Storytelling)
A modern CMO needs to be close to content. Not to become an influencer, but to understand how content actually works.
When a CMO writes posts, records videos, shares ideas on LinkedIn, or joins podcasts, they learn something important, what holds attention and what gets ignored. They see how platforms behave, how audiences react, and how storytelling shapes perception.
This hands-on involvement builds instinct. It helps CMOs guide their teams better because they understand the effort behind good content. They know that one good piece of content can build trust, while poor content can weaken credibility.
Content today is how brands speak to customers daily. If a CMO is disconnected from content, they are disconnected from the customer’s reality.
2.2 Analytics
Marketing today is measurable in ways it never was before. Every campaign, click, and conversion leaves behind data.
A CMO does not need to operate dashboards daily, but they must understand what the numbers mean. They should know where money is going, which channels drive results, and what brings real business impact.
This includes understanding performance marketing, retention metrics, customer lifetime value, and funnel performance. It also means knowing when to scale a campaign and when to stop wasting money.
Analytics brings clarity. It turns opinions into informed decisions. A strong CMO uses data as a guide, not a crutch. Data informs direction, but judgment still matters.
Read more – Marketing Analytics | The Next Big Frontier in Data-Driven Growth
2.3 Budget Management
Marketing budgets today are spread across many areas — ads, content, technology tools, influencers, partnerships, and distribution. This makes budget management more complex than before.
A modern CMO must constantly make trade-offs. Spending more on performance can drive quick sales but may weaken brand building. Investing in brand builds long-term value but may not show instant returns.
So the CMO must balance short-term growth and long-term brand health. This requires financial thinking, prioritization, and discipline.
Great CMOs treat budgets like investments. They review spends, shift allocations based on results, and avoid emotional decisions. Smart budget management ensures marketing stays sustainable and accountable.
2.4 Leadership
Leadership is the most important skill because no CMO succeeds alone. Marketing today needs specialists in performance, content, design, CRM, and analytics. One person cannot master everything.
The CMO’s role is to bring these specialists together and align them toward one direction. This means hiring the right talent, setting clear goals, and creating trust within the team.
Strong leadership also creates a culture where teams can experiment but still stay accountable. People should feel safe to try ideas, but also be responsible for results.
Tools and platforms will keep changing. But a strong team with good leadership can adapt to any change. That is why leadership multiplies the impact of every other skill.
3. Why Content and Storytelling Sit at the Center of a CMO Role Today?
For a long time, marketing was mostly about brand narratives. Then performance marketing took over, metrics, dashboards, paid growth, and optimisation. This included:
- Brand strategy: Defining what the brand stands for and how it should be perceived.
- Media planning: Deciding where and how budgets should be spent to reach the audience.
- Campaign execution: Planning and running marketing campaigns across channels.
- Agency management: Coordinating with external partners to deliver marketing outcomes.
For a long time, this was sufficient. But, today, this model no longer works.
Today, the reality is more balanced. While paid channels and data matter, strong brands are not built on ads alone. They are built on clear, consistent storytelling.
Without good content, even the best performance strategy struggles to sustain trust.
This is why content marketing is no longer optional. It is foundational.
You can reduce ad spends. You can pause campaigns. But you cannot pause storytelling. Content is what shapes how people understand your brand when you’re not actively selling to them.
Earlier, content creation was largely limited to celebrities, big-budget campaigns, and large media houses. That has changed.
Organic reach, social platforms, and creator ecosystems have made storytelling accessible to everyone. Today, founders, leaders, and marketers themselves can become the face and voice of the brand.
The real change, however, is not about tools or platforms. It’s about mindset. The most important question now is simple: how willing is the marketer to embrace storytelling themselves?
Because in modern marketing, the story doesn’t start with a campaign—it starts with the human behind the brand.
4. What Will the Future CMO Look Like?
The future CMO will not be someone who learned marketing only through campaigns, or agencies. They will be someone who has created content themselves first, posting, writing, or recording, before scaling it with teams, tools, and budgets.
Scaling a brand through content and storytelling requires more than just a big budget. It demands a unique “voice,” consistency, and the ability to build a community that trusts and engages with the brand.
Consider Chandan Mehendiratta, for example. He started by creating campaigns hands-on, understanding what resonates with audiences, and then scaled those ideas across multiple teams and channels.
Similarly, Alex Schultz, CMO of Meta, personally experiments with content and analytics to understand what works.
In his book Click Here, he shares how data-driven storytelling can guide decisions, optimize campaigns, and build long-term brand trust, showing that modern marketing is both creative and measurable.
These leaders show what a modern CMO truly is: someone who scaled up by creating, driving analytics, and scaling with budgets, using narrative-driven content to achieve massive growth.
Therefore, the most effective CMOs of the future will be content creators at heart. They may not be influencers, but they understand how stories are written, distributed, and consumed. Once they get that right, scaling becomes easier—through paid media, teams, and systems.
Earlier, CMOs scaled brands without ever creating content themselves.
Tomorrow’s CMOs will scale brands because they’ve created, tested, failed, learned, and built an audience first. That lived experience of storytelling will become one of the most valuable skills at the top of the marketing organization.
Content is no longer just one part of marketing. Today, it is the foundation of all marketing efforts.
5. Final Thoughts
Marketing has evolved faster in the last 5–7 years than it did in the previous 20. And naturally, the role of the CMO had to evolve with it.
Today, being a CMO is less about control and more about trust. It’s not just about having all the skills, it’s about having the right mindset. Success comes from enabling the right people to do their best work, rather than trying to do everything personally.
And honestly, that can feel challenging.
Letting go of control and focusing on trust and leadership is not easy. But at the same time, it makes this version of the CMO role the most exciting one yet, full of opportunities to build strong teams, make bigger strategic impact, and shape the future of marketing.
Watch the full podcast to hear more about the journey!
If you’d like to discuss how we can help enhance and optimize your Omnichannel and growth marketing strategies, we’d be happy to set up a consultation call. Feel free to reach out to us at alibha@daiom.in
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