We all pretended the funnel mattered

I was in a board meeting explaining our funnel. Top of funnel up 32%. Conversion to marketing qualified leads improved 15%. Pipeline velocity trending positive. I walked them through each slide, each metric, each carefully optimized number.

The board members nodded. Asked clarifying questions. Took notes. We discussed methodology, debated definitions, aligned on next quarter's targets. Everyone performed their role perfectly.

We all pretended this was what mattered.

Here's what nobody said: whether we knew how to win. Not one slide covered whether our strategy was right, whether we understood our market, whether we were positioned to capture it. An hour on funnel metrics. Zero minutes on the questions that would actually determine if the company succeeded.

I left with budget approval and the sinking realization I'd gotten good at the wrong job.

We've been solving the wrong problem

I've heard the same conversation about marketing data for over a decade. First it was "we don't have enough data." Then "we're drowning in data." Now "nobody trusts the data anyway."

Different dashboards, same problem. And it's accelerating.

McKinsey found the CEO-CMO gap grew 20% this past year. Only half of CMOs are involved in strategic planning now. PwC reported CMO credibility with decision-makers dropped from 54% to 40% in just two years. Marketing budgets dropped from 9.1% to 7.7% of sales, yet 80% of CEOs and CMOs agree marketing is underfunded.

The more sophisticated our measurement becomes, the less influence we have.

Here's why: Boards ask "How will we win this market?" and we answer "Here's how our tactics performed last quarter." Everyone knows these aren't the same question. But we show up with funnel metrics anyway because we convinced ourselves that's what proves marketing's value.

It doesn't. It proves we're busy. What it doesn't prove is that we understand how to win.

From marketing officer to market officer

I came to the CMO role from product marketing, and that shaped how I see this job. Product marketing is fundamentally about thinking upstream—understanding the market, defining personas, ensuring product-market fit. Without those foundations, it doesn't matter how much budget you have. You're talking to the wrong people, in the wrong channels, with the wrong message.

That upstream thinking is what separates Chief Market(ing) Officers from Chief Marketing Officers.

Somewhere, we became Chief Marketing Officers—executors of programs, optimizers of conversion rates. We got very good at the marketing part. But brands need someone who answers the strategic questions that determine whether the business wins: What market are we really in, and how is it evolving? Who is our ideal customer—not demographics, but genuine understanding of who values what we sell and why? How do we differentiate to win using every tool available: product, marketing, sales, partnerships, everything?

Most CMOs stopped asking because they're too busy measuring marketing. Every successful CMO needs product marketing in their DNA—it forces you to think about the market first, not the tactics.

The three questions that matter

Chief Market Officer means something different from Chief Marketing Officer. Market means the strategic questions: where we play, how we win, why customers choose us. Marketing means tactical execution. Both matter. Only one gets you in the strategy room.

The Chief Market Officer owns three questions better than anyone else in the company.

What market are we in? Not the TAM slide, but understanding how the category evolves, where white space exists, what forces reshape the landscape. You're not just operating in a market—you're helping define it.

Who's our ideal customer? Not firmographics, but insight into who values what you do, what matters most to them, which roles you need to win. You know who you should win and precisely why they'd choose you.

How do we win? Not marketing strategy but company strategy—differentiation spanning product, pricing, partnerships, go-to-market. You're thinking sustainable competitive advantage, not campaign optimization.

When you answer these questions with conviction, measurement becomes what it should be: a tool to validate your thesis, not a performance proving you're busy.

What this looks like in practice

At a B2B SaaS company where I worked, we were selling individual products to small and mid-sized businesses. Two-digit deal sizes. Transactional sales. Competitors matched us feature-for-feature, so every deal became a price negotiation.

The product marketing lens showed me what everyone else was missing: Our customers weren't buying products. They were trying to solve problems that required multiple products working together. We were making them assemble the solution themselves.

We repositioned the entire portfolio around customer outcomes instead of product features. Same products, repackaged as solutions mapped to the problems enterprises were trying to solve. Suddenly we weren't selling to managers comparing tools—we were selling to executives investing in business transformation.

Deal sizes moved from two digits to three. We shifted from SMB transactions to enterprise relationships with multi-year commitments. The pricing conversations stopped because we were no longer competing on features. We were competing on outcomes.

That's market thinking. Understanding what game you're actually in and repositioning to win it. No amount of funnel optimization creates that kind of impact.

What's at stake

The CEO-CMO gap isn't just about alignment. It's about who's defining the terms of competition in your category.

When a CMO is measuring marketing instead of shaping markets, someone else is defining what category you compete in. Someone else is setting the criteria customers use to evaluate you. Someone else is determining which customer problems matter most.

The companies winning their categories have CMOs who don't just report on marketing performance—they shape market perception. They don't just track customer preferences—they influence what customers value. They don't just execute go-to-market plans—they determine what market the company should own.

Where this lands

I think about that board meeting more than I should. The polite engagement. All of us pretending funnel metrics answered whether we knew how to win.

We built an entire industry around proving marketing is busy when what actually matters is proving marketing understands how to win. Attribution models, multi-touch analytics, marketing mix modeling—all solving for the wrong question.

The right question isn't "Did our campaigns work?" It's "Are we positioned to win the market that matters most?"

Chief Market Officer, not Chief Marketing Officer. It's the difference between a function that defends its budget and one that shapes where the company goes next.

The most successful CMOs I know change how leadership sees the market, the customer, the competition. They bring perspective that proves they understand how to win.

That's what the role requires. And it's what makes the difference between marketing that costs money and marketing that creates value.