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Early in my career, I was a key contributor on a global product launch for a client. On paper, everything looked tight. The positioning was sharp, the creative was compelling and the media plan was thorough. But something didn’t sit right. Our pricing felt arbitrary. Our dealers weren’t prepped. And the onboarding flow — the experience that customers would actually live — wasn’t in sync with what we were promising.
The launch flopped.
It was disappointing — and it was embarrassing. We had crafted a compelling story, but overlooked the foundation upon which it was built. That experience taught me a lesson I would never forget: marketing can’t fix a broken product, a confused value proposition or a fragmented customer journey. No matter how polished the campaign, if the reality doesn’t live up to the promise, marketing will always be fighting an uphill battle.
It forced me to rethink marketing’s place in the business. I stopped seeing it as a downstream function and started embracing it as the role of a growth architect — someone who doesn’t just amplify value but helps shape it from the very beginning.
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The CMO’s upstream shift
This shift didn’t happen overnight — for me, or for the industry. Historically, marketing has operated downstream: focusing on messaging, media and creative, often reacting to decisions made upstream about product, pricing, and experience. A cynic might call it the “crayon department.”
But today’s customer expects coherence, not just communication. They notice when the brand promise matches their lived experience, and even more when it doesn’t.
The modern CMO can’t afford to stay downstream. We have to move upstream, embedding customer insights into product development, shaping pricing strategies that align with perceived value, collaborating with operations and IT to orchestrate seamless journeys, and building data systems that don’t just report outcomes but inform better decisions.
Real growth today isn’t about driving more awareness — it’s about designing better alignment across the business. And that requires CMOs to step fully into the role of cross-functional growth architects.
Related: Why the CMO — Not CEO — Should Create the Company Mission
Where CMOs must lead to drive growth
In my experience, four business-critical domains stand out where marketing leaders must engage deeply to unlock the full revenue engine:
1. Product Development. The product is often the first brand interaction a customer has, long before they see an ad or download a whitepaper. CMOs need to bring the outside-in perspective to product teams, ensuring that what we build matches market needs and brand promises.
2. Pricing & Packaging. Pricing shapes the story customers hear about your value. It frames expectations and signals market positioning. CMOs must ensure pricing strategies reflect not only margin goals but also customer psychology and brand integrity.
3. Customer Experience (CX). Every interaction is part of the brand narrative. CMOs must orchestrate a consistent, emotionally resonant experience that reinforces the story marketing tells.
4. Analytics & Data Infrastructure. Growth demands clarity. CMOs must help design systems that capture actionable customer insights, ensure clean attribution, and drive smarter decisions across the organization.
Related: Why Your Small Business Growth Stalled — And How to Kickstart It Again
Turning insight into influence
But of course, stepping into these domains isn’t automatic. Influence has to be earned—and that realization didn’t come easily for me.
Earlier in my career, I remember walking out of yet another cross-functional meeting feeling deflated. I had presented what I thought was a sharp campaign strategy, only to be met with indifference—and worse, resistance. It felt like marketing was always expected to execute, but rarely invited to shape the thinking.
When I vented to a mentor, I told him, “They just don’t get it.”
He didn’t flinch. Instead, he offered a truth that I wasn’t ready for at the time: “That’s not their fault. That’s a failure to influence.”
It stung. But he was right. Influence isn’t something you’re granted—it’s something you build.
So I stopped trying to prove the value of marketing in isolation and started focusing on relevance—on speaking the language of my peers, aligning around shared goals, and showing up as a partner, not a department.
Here’s how I’ve learned to do that:
- Frame marketing goals as business goals. Tie efforts directly to revenue, retention, and profitability.
- Co-create solutions. Engage peers early in strategy, not just execution.
- Speak operationally. Understand and align with the KPIs and realities of other teams.
- Use data as a bridge. Shared truths build shared trust.
And this is why today, I like to think of the CMO role as the Chief Dot Connector—the one who aligns internal teams around external value.
Related: Why Every Entrepreneur Should Make CMO As A Top Advisor
The HubSpot example
But if you want a real-world example of marketing moving upstream and driving true business growth, look at HubSpot.
Under CMO Kipp Bodnar, marketing wasn’t treated as the end of the assembly line—it was embedded in the value creation process from the start.
Take their decision to introduce a free CRM. That wasn’t just a lead-generation tactic—it fundamentally reshaped their entire funnel strategy, opening the door to millions of users and future customers.
Or look at their tiered packaging approach. Instead of treating pricing as an afterthought, marketing worked alongside product and finance to structure value ladders that met customer needs at different stages of growth.
And then there’s HubSpot Academy. What started as a customer education initiative evolved into a powerful growth engine, boosting adoption, reducing churn and building a loyal, advocate community.
HubSpot’s success didn’t happen because marketing was louder. It happened because marketing was embedded where it mattered most—inside product, pricing, customer experience, and success.
That’s the future. And it’s the blueprint modern CMOs need to study.
Marketing leadership future
If you’re a CMO who wants to expand your influence, start by finding the places where outcomes are stuck but ownership is unclear — look for:
- A conversion gap between sales and onboarding.
- A pricing model is misaligned with customer perception.
- A churn spike that no one has mapped to root causes.
These “white space” problems are opportunities. Solve them — not for marketing’s sake, but for the business’s sake — and you’ll earn trust that transcends org charts.
Because the future of marketing leadership won’t be built on louder campaigns. It will be built on deeper integration.
And the CMOs who succeed won’t settle for a seat at the strategy table.
They’ll lead the conversation.