Most marketers are promoted because they are good at delivery and we know how to get things done. We understand campaigns, channels, creative, content, events, agencies, brand, communications, budgets and deadlines. We are useful to the business because we solve problems and turn ideas into action.
But the work that gets someone promoted won’t be the work that makes them effective once they are there.
That is one of the traps in senior leadership, and I suspect it is the same in other professions. Too many marketers step up into senior roles but keep operating as if the job is simply to run more work, attend more meetings, approve more assets and stay closer to every campaign. It looks busy. It can feel responsible. It may even look like leadership from the outside.
But senior marketing is an influence role, not a campaign management role.
The value of a senior marketer is measured by whether marketing is shaping the commercial decisions that determine whether the work matters in the first place.
McKinsey’s 2025 work on the changing role of the CMO makes this point clearly. It argues that marketing leaders are vital to strategic decision-making, but are too often left out of the discussions that matter most. Its research found that when marketing executives are involved in strategic planning, companies see a 1.4 times higher top line. Where there is a single integrated customer-centric executive in the top team, growth is 2.3 times higher.
I have experienced this throughout my career. It is frustrating, but it is also fixable. The senior marketer’s job is to help the organisation answer bigger questions.
Where should we compete? What do we want to be famous for? Which customers matter most? What does the market need to believe before it will buy from us? Where is the business creating value that the market does not yet understand? What should we stop doing because it creates noise, not momentum? What gives us the right to win?
These questions require judgement, structure and influence.
They also matter because modern B2B buying is no longer a neat conversation between a supplier and a named decision-maker. Gartner reported in March 2026 that 67% of B2B buyers prefer a rep-free experience, while 45% used AI during a recent purchase. Gartner also makes the point that buyers need “value clarity”, a clear understanding of how a solution improves outcomes in their role and business context. Confident buyers are twice as likely to report a high-quality deal.
That should be enough to change how senior marketers think about their role.
If buyers are researching independently, involving more internal stakeholders and forming views before sales is in the room, then marketing cannot simply be the department that produces demand assets. It has to shape the market’s understanding of the business before the visible buying process begins.
Marcus Sheridan made a related point in They Ask, You Answer: buyers reward the businesses that answer the questions they are already asking. That principle has become more important, not less, as search, AI, analysts, review sites, peer networks and industry media shape buyer confidence before a supplier ever gets a meeting.
The Edelman and LinkedIn 2025 B2B Thought Leadership Impact Report makes a similar point. It highlights the role of “hidden buyers”, internal influencers who may not be the primary users of a product or service but can fast-track a deal or stop it. The report states that more than 40% of B2B deals stall because of internal misalignment within buying groups.
Senior marketers have to help the business create clarity across audiences it may never directly meet. That includes buyers, users, procurement, finance, legal, partners, investors, analysts and internal teams. The work is to make the business easier to understand, easier to trust and easier to choose.
Structure Before Output
A good senior marketer builds the system that allows better marketing to happen. Positioning. Narrative. Segmentation. Commercial priorities. Team design. Agency roles. Measurement. Governance. Decision rights. The operating relationship between marketing, sales, product, finance and the executive leadership team. They know that campaigns sit downstream of these choices.
If you have not built the foundations, campaigns become a noisy substitute for strategy. The team gets busy producing things or stuff, but the business is no clearer, more differentiated or more credible as a result.
So it is worth being honest with yourself.
Are you still personally carrying too much delivery?
Is the team under-resourced?
Does the business keep pulling marketing into reactive work?
Are you protecting quality?
Or is delivery simply familiar, visible and controllable?
Influence is slower, harder and more political. It means getting into decisions before they become briefs. It means helping the CEO and CFO understand what marketing is driving commercially. McKinsey notes that 70% of CEOs assess marketing impact through year-on-year revenue or margin growth, while only 35% of CMOs put margin growth on their own list. That gap shows how easily marketing and the executive team can talk past each other.
When senior marketing operates at executive level, junior and mid-level marketers get better conditions in which to do strong work. They get clearer priorities, better briefs, stronger protection from random requests and a more credible link between their work and business outcomes.
A rising tide really does lift all boats here. The more senior marketers are seen as commercial leaders, the more marketing is treated as a serious business function rather than a service desk for campaigns, content and colour.
The senior marketer’s job is not to be the person closest to every campaign. It is to build the structure, confidence and influence that make the right campaigns possible. Because at senior level, marketing is about helping the business decide what it is trying to become, who it must matter to, and what must be true for the market to believe it.
Some sources -
McKinsey, **“The changing role of the CMO, and what it means for growth”**, August 2025. ([McKinsey & Company]
Gartner, **“Gartner Sales Survey Finds 67% of B2B Buyers Prefer a Rep-Free Experience”**, March 2026. ([Gartner]
Edelman and LinkedIn, **2025 B2B Thought Leadership Impact Report**. ([Edelman]
Edelman, **“The Rise of the Hidden Buyer: Rethinking B2B Influence Beyond the Obvious”**, June 2025. ([Edelman]
Marcus Sheridan, **They Ask, You Answer**. [marcussheridan.com]