Every new CMO starts with a 90-day plan. They should also bring a succession plan.
Jon Louis • March 12, 2026
If you are a marketing professional who has spent five minutes online or on LinkedIn lately, you’ve likely seen the CMO role discussed in one of two ways:
- The Playbook: How to be the ultimate growth architect, AI innovator, and board-level advisor.
- The Obituary: Data-heavy warnings about shrinking tenures, deleted roles, and the disconnect between marketing and the rest of the C-suite.
The second category often paints the CMO as an endangered species. But there is a massive epilogue missing from these tenure statistics. Where do these CMOs actually go?
Contrary to the fired CMO trope, recent research from VCMO and Spencer Stuart suggests a much more empowered reality: Modern CMOs aren't just exiting; they are ascending. Whether it’s moving into a CEO role (now roughly 10% of exits), transitioning to Private Equity as an Operating Partner, or building a high-impact Fractional career, the "exit" is often a promotion by choice.
The Missing Part of the Plan
Every incoming CMO or VP of Marketing enters the building with a 90 day ramp up plan. We are obsessed with the start. But if we are to truly embrace the CMO role as a strategic business driver, we must also bring a succession plan.
This isn't about being trite or one foot out the door. It’s about beginning with the end in mind. If you don't know what your next looks like or at a minimum which category your next lives in; you cannot effectively build the now.
Beginning with the End is a Power Move
- It Forces Sustainable Growth: When a CMO builds a department that requires their constant presence to function, they haven't built a system; they've built a job. A succession-mindset CMO builds a marketing machine that can outlast them. This is exactly what Boards and PE firms look for: Scalability.
- It Aligns Personal Brand with Business Impact: If your goal is to become a CEO, your current 90 day plan shouldn't just be about "brand awareness"—it should be about P&L mastery and operational efficiency. Knowing your exit path dictates your current priorities.
- It Mitigates "Tenure Anxiety": The 40-month average tenure isn't a failure if you’ve spent month 1 through 39 grooming a successor and hitting the milestones required for your next move. It changes the narrative from "I hope I don't get fired" to "I am here to achieve X, so I can go do Y."
By trading tenure anxiety for a succession mindset, you transform from a tactical manager into a strategic architect. A 40-month tenure shouldn't be a countdown to an exit; it should be a mission timeline to build a scalable marketing machine and groom the talent that will run it. Whether your Next is the CEO’s office, a Private Equity partnership, or a high-impact fractional career, the goal remains the same: build something so robust that your departure is a graduation, not a funeral.
Start planning your end today, because that is exactly how you master the beginning
About the author
Jon Louis is a marketing leader who has built brands and top performing teams across technology, healthcare, and professional services organizations.
#B2BMarketing #MarketingStrategy #CMO #Innovation #MarketingData #Experimentation
Some late winter thoughts for marketing professionals. Are you still operating with a "Traditional" mindset, focusing on single source attribution, broad reach, and treating marketing as a cost center? Or have you embraced the "Dynamic" approach, driving multi-touch influence, targeted engagement, leveraging AI for SEO, and operating as a true growth engine? IMHO The future of marketing is about: Influence over just attribution Targeted Engagement over broad brand awareness AI-driven Answer Engine Optimization over simple keywords Strategic Focus ("Yes to Only") over high-volume, low-focus activity Positioning marketing as a Revenue Driver rather than an expense It's time to adapt, innovate, and drive measurable growth. Where do you see your organization on this spectrum?
The Growth Spectrum: Where Does Marketing Move the Needle? Most leaders treat marketing like a growth dial. They assume that if they turn it up, revenue will naturally follow. This is where friction with finance often comes in as well because of an expectation that revenue immediately follows investment. But many find themselves frustrated when pouring money into SEO or social ads does not result in an immediate sales spike. Usually, the problem is not the creative or the budget. It is a fundamental disconnect between their marketing tactics and their actual growth model. Scaling impact in the age of AI requires more than just better ads. It requires a Digital Thread that seamlessly connects between your marketing automation platform(s) where engagement lives and your CRM where revenue lives. Marketing’s impact is a spectrum of assistance. To get the best return, you have to know if you are building a transit system, guiding a tour, or acting as a private concierge. Marketing Dependent Growth: The Public Transit System In high volume, self serve businesses, marketing is the vessel that carries the customer from point A to point B. Because there is often no salesperson involved, there is a strong, direct correlation between marketing investment and revenue growth. In this world, your unit of trust is social proof. AI transformation here is about efficiency and identity. By using AI to validate data and resolve identities, you ensure the person clicking the ad and the person buying the subscription are recognized as the same individual. Success is a math game where AI-driven personalization fixes messaging gaps in real-time to keep the trains moving. Marketing Enabled Growth: The Guided Tour In the mid-market space, particularly B2B; marketing does not carry the customer alone. It provides the maps that make the journey possible. Here, marketing investment is an important contributor to a mix of investments that drive growth. This is also the case in a small division or a larger enterprise. Think of a product brand inside a services company or a services brand inside a product company. The Digital Thread is vital here to optimize influence. AI can predict which specific case studies or whitepapers will move a deal from "interested" to "won" based on historical efficiency. Marketing creates the qualified demand that a sales team then walks to the finish line. Without this AI driven air cover, your sales team is trying to lead people through the wilderness with no map. Sales or Relationship-Driven Growth: The Private Concierge For high-ticket enterprise contracts, the journey is exclusive and high-stakes. In this world, investments in traditional demand generation (like click-here ads) have almost zero impact on growth. Instead, investments in brand have significantly more impact. You do not find a high-end concierge through a pop-up ad. You find them through reputation. Marketing’s role here is to be the lighthouse: a signal of prestige and reliability. In an AI driven world, we no longer claim to own the lead. Instead, we use the Digital Thread to prove that we empower the journey, providing the brand authority that makes a million-dollar handshake possible. The Bottom Line: Moving from Cost Center to Growth Engine Alignment is your secret weapon. A company trying to provide concierge-level service for a $20 app will go bankrupt from the overhead. Conversely, trying to sell a million-dollar contract with public transit marketing makes your brand look risky. Measurement is only as good as the data behind it. By connecting the Digital Thread, you move marketing from a cost center to a growth engine. Before you sign off on next quarter's budget, ask yourself: Are we running the trains, mapping the tour, or acting as the concierge?
There have been many discussions on LinkedIn and in the real world about the challenges of marketing teams that never tell their business “No”. And we have all been there! It is tough to say No. Humans are wired to say yes; we want to be seen as the hero and liked by the CEO or the Board. This challenge is also compounded now that the eager business leader who always knew they could do marketing (I mean they took the class at Sloan or Haas or Thunderbird) is now inundated with slick marketing (irony) from every LLM tool vendor about how that solution can remove layers and layers of cost while driving boundless growth.This is not a nefarious plot, business leaders are faced with a hard truth, the board only cares about proof of revenue and profitability growth; so they are trying to use the new AI tools to gain an advantage in one or both of those areas. And if the marketing team says No; the business will just use AI to get what they want and it will be just as good. (I assure you I will write about this at a future date) In this context it is very easy to build a say “ Yes to everything culture” as a way of demonstrating the value of marketing. But this is just reinforcing the incorrect meme that marketing is an order taking cost center. Even if this culture feels good; it rarely drives growth long term. And this is not just my salty take. In 2023 the Journal of Marketing coined the term the Digital Janitor Trap to highlight how a reactive Yes culture forces teams to prioritize politics over performance.
Stop blaming brand awareness for missed quotas. Learn how AI-driven validation, Answer Engine Optimization, and Digital Sales Rooms solve the B2B positioning problem.
Marketing leadership isn't just about math; it's about owning the growth narrative. Master the 4 questions that secure your seat at the strategic table.
Marketing Attribution is Dead. Long Live Influence.