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Understanding the CMO–Product Marketing Disconnect
In many B2B organizations, there’s a subtle disconnect between Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) and product marketing teams. Both roles ultimately aim to drive growth and customer engagement, yet their perspectives and priorities can diverge. CMOs focus on big-picture business outcomes and cross-functional alignment. Product Marketing Managers (PMMs) concentrate on positioning, go-to-market execution, and being the “voice of the customer.”
It’s not that these focuses fall out of sync, but each party needs to be able to adjust to the other’s perspective, especially when product marketing sits on the product team. Otherwise it can create tension in product marketing leadership alignment – a gap where each side feels the other doesn’t “get it.” Bridging this gap is crucial: aligned CMOs and product marketers can become a powerhouse for strategy and execution.
This week, let’s explore what CMOs wish product marketers understood (to better tie product marketing efforts to business goals). Don’t worry, next week we’ll cover what product marketers wish CMOs understood (to appreciate and empower the product marketing function). Let’s dive into part 1 of this 2-part series highlighting each side’s top wishes and how addressing them can improve collaboration and drive stronger results.
Five Things CMOs Wish Their Product Marketing Teams Understood:
1. Focus on Business Outcomes, Not Just Features
Product marketers excel at understanding product features and crafting messaging – but CMOs urge them to go further and link those features to tangible business results. Rather than simply promoting a new feature, CMOs want the narrative to answer: how does this feature drive revenue, customer lifetime value, or market share? In other words, show the business impact.
Product marketers should frame product benefits in terms of the outcomes the C-suite cares about (e.g. how a feature can help increase a customer’s ROI or reduce churn), rather than just detailing what the feature does. By focusing on business outcomes, product marketing can speak the language of CEOs and CFOs, demonstrating that their work isn’t about feature checklists but about fueling growth.
2. Align Product Marketing with Overarching Business Goals
CMOs also want product marketing strategies to be tightly woven into the company’s overall strategic objectives – not developed in a silo. A lack of alignment between marketing, product, and sales teams often leads to inefficiency and mixed messages. In fact, research shows that siloed efforts hurt performance; when CMOs realign marketing around key business objectives across departments, results improve. Product marketers should understand the high-level goals (e.g. targeting a new segment, improving customer retention, enabling a sales play) and make sure their plans support those aims.
For a deeper dive into product marketing’s strategic role in business growth, see Aventi’s blog What Every CMO Should Know About Product Marketing, which discusses how product marketing acts as the connector between product, sales, and marketing to keep go-to-market efforts aligned with business priorities.
3. Embrace Data-Driven Decision Making (Beyond Vanity Metrics)
Modern CMOs live and breathe data, and product marketing is no different. That means moving beyond vanity metrics and ensuring that product marketing decisions are backed by meaningful analytics. CMOs want product marketers to prioritize measurable Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that tie to business goals – things like conversion rates, pipeline influence, customer acquisition cost (CAC), and expansion revenue – rather than solely tracking campaign clicks or content downloads in a vacuum.
A recent CEO survey found that while 79% of CMOs are involved in setting financial goals, many remain “limited by a focus on metrics that don’t directly tie to the metrics CEOs prioritize.” The recommendation: CMOs must deepen their financial fluency and align marketing metrics with business outcomes. Product marketers can help CMOs answer this call by showing how their work drives those CFO-friendly numbers – for example, demonstrating that a new product messaging strategy lifted win rates by X%, or that a targeted campaign reduced CAC by a certain amount. The more product marketers use data to plan and to prove their impact, the more confidence CMOs will have in scaling those initiatives.
4. Balance Effectiveness with Efficiency
“Do more with less” has practically become a mantra for CMOs in recent years. With marketing budgets under scrutiny, CMOs need product marketing to strike the sweet spot between maximizing impact and minimizing resource use. In practice, this means being smart about priorities – doubling down on the high-impact campaigns and content that move the needle, while saying no to low-value activities that consume time and budget. It’s about working not just harder, but smarter.
In PwC’s October 2024 CMO Pulse Survey, 75% of CMOs agreed that their marketing budget would likely be cut before other departments, and the report urges marketing leaders to “strike a balance between cost-cutting and maintaining investments in areas that can boost revenue and drive the business forward.” Product marketers should take this to heart. For example, if 10 planned content pieces are draining resources, but only 3 of them address major customer pain points linked to sales wins, a balanced approach might be to execute those 3 exceptionally well and postpone the rest.
CMOs appreciate when product marketing shows discipline in focusing on what works and optimizing spend, because it demonstrates effectiveness (impact) is the goal, but efficiency (ROI) is the guardrail.
5. Develop a Deep Customer Understanding (Beyond Demographics)
Finally, CMOs want their product marketing teams to immerse themselves even more in the customer’s world – not just surface-level demographics, but true behavioral and emotional insights. Great product marketing already involves buyer personas and market research; CMOs want PMMs to push further, continually bringing fresh customer insights to the table that can shape strategy.
Why? Because CMOs see themselves as champions of customer-centricity in the C-suite. They count on product marketing to be the experts on who the customers are, what they care about, and how they make decisions. According to the recent PwC marketing leaders survey, customers want to feel heard and understood, yet only 24% of CMOs strongly agree that they are meeting consumer demands for personalized marketing. This gap signals that marketers (including product marketers) need to dig deeper in understanding customer behavior, needs, and pain points.
(In addition to the points above, CMOs also value things like strong sales enablement from product marketing and competitive intel. But the themes of business outcomes, alignment, data, efficiency, and customer insight consistently top the list of CMO priorities.)
What Product Marketers Wish CMOs Understood
Next week, we’ll flip the perspective and share what Product Marketing Managers wish CMOs (and other executives) understood about their roles.
In the meantime, if your organization is struggling with CMO and product marketing alignment, or if you simply want to accelerate your product marketing impact, Aventi Group can help. As a product marketing agency with deep expertise, we’ve partnered with countless marketing and product teams to drive strategic alignment and results. Reach out to Aventi Group to learn how our seasoned product marketing consultants can bridge gaps, inject fresh insights, and boost your go-to-market success. Let’s transform disconnects into a united front that propels your business forward.
