Companies increasingly expect chief marketing officers to influence revenue, customer loyalty, and long-term growth. Yet many organizations still limit marketing’s role to building visibility around decisions made elsewhere.
That creates a structural gap. Marketing may communicate the promise, but customers evaluate the organization through everything that follows: the website, sales process, product, onboarding, service, support, and the consistency of the information they receive.
In the Senior Executive CMO Think Tank article “Meeting Marketing’s Mandate: How Companies Can Empower CMOs to Drive Real Growth,” ArtVersion Executive Director of Design Erin Lentz explains why CMOs can create greater business value when they are empowered to connect those moments into a coherent customer experience.
“One thing that needs to change is the separation between brand promise and user experience.”
— Erin Lentz, Executive Director of Design at ArtVersion
Customers experience one brand, not a collection of departments
Inside an organization, ownership is divided by function. Marketing manages campaigns and messaging. Sales handles prospective customers. Product teams shape features. Operations oversee delivery, and support teams respond when customers encounter problems.
Customers do not experience those divisions. They encounter one organization and form an impression from the consistency—or inconsistency—between each interaction.
A clear campaign cannot compensate for a confusing website. Strong positioning loses credibility when onboarding fails to fulfill the expectations created during the sales process. Responsive customer support can resolve a problem, but it may not repair a larger disconnect between what the brand promised and what the customer received.
This is why growth depends on more than creating awareness. Every touchpoint either reinforces the organization’s value or introduces friction into the relationship.
Marketing does not need to own every department to help resolve that fragmentation. The CMO’s broader contribution is connecting customer understanding, brand direction, and organizational priorities so teams are working toward the same intended experience.
Cohesive experiences turn marketing into a growth function
When marketing is brought into the process only after major decisions have been made, its work becomes reactive. The team is asked to promote an offer, explain a product, or generate demand without enough influence over the experiences that determine whether customers believe the message.
Earlier involvement changes the role. Customer insights can inform positioning before it is finalized. Brand strategy can guide the product and interface experience. Marketing can identify disconnects between what sales communicates, what onboarding delivers, and what customers ultimately need.
At ArtVersion, strategy, brand, and digital experience design are treated as connected parts of the same system. The language used to describe an organization should remain consistent with the structure, behavior, and quality of the experience people receive.
That alignment does more than improve presentation. It makes the organization easier to understand, reduces uncertainty across the customer journey, and helps internal teams make decisions from a shared understanding of the brand.
For leaders, the practical question is whether the CMO has enough access and influence to connect the brand promise and customer experience. If marketing remains confined to promotion, it can only respond to gaps after they become visible. When it is connected to the broader experience, it can help prevent those gaps, strengthen trust, and create better conditions for sustainable growth.
Read the complete Senior Executive CMO Think Tank article for additional perspectives on CMO authority, product and revenue alignment, market intelligence, customer insight, and shared accountability for growth.
Source: Meeting Marketing’s Mandate: How Companies Can Empower CMOs to Drive Real Growth