In the recently released “State of Marketing” report, the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council agrees that the global economy is definitely robust and on an accelerated upwards pace when it comes to marketing. There is a high level of confidence among CMOs that revenue growth and market share goals for 2015 should be not just achievable but may be surpassed. After the doldrums which were beset on the global economy after the 2008 financial shocks, this optimism is certainly welcomed by online marketers everywhere.

Looking to grow staff & budgets in 2015

Of the 525 global marketers who were surveyed in the report, 81 percent stated that they believe that the current management mandates for growth are both realistic as well as attainable. Basing on this optimism, 55 percent of CMOs plan to expand their personnel base, and 54 percent of them expect to be able to harness even larger budgets next year as opposed to 2014. When examined by overall statistics, 2012 and 2013 were essentially flatlining in terms of both market share and company growth, but in 2014 the first true measure of improvement was seen and this is a trend which is widely expected to continue with even more vigor into 2105.

CMOs are trusted & valued

This renewed and refreshed optimism is at least partially due to the recognition within the C-suite of the importance of the CMO role. As CMOs continue to champion the efforts for brands to invest in both social media and mobile content in order to devise improved targeting capabilities and deliver a more personalized experience which maximizes customer engagement, the other members of the executive corps are sitting up and taking notice. Due to this increase in visibility and impact, the percentage of CMOs which has stated that they are indeed trusted and valued members of the entire C-suite has increased in 2014 to 69 percent which is a number which is considerably higher than it was just a couple of years ago.

1.2 mobile subscriptions per human in 2016

There is no doubt within the C-suite or outside of it that marketing is moving towards a business model which is focused on the needs of the client and the ways to cater to those requirements by the application of the latest technological tools. Most of this advancement is built around the mushrooming mobile market. By the end of 2014 there are expected to be as many mobile subscriptions as there are humans on the planet, a staggering total of 7.1 billion. This number is expected by Portio Research to exceed 8.5 billion by the end of 2016, which would mean that every man, woman, and child on Earth would have an average of 1.2 mobile subscriptions!

The massive shift from sitting to mobile technologies

According to IDC, desktop PCs represent just 8.6% of the global smart connected device market by category, followed by portable PCs at 11.6%. Tablets are responsible for 14.6% of the market (nearly double that of the old standard desktop PCs) while smartphones take the lion’s share at 65.1%. This massive shift from “sitting technologies” to “mobile technologies” has not gone unnoticed by CMOs who are targeting these burgeoning millions of mobile customers with ever more sophisticated tools to accentuate their engagement with the brand and thus receiving results on the bottom line which are not escaping notice by the other executives in the C-suite.

There was a time not too long ago when a CMO was a position that many businesses didn’t even have, as marketing was a category of enterprise to be relegated exclusively to middle management. As marketing of all forms, whether online or off, has continued to prove its worth to Corporate America, the position of CMO is growing in impact and influence. It is not a coincidence that the growing visibility of CMOs is growing hand in hand with the explosion in the uptake of mobile web enabled devices, as this generation of CMOs understand the power to engage customers which is held within smartphones and tablets, and is able to leverage it for the overall success of their company.