Marketing increases customer acquisition
While we prefer nobody would tinker with the CMO title, there is a good reason why some CMOs would love the title of Chief Growth Officer. They are in businesses where the #1 responsibility of marketing is to drive customer acquisition.
Their key responsibilities are for the promotion and place aspects of the 4Ps to ensure that the company and its products are top of mind and easy to locate in relevant purchase situations (or, as the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute would say, they enjoy high mental and physical availability).
Marketing improves customer lifetime value
Many marketers – especially in B2B – operate in markets with a concentrated number of buyers. A successful business is one that attracts the right customers (those to whom the company offers distinctive value) and who have the potential for high CLV (Customer Lifetime Value). Marketers know that not every dollar of revenue is created equally – one-off sales are worth far less than those to customers with whom a recurring revenue relationship can be established.
Marketers need to explain to their ROAS-obsessed finance colleagues the fallacy of performance marketing – namely, that every dollar of revenue is equally valuable. Good revenue is about relationships, not just increasing the number of one-off transactions.