With budgets set for 2025, CMOs are about to enter the new year with several critical initiatives. What’s bubbling to the top? Forrester’s Q4 B2C Marketing CMO Pulse Survey, 2024, provided a list of 17 initiatives, and we asked respondents (127 US B2C marketing executives) to select up to three. Read on for the top five most commonly selected initiatives.
1. Advance our generative AI capabilities.
Of course this topped our list of 2025 CMO priorities! While headlines about genAI saturated the marketing trades in 2024, CMOs hustled to make sense of them all. But in 2025, CMOs will get down to business with AI. That’s why we predict that marketing operations will be front and center within the B2C realm in the new year — to provide the rigor needed to advance genAI, particularly in creative development and marketing insights. Read: How AI Impacts The CMO
2. Invest more in creator/influencer marketing.
Creator marketing is having a moment, and for good reason: It’s demonstrating results. Among B2C marketing executives who invest in creator marketing programs, 40% strongly agree that creator-made assets perform better than those that their agency makes. But to do creator marketing well means letting go of conventional instincts in the marketing process or else face myriad pitfalls. Read: Best Practices For Creator Marketing Campaigns
3. Mature how we measure marketing effectiveness.
A CMO’s quest to demonstrate marketing’s business value is never-ending. When we blogged about CMO priorities in 2023, indeed, measurement made the top of that list. Why? The media and analytics landscape is ever evolving: new tactics, channels, and platforms, data complexities (cookie or no cookie, anyone?), and changes in consumer behavior. The solve? A layered measurement strategy. Read: Elevate Marketing’s Impact With A Layered Measurement Strategy
4. Increase/optimize marketing personalization use cases.
Almost exactly a year ago, B2C CMOs told us marketing personalization is a top initiative that they need the most external help with. This need manifested as one of the most frequently requested guidance session topics in our B2C marketing practice. Yet despite CMOs’ fixation with personalization, nearly half of US and UK online adults (43% and 49%, respectively) wish that brands would do a better job of creating relevant experiences. Read: Forrester’s Essential Research For Approaching Consumer Personalization
5. Increase brand awareness.
Brand advertising is back! (But it’s different than before.) That’s the topic of a forthcoming report for 2025 by my colleague, Jay Pattisall. With more consumer choice and instant access than ever before, brands are finding it harder to break through. CMOs understand that brand differentiation is critical for sustained, above-average growth. The place to start? Improve your customer experience, because all customer experiences are brand experiences. Read: Data Overview: Bank Customers Say Brands Are Trustworthy But Undifferentiated
The Five Bottom Initiatives?
From our list of 17 initiatives, respondents chose these five the least:
- Double down on performance marketing.
- Optimize our martech stack.
- Rethink our pricing strategy.
- Select a new agency partner.
- Better leverage consumer insights.
High-Growth Vs. Low-Growth Companies
We additionally segmented this dataset by respondents who indicated that their year-over-year growth rate was above 10% (high growth) versus under 10% (low growth). We found that low-growth companies are more likely to prioritize genAI, brand awareness, performance marketing, and consumer insights (compared to high-growth companies).
Forrester clients: Let’s chat more about the data via a Forrester guidance session.
