How B2B CMOs Rate Their Marketing Teams
13 Oct 2025
During the Propolis Leaders Forum, we surveyed a group of CMOs from leading B2B organisations to understand how marketing teams are evolving — from capability design to resourcing and transformation readiness.
The results confirmed what we see every day in our client partnerships: marketing teams are strong in intent but constrained by structure.
Question 1: How effective are your core marketing functions?
Most CMOs reported strong capability in events, product development, and strategic planning, revealing teams that execute and create well.
However, functions tied to commercial performance — such as advertising, account-based sales, and promotions — scored significantly lower.
Takeaway: Marketing teams are operationally solid but often lack the commercial precision to translate creativity into growth.
Question 2: How effective is your current resource network?
Leadership and full-time talent scored highest (7 + average), showing that CMOs trust their core teams and specialist partners.
Yet external levers like freelancers, offshore pods, and AI augmentation remain under-used, pointing to missed opportunities for scalability and speed.
Takeaway: CMOs are confident in their core but under-optimised at the edges. Building a balanced, hybrid resource model will unlock true agility.
Question 3: How ready is your marketing function to drive transformation?
Respondents showed strong strategic clarity and leadership alignment (averaging 7.5 +), but lower confidence in speed, collaboration, and adaptability.
This gap highlights the difficulty of turning transformation vision into operational momentum.
Takeaway: The path is clear — execution needs catching up. CMOs must strengthen the enablers of agility and cross-functional response.
Conclusion
Taken together, the findings paint a revealing picture of today’s B2B marketing landscape: Marketing leaders know the destination — but their structures, resource models, and transformation frameworks aren’t yet keeping pace with disruption.
HelloKindred partners with CMOs to close these gaps — connecting them to specialised marketing, creative, and digital talent that scales flexibly with business demand.
Whether through embedded pods, near-shore hubs, or augmented creative networks, we help marketing teams move from reactive to future-fit — ready to lead with clarity, capability, and confidence.
Not sure where to start? Have a read of our Chief Commercial Officer, Roland Glass’s take on how to build a plan to make your marketing operations future-fit and ready.
