Joining an established SME as a Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) is a formidable challenge.

When faced with outdated practices, fragmented technology, and a leadership team resistant to change, the pressure to deliver results can feel insurmountable. Yet, it is precisely in these scenarios that most of us find ourselves very often in our C Suite roles.

For 2025, and with the ongoing changes in technology, behaviours and socio-political settings, CMOs have to think about their role as an opportunity to create profound transformation.

At the heart of this transformation lies the ability to dismantle and rebuild systems—technical, operational, and cultural.

This article explores the intersection of technical proficiency, strategic business acumen, and marketing leadership, drawing on evidence and case studies to guide CMOs tasked with reshaping their organisations.

The Trap of Legacy Systems in SMEs

NorthStar has had the privilege of working with hundreds of organisations to drive innovation and transformation.

Currently engaged in a diverse portfolio of projects, we deeply admire the vision and resilience of CMOs who often lead the charge in embracing the future, ahead of their business, financial, and technological peers. We understand their challenges.

Many SMEs rely on systems and processes that may have served them well in the past but fail to keep pace with the modern world. Legacy technology, entrenched workflows, and a “we’ve always done it this way” mentality create significant barriers to growth.

Consider the cautionary tale of Kodak, a once-dominant player in photography that failed to adapt to digital innovation. While SMEs may not face the same scale of disruption, their resistance to change can lead to stagnation and missed opportunities.

The new generation of CMOs entering these environments often inherit challenges such as scattered data across platforms, outdated tools, and an unrealistic expectation to “make do” with limited resources.

The key to breaking this cycle is a combination of technical skill and business strategy. Of course, ultimately it all depends on the overall company culture but there are important things that CMOs should not be afraid to do for 2025, to bring their companies to being agile, relevant and overall competitive.

Technical Proficiency: A Modern CMO’s Superpower

Gone are the days when CMOs were solely responsible for crafting messaging and managing creative campaigns, as the below chart explains.

If your role is reduced to “making newsletters look pretty,” yet you’re expected to deliver a 50% revenue increase over historical data, it may be time to question whether the organisation truly values your vision and expertise.

Today, technical proficiency is a core competency for CMOs. It empowers marketing leaders to:

• Extract actionable insights from raw data.
• Identify inefficiencies in existing workflows.
• Implement scalable solutions that enhance performance.

The CMO should have every detail at their fingertips. By automating data extraction and implementing centralised dashboards, they can unlock real-time insights to inform strategy.

Close collaboration with IT and finance is essential to ensure that marketing gets the bigger picture in real-time.

While content and campaigns can be adjusted, and should not be the core job of a marketing department the strategy must remain rigorous, data-driven, and dynamic.

The Intersection of Marketing and Business Strategy

CMOs must have a deep understanding of their company’s business model, financial health, and competitive landscape to ensure that marketing efforts are not just creative but also revenue-driven and measurable.

As you approach 2025—whether launching a new project, joining a new company, or preparing an annual strategy—begin by establishing a flexible framework.

Such a framework defines long-term goals while remaining adaptable to real-time data and market shifts.

Balancing overarching objectives with agile, data-driven adjustments is essential for staying competitive in today’s fast-paced environment.

Additionally, evaluate critical challenges that may hinder your efforts, including:

Fragmented data: Scattered data across multiple CRMs and spreadsheets prevent a comprehensive overview, increases time spent on manual tasks, and forces you into a reactive, catch-up mode

Limited budgets: These can constrain digital transformation initiatives and delay progress. Compromising is never an option.

Cultural resistance: Leadership hesitant to embrace change can slow or obstruct innovation.

What is most important is to bring about a new culture associated with being a CMO and of marketing as a whole.

The role of the modern CMO is no longer confined to branding and content creation. It is a dynamic, multifaceted position that requires technical expertise, strategic vision, and the resilience to challenge the status quo.

For SMEs, embracing CMOs with these skills is critical to staying competitive in an ever-evolving landscape. For CMOs, the courage to dismantle and rebuild systems—not for the sake of change, but for the sake of growth—is what sets true leaders apart.

In the spirit of supporting all CMOs, we’ve created a cheat sheet for marketers, outlining the essential metrics they need (and expect) on an ideal dashboard to guide their yearly, quarterly, and monthly campaigns and agile strategies.