B2B brands introducing leadership roles to ‘redefine marketing’

B2B brands are introducing new leadership roles to help reset the relationship with marketing, according to exclusive new Marketing Week data.

According to the 2025 State of B2B Marketing research, a tenth (10.6%) of the 450 B2B marketers surveyed have introduced a head of marketing position in the past year, while 6.2% have created a CMO role.

Some 4% of the total sample have welcomed their first chief growth officer in the past 12 months, while 3.7% have introduced a chief revenue officer and 2.5% now have a chief customer officer.

Head of marketing is the most popular new role introduced in both (10.7%) SMEs (250 employees and under) and large organisations (10.5%).

That said, almost a tenth (9.3%) of large B2B organisations have introduced a CMO in the past year, compared to 3.8% of SMEs.

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Some 3.4% of smaller B2B businesses and 4.9% of big firms have brought in a chief growth officer in the past 12 months. Chief revenue officers have been introduced into 3.4% of SMEs and 4% of large corporates.

The chief customer officer role is less likely to have been brought in at small firms (0.9%) compared to large companies (4.5%).

When asked why these roles have been added, the answers speak to a desire to reset the relationship with marketing.

Over a third of brands which have introduced new leadership roles in the past year describe the decision as reflective of a changing business strategy (38.9%), while for others the move is an effort to “redefine” the role of marketing (34.2%).

Some 32.2% of this cohort brought in new leadership positions as part of a restructure, while for a fifth (20.8%) the departure of an existing leader or general change of personnel presented the opportunity for a rejig.

For under a tenth (6%), new senior positions such as CMO or chief growth officer have been introduced due to short-term business pressures and budget cuts.

Redefine vs restructure

Cutting this cohort by size of business, almost half of SMEs (45.6%) that introduced a new senior marketing role did so as part of a wider strategic update, while over a third (35.3%) sought to redefine marketing with a change of leadership.

A quarter (25%) of these smaller B2B firms brought in new positions following a restructure, while 16.2% used changes in personnel as a chance to introduce fresh leadership. Budget cuts and financial pressures only factor into the rationale for 2.9% of SMEs.

By comparison, large companies (38.3%) were much more likely than smaller firms to cite restructure as the main reason for introducing a new role like CMO or chief customer officer. A general strategic update and effort to redefine the role of marketing were also cited by a third (33.3%) of big businesses.

A quarter (24.7%) of these large companies have used a change of personnel as an opportunity to revamp the marketing leadership, while budget cuts and business pressures (8.6%) proved less of a motivation to switch things up.

While by no means every B2B business is rethinking its marketing hierarchy, the data suggests the firms experimenting with new roles – in particular bringing in a head of marketing or CMO – are doing so as a reaction to changing business priorities. There is also a clear preoccupation with redefining marketing, which goes beyond semantics to positioning the function as an engine of growth or elevating it to the C-suite.

Marketing Week will be continuing its coverage of the 2025 State of B2B Marketing research in the coming weeks