Marketers have great potential but they are not being supported enough

“In marketing, there’s a fairly high chance that we’re going to have very stressed people, because of a lack of control and constant change.”

This from Michelle Anderson, an experienced fractional CMO. And one who has seen enough to know.

She was responding to data from Marketing Week’s 2025 Career & Salary Survey, which should be essential reading for all marketing leaders and the leadership of the companies they work for.

Some lowlights. More than half of the 3,500 marketers that responded to the survey report being overwhelmed in their role and the extent of their challenge. A further 56.1% feel undervalued. Just over half say they have experienced emotional exhaustion during the past year.

This nets out at diminishing enjoyment. Just under half (48.2%) admit to enjoying their job less than they used to. And also the likelihood of burnout. All this should be of importance to everyone concerned with the wellbeing of marketers and by extension their ability to be effective in their jobs.

We don’t have comparisons. No data on how accountants, logistics or IT staff are feeling. Post Covid, all businesses in all categories and sectors have been spun around. From the challenges of lockdown and geopolitical shocks, to the subsequent low to no growth economic environment further blighted by high inflation and interest rates, it’s not been easy.

‘Overwhelmed and undervalued’: Half of marketers grappling with ‘emotional exhaustion’

You can even trace the tumult back to the financial crash of 2008/09 and the austerity and uncertainty that came in its wake.

But there’s enough to suggest that marketers have been at the pointy end of disruption. That their challenge is particularly acute.

Short of a massive boost to the economy and enlightenment among C-suite leaders everywhere, there is no catch-all panacea.

As we have reported time and again, marketing teams are in a constant state of flux, for the last five years a huge number have told us in our annual survey that their teams have been subject to a restructure. Last year saw almost half of respondents reporting their team had been subject to changes, a percentage broadly in line with the four years previous, since we began to ask the question.

The volume of teams subject to restructure could, of course, be seen as positive. The pursuit of excellence, the quest for strategic excellence might be the objective of some but for many more, it’s a product of the need to cut costs that has seen many marketers suffer redundancy, or from an incessant need to tinker to be seen to be doing something.

And if they’re not feeling the unease that often results in change, then they are suffering from a sense of diminishing influence. That marketing’s role is being reduced. That their boss or other stakeholders feel they can do the job better than them. We have all seen the data of how marketing and marketers are seen by the executive, the reports that show the narrowing of the job to P for promotion. And we can all point to examples of where marketing has contracted to be purely execution.

And then there’s budgets. ‘More with less’ has become a mantra.  Everyone in business has had to make hard choices. Everyone has had to optimise what they have. Do fewer things, and do them better.

It might be familiarity bias, but marketing feels more exposed. It is seen as discretionary spend more than other areas of a business.

‘Pressure in all directions’: What’s causing marketing’s burnout crisis?

What can be done?

There is, of course, no easy answer. Short of a massive boost to the economy and enlightenment among C-suite leaders everywhere, there is no catch-all panacea.

But that doesn’t mean companies shouldn’t try and address the problem. If they do nothing, the consequences will be inevitable.

Senior marketing leaders have a responsibility. Even though the survey found the sense of despair is spread evenly across levels of seniority, there is a job to build resilience through teams, to help them cope with change.

A clearer sense of direction is required. Call it strategy or vision, but a lot of the restructuring is a consequence of reacting to circumstance, of short-termism. It speaks to the lurch from quarter to quarter, sales update to sales update that many companies and their leadership are suffering from and guilty of.

But most of all, more with less needs to be addressed. It needs to be reframed. Automation, optimisation and AI will enable some cost efficiency. May, indeed, have freed some up to focus on strategy. To do more things that prove more effective in the long term while spending less money. For others, being forced to make decisions they otherwise wouldn’t have had to, might lead to outcomes that otherwise might not have been realised.

But for many, many more. It just means a slog. A constant state of playing catch up. Of feeling they don’t have the means to do the job properly. Of doing lots of things badly. And ultimately, the job becoming less enjoyable.

Not everyone will recognise the picture being painted in the article above and in this follow-up article. Many will be feeling optimistic. Excited about the future. Quite right too, there is so much that marketing can contribute, and marketers can lead.

There’s never been a better, more opportune time to be in marketing. The ‘voice of the customer’ has never been more important. The opportunity of data and technology to feed strategy, never more real.

Some of the challenges are of marketers’ own making. Lack of influence can, in some cases, be attributed to a lack of understanding and application of marketing fundamentals or over indexing on tactical concerns.

But despite all of that, all in the industry must recognise that there is an issue. And that issue needs to be addressed if the potential is to be realised.