by Katrin Lewandowski, Senior Marketing Director at SALESmanago
The year is 2024, and the traditional Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) role is experiencing a transformation. Prominent companies, including brands like UPS and Etsy, have moved to eliminate or repurpose the CMO position—redistributing its responsibilities to roles such as Chief Commercial or Strategy Officers. This shift reflects a significant reevaluation of marketing within businesses, as it is now perceived less as a siloed function and more as a strategic, growth-oriented driver embedded into broader business goals.
With these changes, marketers are left wondering how best to adapt. One answer may lie in adopting a growth hacker mindset, which emphasises flexibility, rapid experimentation, and a results-driven approach that transcends traditional marketing. Let’s explore why thinking like a growth hacker might be the best response to shifting CMO expectations.
The Shift from CMO To Business Growth Driver
The CMO role is increasingly being seen as limited in scope for the modern demands of business. Marketing’s value no longer lies solely in brand awareness and promotional activities; today, it’s about driving tangible business outcomes—revenue growth, customer engagement, and long-term loyalty.
The emergence of roles like Chief Commercial Officer, which combines marketing with strategic business functions, points to an integrated vision where growth is fueled not only by reaching new customers but by innovating around product market fit, customer experience, and ongoing engagement. This is where the growth hacker mindset becomes invaluable.
What Is A Growth Hacker Mindset?
A growth hacker mindset is rooted in the practice of identifying scalable, creative, and data-backed tactics that achieve rapid growth. Growth hackers don’t view marketing as a single function but as a critical component woven into every stage of the customer journey.
By experimenting across marketing, product development, and customer service, growth hackers test new approaches to drive growth across all business operations.
Broadening Skills & Crossing Borders
Modern marketers must be proficient not just in traditional tactics but in disciplines like data analytics, revenue generation, pricing strategies, and even customer experience design. This expansion of skills resembles the agility and adaptability of a growth hacker, who constantly broadens their approach to solve problems creatively and pragmatically.
Growth hackers focus on achieving measurable results, and this approach encourages marketers to move beyond traditional metrics and understand how their efforts impact revenue and customer engagement at every level. For instance, embracing insights into pricing strategies or influencer partnerships offers an edge in connecting more meaningfully with customers.
Leveraging Martech Solutions: The Growth Hacker’s Toolbox
For small and medium eCommerce businesses especially, harnessing no-code, integrated martech solutions becomes crucial. They need to look for platforms that provide marketers with a range of tools that enable them to act quickly and scale strategies without heavy reliance on coding or engineering resources. With these tools growth hackers can:
- access usable datasets to gain insights into customer behaviours, refine targeting, and measure the impact of each tactic.
- use AI-powered analytics to predict market shifts and adjust strategies accordingly, staying agile and proactive.
- rely on advanced automation to streamline tasks, scale outreach, and maintain engagement with customers at every touchpoint.
These tools help growth hackers focus on high-impact, strategic decisions that contribute to growth rather than getting bogged down by routine tasks.
Embracing Adaptability & The Growth Hacker Mindset
In an environment where the traditional CMO role is fading, marketers need adaptability more than ever. By thinking like a growth hacker, they stay ahead of shifting expectations, driving growth through an experimental and results-focused approach that aligns with today’s integrated business strategies. The growth hacker mindset allows marketers to step outside the constraints of traditional roles and take on a cross-functional, growth-driven perspective that better aligns with the new demands on marketing as a business strategy core.
Growth Hackers As The CMOs of The Future
As organisations continue to reassess and reshape marketing roles, the growth hacker mindset emerges as an ideal answer to the shifting CMO expectations. Thinking like a growth hacker means positioning oneself as a versatile growth leader, capable of adapting to changes, experimenting with strategies, and ultimately driving meaningful business decisions and growth.
In an era where the lines between marketing, customer experience, and revenue generation blur, adopting a growth hacker mindset provides marketers with the agility, focus, and creativity needed to succeed in today’s competitive environment. For businesses aiming to navigate a digitally-driven future, the growth hacker approach may well represent the most effective path forward.
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