• by Gokce Sezgin , 11 hours ago

Gokce Sezgin, CMO & Growth Consultant from Chief Outsiders, writes “Too many companies keep the same marketing model long after the business has outgrown it. That misalignment may slow growth more than other challenges.”

Ask any CEO or CMO, and they’ll tell you: growth is lumpy. It comes in waves from early traction, a scaling phase, periods of stagnation, to the occasional reinvention. Yet while growth evolves in recognizable patterns, the way organizations structure marketing leadership often doesn’t. Too many companies keep the same marketing model long after the business has outgrown it.

That misalignment may slow growth more than other challenges or budget constraints.

Early-stage and mid-market companies often make do with a collection of generalists, a capable agency, or a handful of channel-specific vendors. That works for a while. But as complexity rises, and the business goes into new markets, expands offerings, faces heightened competition and changing customer expectations, there appears a need for something that marketing can’t supply without structural change: unified strategy, cross-functional alignment, and a scalable operating model.

This is the point where organizations hit a plateau, even when the product is strong and demand signals are present.

The mistake many companies make is assuming the solution is simply more: more hires, more campaigns, more tools. In reality, growth often demands a kind of leadership that can translate business strategy into marketing systems, connect teams that tend to drift apart (especially marketing and sales), and build discipline around data, messaging, and customer experience.

But here’s the nuance: the leadership a company needs at $10M is not the same leadership it needs at $50M or $200M. Growth phases demand different skills, different operating rhythms, and different levels of executive involvement. Finding the right CMO (or changing as business moves to a different growth stage) may take time. And agencies, while powerful partners, can’t manufacture internal alignment on their own.

This is why many companies are rethinking the traditional marketing org chart. They’re prioritizing stage-fit leadership over static roles.

Leaders with cross-industry perspective and experience navigating inflection points (new market entry, repositioning, or scaling go-to-market systems) can help organizations find clarity in these moments. They bring both strategic range and operational rigor, the ability to diagnose what’s needed now while designing for what’s next.

And increasingly, companies are discovering that this kind of leadership doesn’t always need to arrive through a full-time executive hire. Sometimes a fractional or transitional marketing leader can help organizations bridge the gap between growth stages, establishing the systems and discipline that a future full-time team will inherit. And just as importantly, this can help take a significant operational load off CEOs who are already balancing operational challenges, product direction, and the next wave of strategic decisions for growth.

The takeaway for growth-minded organizations: marketing structure shouldn’t be fixed. It should evolve with business. When leadership is calibrated to the company’s growth stage, marketing becomes more than a set of activities, it becomes the engine that pulls the company through the next wave of momentum.

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