Business Growth Strategies For CEOs: Top CMOs On Marketing Strategy Implementations

Per Ohstrom

A global B2B marketing and sales driver, Per brings 20+ years of senior level marketing experience in $1-2 billion blue chip industrial companies. A servant leader, he delegates and empowers without losing focus on results. With a track record in manufacturing, construction equipment, equipment rental, MRO supplies, supply chain, specialty chemicals and other industries, he is a people-centered leader, an effective communicator and builder of cross-functional teams. A strong team player and creative problem solver, Per deals comfortably with ambiguity and is effective in matrix organizations.

What Is Marketing, Really? Why Founders and CEOs Must Lead the Most Misunderstood Function in the Business

Thu, Jul 9, 2026 | Posted by Michael Lang

Executive Takeaways

Marketing is a core enterprise capability, not a support function, and deserves the same CEO-level engagement as Finance and Operations.
Without a unifying system, individually reasonable decisions accumulate into random acts of marketing.
Modern tools make execution faster, but they don't create strategic clarity, so the gap between activity and alignment keeps widening.
CEOs can't delegate marketing entirely. Leading it means ensuring insight, strategy, and execution stay connected.

This blog is part of Chief Outsiders’ Marketing Leadership for CEOs series, an ongoing examination of the critical dimensions of Marketing (the capital “M” is intentional, as you’ll see) that every CEO needs to understand.

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