The State of B2B CMO Compensation in 2024

I had a moment at Pavilion's CMO Summit in NYC.

Pavilion's SVP Marketing Kathleen Booth was on stage announcing the Pavilion B2B Compensation Benchmarks and I got up, walked briskly over to Josh Carter, who heads up Demand Gen at Pavilion, and asked him if they used Gen AI to perform analysis on the compensation dataset.

His answer was no, they used Benchmarkit to do the analysis. I asked for permission to experiment and given the anonymity in the data, he agreed. So that Friday night, I found myself on a plane flying across the continent and I went to work.  

My workflow: 

• Exported the data to a CSV, which Pavilion members get access to in the member hub
• Had ChatGPT's data analysis function run on the CSV
• Discovered a few data issues to clean up, which ChatGPT helped me resolve
• Fixed the CSV file.
• Re-ran the analysis and asked for a report with a summary, and details.
• Asked for charts

Here's are the findings...

B2B CMO Base Pay and On-Target Earnings (OTE)

• Average Base Pay: $267,577
• Median Base Pay: $275,000
• Range of Base Pay: $119,000 to $350,000
• Average OTE: $335,462
• Median OTE: $327,500
  
• Range of OTE: $204,000 to $500,000
• Median Base Pay (as a percentage of OTE): 84%
  

Benefits and Deal Terms

• Work from Home or Remotely: 73% of CMOs
• Signing Bonus: 23% of CMOs
• Learning and Development Stipend: 31% of CMOs
• Wellness Programs: 19% of CMOs
• Premium Economy or Business Air Travel (pre-negotiated): 12% of CMOs

From the desk of a 5-time CMO...

My view? The data wasn’t a surprise on base salary and OTE, other than the range of each.

I might argue that a $120K/yr base on the low end of the range is either a CMO that is leaning heavily into equity - perhaps they have all the money they need - or this really isn’t a CMO, but rather someone eager for the title. The same is true for the low end of the $204K - $500K range in OTE.

CMOs are being tied more-so to performance than ever before (like a CRO), so I expect a shift away from a base pay package with a bonus to more of a base pay package with a performance/commission structure we see on the Sales side.

The really interesting story was in the benefits area. Most CMOs work remotely at least part of the time.  I for one have matched this in my career with several roles away from my home address. Only a few had signing bonuses, parental leave, wellness programs, or travel perks (like premium economy or business class).

Recently, I co-hosted a Pavilion panel with former CMOs who are now in CRO/CEO roles.  Stay tuned for an analysis of how the CMO package compares to the CRO / CEO counterparts...

Want to benchmark your compensation

The interactive widget below is continually updated as new compensation data gets added, so the data I shared may not match exactly 1:1.

Dive into Pavilion's 2024 B2B Compensation Benchmarks to break out compensation by function, region, and more.

Marketing Compensation Benchmarks

About the Author: Andy Jolls is a 4-year member of Pavilion, 3-year Envoy/Chair/Ambassador for the CMO functional group, and recent co-developer of the AI in GTM channel. Andy is a 5-time CMO, who started in the ML/AI space in 2018, studied ML/AI at MIT, and is an ex-CMO from a Sequoia-backed Generative AI startup. Today, he runs his consultancy for AI and GTM at Roxology, LLC.