"This isn’t doom and gloom, it’s diligence. You never regret preparing for a storm." Jeff Haas, COO at Seer has been navigating these market shifts alongside marketing leaders, and this mindset is at the core of where marketing leaders are focused today.
The most effective leaders aren’t focused on certainty, they’re scenario planning. The shift in market present challenges, uncertainty, and real, real pain for the marketer today. But, they also represent opportunity.
Volatility at the scale is a test of leadership. How preparation, looking holistically at the business, and using data, signals, and trends to inform when to act – and when to hold. When something becomes urgent? You’re ready because you anticipated this, you have a plan for this.
Strategy Over Execution: Why Marketing Needs to Think Like a CFO
As digital marketers at our core, we’ve never believed our job stops at campaign management. Understanding the broader forces that impact the marketing team, and the business, as a whole:
- Shifts in consumer behavior
- Volatility in your market category
- Changes in buying cycles
As Jeff shared in a recent session. "We need to be ruthlessly focused on impact and drawing a linear path to ROI on everything we do." That only happens when you’re tracking financial and market signals in order to prepare.
Think candidly about where spend is driving value and where it’s not. For example, we’ve helped teams shift priorities, delay launches, and, in some cases, pause parts of their contracts with us. These aren’t easy conversations, but in an environment where every dollar matters more, we focus on outcomes and what’s over the horizon, not just blind execution.
Strategic Advisory in Practice: What It Actually Looks Like
When volatility increases, many tighten up. Retool. Run scenarios. Align early and often on what matters most: work that creates measurable impact.
Here’s how the Seer team acts as an extension of teams in order to anticipate and stay on top of critical shifts that affect teams:
- Proactively modeling media mix shifts based on Wall Street’s playbook, so you can prioritize the channels delivering the most value
- Evaluating how policy changes, like U.S. tariffs, can alter your entire demand landscape and recalibrate your strategy accordingly
- Investing heavily in AI:
- Constantly studying AI’s impact on search behavior (like this post on Google's AI Mode hypotheses)
- Guiding clients through the AI adoption curve
- Helping clients distinguish breaking headlines from lasting change
Navigating Hard Calls: The Real Role of a Strategic Partner
For CMOs navigating budget compression, shifting boardroom priorities, and increased pressure to prove ROI, the easy answers are (unfortunately) rarely the right ones. The most strategic marketing decisions in this environment are often the hardest: pausing a campaign mid-funnel, reallocating media away from high-visibility channels, or delaying a product launch until conditions stabilize.
These aren’t vendor-level decisions. They’re business-critical calls that require objective, honest conversations.
What CMOs Should Expect from Their Teams Right Now
So what should you demand from your marketing partners right now?
- Leadership that isn’t waiting for hindsight to validate a pivot
- Clarity in a market full of noise, uncertainty, and AI hype
- Candor that helps you prioritize outcomes over optics, even when it means fewer deliverables or difficult trade-offs
In short: partners who see your whole business, not just their scope of work. That goes for in-house teams and your agency partners.
Because in moments like these, diligence isn’t just about preparation, it’s a team sport, about having the right people at the table when it’s time to make the important calls.
Having tough conversations? We'd love to share what we're seeing. Let's talk.
