The Salary Landscape

What Does CMA Pay?

CMA is a specialized discipline and the compensation reflects it.

See where you land 👉

Salary distribution

We asked:

Do you receive a performance bonus and/or sales commission?

We asked:

Approximately how much do you receive from your performance bonus in a typical year?

CMA Base Salary Is Just the Starting Point

7 in 10 CMA professionals receive a performance bonus on top of their salary.

The mid-career ceiling nobody's talking about in CMA

In most B2B marketing functions, the biggest salary jump happens in the middle of your career. Exit Five’s 2025 salary benchmark found that the move from Manager to Senior Manager comes with a 33.5% pay increase. It’s the single largest leap on the title ladder. In customer marketing and advocacy, that leap doesn’t exist and the data is telling us a few reasons why that stagnation may happen… Let’s keep diving deeper.

Salary by years of experience

The Structural Tensions

We just showed you how salaries break down. Now for the harder question: what determines where you land on that chart and whether you’ll move up it?

CMA professionals are hungry for career growth.

Across all seniority levels, team sizes, and industries, the overwhelming majority of CMA professionals are aiming for the next level, but ambition isn’t the problem.

We asked:

Which of the following best describes your desired career level over the next 1–2 years?

To those who responded that they want to advance, we asked:

Do you have a clear path to that promotion at your current company?

…But Fewer than 1 in 8Have a Clear Path There

Of those who want to advance, only 12% have both a role to grow into and a defined path to reach it. Nearly half are aiming for a destination that doesn’t yet exist on their org chart. The drive is real. The infrastructure isn’t.

64% Are Developing Their Careers on Their Own

Nearly half of CMA professionals describe professional development at their organization as ‘ad hoc’, occasional or informal at best. Another 18% have none at all. If organizations want more strategic output from CMA, the math requires more strategic investment in CMA people.

We asked:

How would you describe the professional development and training opportunities available to you in your current CMA role?

The Reality of The Path To Advancement

CMAs Want to Grow, But Can't Do It Alone

Wanting to advance + no support structure = a gap that’s hard to close individually.

Even at organizations with structured development, CMA professionals often don’t have a defined promotion path.

Across almost every tier of professional development availability, 75–91% of people want to advance, but 0% to 15% have a clear path to move forward

“Customer advocacy and Voice of the Customer are becoming priorities at my company, with more excitement and output desired. But there is no additional resourcing or bandwidth to allow me, a team of one, to take a more strategic approach. I wish it were seen as a more essential strategic imperative that needs resourcing in order to operate strategically rather than reactively.”

— Survey Respondent

"If you could change one thing about how CMA is structured or executed...

46% of CMA Professionals Are Their Own Biggest Champion

That speaks to the resilience of the people in this field. But it’s also an organizational hurdle.

When nearly half of CMA professionals are the only voice in the room advocating for the impact of their programs, that’s not a personal achievement. That’s an org leaving them to carry the weight alone.

We asked:

Who is the primary champion for CMA within your organization?

“I wish we had an executive champion. It's hard to feel like our work gets the resources or prioritization or acknowledgement that it merits. This leaves us feeling a lack of clear direction, measurable impact, and a lack of empowerment.”

— Survey Respondent

"If you could change one thing about how CMA is structured or executed..."

We asked:

Does Cross-functional Support = CMA Being Seen As More Strategic?

Cross-functional Champions Drive Strategic CMA Recognition

Organizations with cross-functional CMA champions are significantly more likely to view the function as strategic.

Buy-in from the rest of the org isn’t a soft benefit — it’s a structural signal that reshapes what CMA is allowed to be and do.

CMAs with cross-functional partners were the most likely to report being viewed as significantly or somewhat more strategic (80%) by their orgs over the last year, while those without a clear champion were the least likely (40%).

CMA Make the Case. Attribution Closes It.

Three-quarters of CMA professionals say their greatest organizational impact is creating customer proof for GTM.

But fewer than 4 in 10 say they’re influencing pipeline and revenue growth.

The proof exists. The attribution infrastructure often doesn’t.

We asked:

Beyond specific KPIs, where does customer marketing and advocacy have the greatest impact at your organization? Please select up to 3 options.

75%

say creating customer proof is their biggest impact

37%

say they’re influencing pipeline and revenue

We asked:

From which of the following departments do you receive the most requests?

1 in 3 CMA Requests Come From Sales…

Sales generates more requests for CMA than any other team. And others don’t even come close.

That’s not surprising. What comes next is.

…Yet Sales Doesn’t Even Crack CMA’s Top 3 Closest Collaborators

Despite generating 34% of CMA’s incoming requests, Sales ranks 4th in day-to-day collaboration. Customer success and product marketing (tied at the top) are the teams CMA actually partners with most. But high request volume without close collaboration turns CMA into a reactive order-taker rather than a strategic driver. The fix isn’t working harder. It’s giving Sales what it needs to self-serve.

Request Volume vs. Collaboration by Department

34%

of CMA requests come from Sales

13%

say they collaborate closely with Sales

“We are usually at the beck and call of other teams — sales needs a reference NOW, a CSM has a customer ready to advocate NOW, product/marketing has a customer comm that needs to go out NOW. I rarely have time to deep dive into customer data or work on customer lifecycle campaigns — because there are usually fires to put out for other people.”

— Survey Respondent

"If you could change one thing about how CMA is structured or executed..."

We asked:

Which skills have been most critical in developing your CMA career to date? Please select up to 3 options.

Getting Everyone on the Same Page Has Been CMA's Superpower

Cross-functional collaboration, cited by 60% of respondents, tops the list of skills that have mattered most for CMA careers so far. AI literacy, on the other hand, barely registered. That’s about to change.

AI Literacy Was Overlooked. Now, It Can’t Be Ignored

While AI and emerging technology literacy was at the bottom of the skills CMA said had helped them in their career to date, they expect it to be the most important one moving forward.

Revenue and growth strategy alignment made an equally dramatic jump, suggesting that the skills that built CMA careers are rapidly being supplemented by new ones.

The field is adapting. The urgency is real.

We asked:

Which skills have been most critical in developing your CMA career to date? VS. Which skills will be most important to CMA professionals going forward?

The Call

We’ve named the tensions. Now, it’s time for the pivot. The momentum is real, and there are clear actions for both the CMA practitioners and the leaders in the room.

69%

Say Their Org Views CMA as More Strategic Than Before

Perceptions are shifting. Nearly seven in ten CMA professionals say their organization views the function as more strategic than a year ago.

That momentum is undeniable. But recognition isn’t the same thing as investment. For most, the gap between the two is exactly where the story we just told you lives.

For Customer Marketers

The great news: the gaps we found in our research are totally closable. The better news: many of your peers are already closing them. Head on over to The Outpost, where they’re sharing their best tips, tactics, and playbooks to keep elevating CMA within your org (and help win you your next promotion).

For Marketing Leaders

One of the best things you can do to ensure you’re building a strategic CMA team (and not just a reference request center)? Understanding how proof connects to pipeline. We’ve got all of that research (plus insights into what proof actually drives buyers to buy) in The Evidence Gap report.