by Lee Dussinger
Research shows the average marketing leader lasts just 18 to 24 months in their role. That’s no accident. As incredible as these roles can be as the peak of a marketing career and the chance to influence a brand with your creativity — it’s a battle.
Ultimately, you need to maintain your credibility to ensure you protect your ability to get things done (and your job as a whole). However, for marketing leaders, just a few missteps can send their credibility plummeting. That’s why we’re talking about the most common reasons leaders like yourself lose credibility — and how to come out of tough situations unscathed.
The Hazardous Marketing Landscape of 2025
Marketing has never been easy. It’s harder than ever. For one thing, what started as temporary belt-tightening has evolved into a permanent “do more with less” mandate. Marketing leaders aren’t just being asked to trim budgets — they’re expected to maintain or improve results with fewer people, smaller budgets, and limited tools.
On top of that, tried and true performance marketing channels that once delivered predictable returns now face saturation and diminishing effectiveness.
This is paired with uncertain political and economic factors. This uncertainty causes B2B sales cycle to extend while slowing B2C spending across the board.
And most directly tied to the credibility topic, many executives still view marketing as a necessary evil (or a sunk cost) rather than a growth engine. Until you prove otherwise, they will continue to hold a negative perception.
Your Credibility Is Your Currency
Think of credibility as leadership’s confidence that you have full control over your domain. It’s the belief that you’re making choices that make sense, even when those choices don’t always succeed. With strong credibility, you can:
- Survive company turmoil and economic downturns
- Report bad news without your job being immediately in jeopardy
- Make large requests of other leaders and actually get them approved
- Transform an embattled function into a respected growth driver
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: your credibility will likely never be higher than it is on your first day. When you come aboard, everyone’s excited for you to reform the function and drive impact. But credibility isn’t just spent getting things done — it can be robbed in huge chunks by simple, avoidable mistakes.
The Three Credibility Thieves Every Marketing Leader Must Avoid
1. You Can’t Answer What’s Happening (or Why)
Picture this scenario: The CEO asks, “What did marketing do for that campaign?” If your response is “Let me circle back with answers,” your credibility just took a substantial hit.
This damages you for two reasons. First, something important enough for an executive to ask about happened, and you don’t know about it. Second, you appear so disconnected from your function that you don’t even know where to find the answer.
The Solution: Create a single source of truth that compiles all critical marketing information. Know how to navigate it fluently so you can surface creative briefs, in-market assets, campaign details, or results in real-time. Better yet, if your system is organized and visually appealing, share your screen and walk executives through your process.
2. You Can’t Defend Your Strategic Ideas
No reasonable leader expects perfection. Campaigns miss benchmarks. Strategies fail. What erodes credibility isn’t the failure — it’s the inability to explain the thought process behind your choices. The worst response is to avoid blame, obfuscate your decision-making, and shrink from the moment.
The Solution: Walk through your reasoning confidently and transparently. You’re not on trial; you’re an experienced leader performing a post-mortem with stakeholders who share your goals. State why you made your choices, cite the data that informed those decisions, and speculate on why the strategy missed the mark. Do this well, and you’ll not only emerge unscathed but may even deepen stakeholder trust.
3. You Look Out of Control
Nothing screams “out of control” louder than:
- Wrong content going to market, requiring damage control
- Missing cross-promotion opportunities that suggest you’re not aware of what’s happening
- Not knowing how long tasks take or how much things cost
- Being unable to share results when leadership asks
The Solution: Establish iron-clad processes. Content approvals must happen in official channels, not scattered across Slack threads. Create a comprehensive marketing source of truth where all go-to-market strategies live in one visible space. This becomes your repository for workflow documentation, budget allocation, and campaign KPIs. When questions arise, you’re not scrambling — you’re showcasing a system that demonstrates strategic command.
How Opal Protects Marketing Leaders’ Credibility
One of the reasons Opal has become indispensable to marketing leaders at enterprise brands is because we understand this credibility challenge. Our platform was built specifically for marketing leaders who refuse to be caught off-guard.
As a marketing source of truth, Opal creates the central nervous system that connects every aspect of your marketing operations. Unlike generic project management tools, Opal acknowledges that marketing isn’t just a series of tasks but an interconnected ecosystem where changes in one area ripple throughout the entire organization.
With Opal, marketing leaders can:
- Answer any question about campaigns, content, or performance in seconds
- Demonstrate complete control over approval workflows and brand standards
- Show exactly how marketing strategies connect to execution
- Transform marketing from a mysterious cost center to a strategically managed growth driver
Want to check out Opal for yourself?
