Despite the ink granted to Hewlett Packard's Carly Fiorina or Levi Strauss's Phil Marineau, the corporate path to the CEO's office historically has been a tough one for marketers to traverse. Most CEOs are plucked from the company's operational or financial ranks, while many marketing executives simply move from one high-level marketing post to another at a different company.

In fact, an oft-quoted statistic among recruiters is that in the United States, only about 18% of Fortune 500 CEOs have a career history that's heaviest on marketing.

"Many Fortune 500 companies have had to continually reinvent themselves," to keep up with changes in the economy, such as globalization and advances in technology, explains Jay Conger, senior research scientist and former director of the Leadership Institute at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. "Companies, headhunters and boards tend to look for CEOs who have a lot of breadth, meaning they're good general managers. As a result, many CEOs tend to come out of roles like president of an operating group rather than a functional background like marketing."

Nevertheless, marketers with an eye on a company's top spot can position themselves as a CEO candidate. One way is to follow their brethren into the Internet world, despite its uncertainties; the companies are smaller and great in number, and a marketing executive's expertise opens a lot of doors.

Those who see traditional corporations as a better option should take a close look at the company and industry in which they work to see how other marketers have fared at the tops of their careers. Also, experts say they must expand their experience to include non-marketing operating areas-how many and for how long depends on the company and the industry-and make relationships at all levels in the company a priority.

"It's not an easy pathway, and they may not get the brass ring at all. Especially as you move outside consumer products ... the odds are very much against a person getting that title," Conger says.

Nevertheless, the time has never been better for a marketing executive to set his or her sights on a CEO post.

"Companies across all industries are becoming more consumer-focused," says Jim Carpenter, managing director at Russell Reynolds, an executive recruiting firm in New York. "You don't just provide customers with a product or service; you try to maintain that relationship over the lifetime of that consumer. The marketing people historically are the keepers of the customer relationship; therefore, the influence of the marketer has increased quite significantly."

At the most basic level, the first thing a CEO hopeful must consider is whether he works for a company or in an industry that lets marketers rise through the ranks to the corner office.

"Industries such as high-tech tend to be biased toward people with an engineering background," he says, Fiorina's roots in sales and marketing notwithstanding. Marketers may need to make the tough decision to migrate to another, more marketer-friendly arena.

Similarly, he adds, marketers should examine the backgrounds of the last two or three CEOs in their companies.

"If there's a pattern to the functions where (the CEOs) are coming from and it's not marketing, odds are small there'll be a change," Conger cautions. "In every company, there are one or two functions that are dominant, and they are the ones that tend to field the CEOs."

Even if marketing is one of those proving grounds, marketing expertise by itself, no matter how extensive and varied, simply won't get you there. Marketers must add several skills to the repertoire in order to make it to the top.

"The more involved they are in the company and the business they're in, the better off they're going to be," says Nick Francis, CEO of Research Triangle Park, N.C.-based Tavve Software Co. and a former marketing executive at both Cisco Systems Inc. and IBM Corp. "Once you really understand all the different areas of the business, you are better positioned."

Francis says that in the past, CEOs were hired because they were good managers, and they didn't necessarily need to know the business in great detail. But today, he says, "as a CEO, I have to be able to articulate my technology and my value propositions,"he says. "I have to be able to talk with the technical person as well as the business person and the financial person."

In order to develop that knowledge, marketers will need to seek out ways to expand their skills beyond marketing. Short of changing careers, executives can seek to use their existing skills-marketing-on behalf of departments that will help them get ahead, such as the finance department or a key manufacturing plant.

"In a lot of companies now, you see people going into sales for a significant period of time, which broadens their experience. Outside of sales, you want them to have exposure to the manufacturing organization, and they need to get involved in things like quality control," Carpenter says.

Herb Baum, CEO of Scottsdale, Ariz.-based Dial Corp., began his career in advertising, but he also holds a degree in finance.

"I don't think anyone with a pure marketing background can step into a CEO slot without some financial background," he says. "And if they have some manufacturing training, that's even better."

Finally, Carpenter notes that there is one area of expertise that all aspiring CEOs must develop, no matter what industry they're in: "(Marketers) need to come up to speed in technology, either by virtue of moving into that side of the business or just becoming a student of it," he says. They need to understand how much of the company's money to invest in it and what types of technology to buy for the business-to-business arena.

In addition to working with other functional departments of the company, advisers say that moving into a planning or strategy-related role, such as being involved in long-term projects that demonstrably boost the bottom line, can also be important to getting ahead. The key is to work not just on executing a plan, but on analyzing and creating it.

"The CEO's role is seen as heavily biased around the activity of strategy, so the more they can get themselves in the strategic side of marketing, the more they are better positioned as a CEO candidate," Conger says.

Doing the job is only half the job, however, especially if the goal is the top spot. Working the networks, internally and externally, is just as important, advisers say.

"Choosing the right company, the right job, the right boss, the right environment-all (of those choices) can sometimes be the difference," Herb Baum says.

Indeed, once a broad base of knowledge is developed, marketers priming themselves for a CEO spot need to show company higher-ups that they have that deep understanding of the business.

"In the end, it's the current CEO and the board who choose the new CEO, and so it's important to get some visibility at that level," Conger says.

Getting a foot in the boardroom door typically means nurturing a network of mentors and political relationships with clout-heavy colleagues who may mention you as the prime executive to lead a high-profile project. In some ways, however, those who can provide the biggest boost don't work in a company's stratosphere; executives with a reputation for leadership at all levels of the company are in growing demand in the 21st century.

"In a lot of companies, marketers have been perceived by others within the organization as viewing themselves as more important than people in other areas of the business," Carpenter says. "But they really need to embrace the importance of the other functions within a company to build alliances and partnerships."

Says Tavve Software's Francis, "People are smarter now. Investors are more sophisticated, and employees are more sophisticated. No one wants to work for someone who's dull or shallow. I think it's part of the new economy."

In the meantime, patience is a virtue. In the banking industry, for example, Conger says marketers could toil in the trenches for three decades or more. In the high-tech arena, the career path is faster, but it still could take marketers a decade or two to reach the top rung, he says.

And there is a point at which marketing execs should cut their losses. Conger adds: "Most people are appointed CEO in their mid-forties to mid-fifties. Generally speaking, if a marketer is mid-career, which would be mid-thirties to mid-forties, and they're not at executive level by that time, then they probably should move on.