You are a marketer: No one trusts you
Especially your CEO
A few stats I saw this week before we get started today:
84% of marketers are under pressure to prove ROI in order to justify their marketing spend or budget increases for campaigns and initiatives. The same survey also found that 61% of marketing leaders do not use ROI when making strategy decisions because they aren’t confident in their own data.
80% of CEOs don’t trust or are unimpressed with their CMOs. In comparison, just 10% of the same CEOs feel that way about their CFOs and CIOs, according to Harvard Business Review.
I can’t help but feel these are connected.
At its core, the main goal of marketing is to help drive revenue - plain and simple. Yes, that's right, marketing isn't just about making your brand look good; it's about revenue.
And if your focus is to make the brand look good - then you should be able to explain the how and why that will impact revenue.
Over the last 18 months I have been able to get an inside look at over 50 companies. I have seen board decks, QBR slides, Monthly reports, you name it.
The biggest problem I see in all of it - the lack of clarity Marketing presents with. Buzzwords, acronyms, massive amount of data in a slide. Everything but - showing how marketing is impacting revenue in a simple and clear way.
The problems isn’t that your CEO “doesn’t get marketing” as many marketers love to lament. The problem is they care about how marketing is impacting revenue and you are making that impossible to understand or even worse hiding from it.
So, how do we bridge this gap? How do we build trust with the CEO again?
Understand the key marketing metrics they report to the board for marketing and report back how you are pacing monthly against them.
Understand the revenue goals and share back how the marketing plans you are rolling out will impact those goals (with numbers not fluff). This goes for all parts of marketing too - don’t just cherry pick.
No surprises - You are the canary in the coal mine. You should know first if a month seems off because lead volume is down or traffic is taking a dip. Be the first one to communicate that to the finance team and CEO so they know what is coming and may be able to help adjust.
Help them understand what is happening - give context to the numbers they are seeing on a spreadsheet.
And as a result of doing these things what you will find is that the CEO is able to better understand what you are trying to achieve and have confidence you are trying to do it responsibly. Suddenly the conversation will switch from why are we spending this to things like:
What channels are working well enough that we can funnel more money into them?
How can we help get the team to go faster? Do you need more headcount or other help?
Thanks for reading!
Adam
PS - In case you missed it, last month I launched Growth Union, a B2B marketing agency, comprised of a team of marketers who have been in the trenches scaling some of the most iconic brands in SaaS - from G2 to Ramp to HubSpot.
We are opening up 3 more spots for clients next month - Schedule your call today and see how we can help you scale.
