Does Your Marketing Team Have a Seat at the Table?
“If a campaign goes well, it’s because the sales team did well. If it goes badly, it’s marketing’s fault.”
This is a quote from a McKinsey & Company report titled what CEOs and other execs really think of marketing, but I’ve heard similar sentiments throughout my marketing career–particularly in roles where marketing’s direct impact on revenue growth was unclear.
Per McKinsey’s survey, marketing is gaining respect in the C-suite thanks to:
Accountability… when marketing impact can be measured with greater accuracy
Alignment… when the marketing strategy is built to support the company strategy
Customer-focus… when marketing has clear ownership of customer insights and the end-to-end customer journey
The report points out that this reputational growth isn’t universal, though, and I can vouch for that in my own experience. A Financial Services CMO is quoted as saying, “Marketing isn’t brought to the table as frequently with the C-suite as other parts of organization.” A lack of collaboration and transparency among leaders at the highest levels of the company has a trickle-down effect. If product, sales, business strategy, and marketing teams aren’t guided by the same core goals, then the efficiency of all teams will suffer. Marketing in particular is likely to face resistance when requesting incremental budget or headcount if there is a general perception that marketing’s tactics aren’t driving revenue growth.
So what can CMOs and their leadership teams do to earn organization-wide trust and a seat at the business planning table?
Earning trust, particularly with teams that “don’t get marketing”, doesn’t happen overnight. But trust can be engendered over time by:
Modeling transparency: CMOs should proactively share marketing org priorities and campaign results with leaders across the business. Being transparent about challenges is important too. I’ve seen many instances where the marketing org’s dialogue about their program performance is only positive (“Awareness is up 5 percentage points and our Instagram followers have doubled!”), while the broader business is pacing under a KPI. In order to earn trust, the dialogue must be open, honest and ego-free.
Aligning metrics: The CMO and CFO must align on a set of marketing objectives that will have direct and measurable ties to business and revenue goals. While it’s important for the marketing org to impact and measure brand awareness, prioritizing this objective over revenue-driving KPIs will limit marketing’s ability to demonstrate value and thus make it harder to secure buy-in and resources from the finance org.
Aligning measurement models: Similarly, the CMO and CFO (as well as the CTO/CDO) must align on how marketing spend is being tracked and allocated, as well as how revenue is being attributed at the channel and/or campaign level. And keep in mind—building an overly complex attribution model that no other stakeholder teams understand can only undermine the perception of the reporting coming from it.
Creating regular forums: While the CMO and CFO relationship sets the tone for their respective teams, senior leaders must lead ongoing discussions between their orgs to ensure that information sharing and alignment exists at every level. At the very least, the marketing and finance orgs should come together in advance of quarter close to make sure that everyone is on the same page in terms of performance to goal and budget pacing.
Patience and persistence is required here, but we can also help. We partner with CMOs and their leadership teams to build and optimize marketing infrastructure to better deliver against business goals. Please contact us to learn more.
