Agree what marketing should be accountable for… and what it shouldn’t

The fact marketing directors tend not to last as long as their c-suite counterparts illustrates the difficulty that organisations face in finding marketers who can tick all the boxes. From the senior marketers we spoke to the most recent B2B Leaders Forum, it seems a case of trial and error. Their assumptions that great marketers are difficult to recruit does nothing to help the profession, which some would argue already suffers from an image problem.

• Make sure expectations are realistic: For the rest of the c-suite, hiring a new CMO can at times be a leap of faith. Ensuring you understand the role, what it entails, and whether you’ll have all the tools at your disposal to meet your objectives is absolutely essential. Ideally, you should look to design the role before you start to make sure everyone involved is clear about what they expect from marketing.
• Align with other c-suite members: Make sure your KPIs as a marketing leader include pipeline or sales – we know the marketers who ensure this is the case not only feel more accountable, but receive increased respect from both sales and senior management. Simply tracking marketing-qualified leads will not reflect the true contribution that marketing makes to the business.

Strike the right balance between art and science

You just can’t please some people – members of the board seem to want it all: marketers who have a creative edge and can see past the usual business constraints, all while staying on budget and providing ROI in the form of detailed numbers. So, as the debate over art and science in marketing continues to rumble on, it’s clear that the ideal CMO has a real mix of the two. So what should marketers be expected to do?

• Cultivate your leadership skills: According to the B2B Marketing career acceleration guide, the top skill that marketing leaders believe is necessary to succeed is strategy/planning, while creativity was ranked as more important among junior marketers than it was by senior marketers. But we’d encourage marketing leaders to continue to nurture their creative side – it’s easy to get caught up in the numbers, but ensuring you’re involved in brainstorming meetings and are pushed to come up with new ideas on a regular basis will help to make sure you don’t leave creativity by the wayside.
• Build the right team: Ensure your team contains a real mix of creatives and data geeks – as is often claimed, the best leaders surround themselves with people who know more than they do, and this is truer than ever. Having a team full of complementary skills will help to balance out a marketing director who may have a penchant one way or the other.

Know your internal customer

For the foreseeable future, there’s likely to be a disparity between what the c-suite wants to hear from marketing and what marketing is actually able to provide, even if marketing tech can go some way to resolving this issue. And although those we spoke to showed some level of understanding that it’s not necessarily marketing’s fault that it can’t display clear attribution, providing them with more data and speaking to them in the language of the business are sure-fire ways to attain their support. Here are some ways marketers can satisfy the demands of the c-suite:

• Collaborate with those who matter: If you don’t already have regular meetings set up with key board members, it’s important that you do so. Only then will you be able to persuade and convince them in crucial situations in board meetings – for instance, when you’re trying to win support for a bold new initiative.
• Get into their mindsets: Find out, as much as possible, what’s keeping your CEO up at night – and figure out ways for marketing to help solve those key business issues.

• Clarify your own expectations: In addition to regular meetings, make sure you clearly understand the priorities of different board members, but also that they understand what you’re grappling with. It may be the case that your CFO is dying for more information that you could actually provide them, but you just didn’t realise they wanted it.
• Share your insights in an accessible way: Expectations need to be set in order to satisfy the CFO and the CEO – if they’re expecting hard numbers but these aren’t delivered, this naturally won’t go down well. One way of doing this is to make sure you’re clear about what results you expect to see, and when – if you can explain that you expect to see a particular result in six months, but won’t see any significant results around another initiative for a couple of years, it’ll help to set expectations.
• Maintain dialogue across the organisation: Marketing tech can go some way to providing the data the c-suite is looking for, but it’s not the whole answer (at least not yet). However, data visualisation will always help numbers to be more digestible. Continue to explore ways to visualise data in an engaging and clear way, and this will help you to communicate the numbers that really matter.

Consistently and compellingly communicate the value you deliver

Senior members of the board can be slow to realise how important a role marketing can play within the business – and this won’t be news to many marketing leaders, who’ve battled for years to have their voice heard and their work appreciated. In order to begin to be seen in a different light, however, marketing leaders can take some of the following steps:

• Understand expectations: Ask members of the board what they truly think about marketing and the value it can bring – if you’re starting in a new role this can be a particularly valuable exercise, as it means you’ll be able to identify the misconceptions around marketing and develop ways to address them.
• Align with wider business objectives – and make sure you remain aligned: Every function in the organisation needs to be clearly and demonstrably aligned with wider business objectives. If you’re aligned, everything and anything that you do will not only be justified, it should also be supported by the rest of the c-suite. If you’re misaligned, you’ll very quickly get into difficulties justifying your existence. But everyday events and tactical opportunities means it can be easy to slip out of alignment, so constant recalibration and adjustment is required to ensure you’re still on the correct trajectory.
• Cultivate and leverage your peer network: Genuine and candid feedback from peers is always eye-opening. Speak to other marketing directors – what have they done when they’ve faced CEOs or other members of the board that haven’t truly understood the value marketing can bring?

Deliver market insight – challenge preconceptions

Marketing is exceptionally well placed to understand what’s going on in the market, and what the business can do to keep up, differentiate itself, and stay a step ahead of the competition. Marketing leaders need to remember that this insight is hugely valuable to the business, especially when it’s not directly requested – the question of supporting sales is almost assumed, but it’s the value beyond this that the board will really appreciate.

• Invest in insight and analysis: Revisit the data you currently possess and collect. What can this data actually tell you about the wider market, and can you complement it with third-party data on your competitors or the sector? Even if you don’t have in-depth insights now, think about what you can do to gather information that will help you to truly understand how the business is positioned in the market in future. Could AI help with this?
• Keep your customers close and your competitors closer: Marketers need to leave the office and get out and about regularly, whether that’s meeting customers or getting a better view of what the competition is doing. Staying put in the office will do nothing to help you understand the bigger picture, which is so important to the board.
• Read and cultivate a culture of curiosity: The best marketing leaders stay at the top of their game by keeping abreast of changes in marketing as well as changes in their sector. Do whatever it takes to keep learning, whether that’s through reading, attending events or writing a regular blog to ensure you’re on top of every trend. Be sure to use both internal and external sources.

Become the hub, not a spoke

Rather than responding and reacting to agendas for change and disruptive forces emanating from elsewhere within the organisation, marketing should be seeking to work other influencers to understand these forces and determine the nature and style of change required.

• Participate in the conversations that matter: Senior marketers shouldn’t wait to be invited into different areas of discussion – the next time a discussion around product development happens, for example, make sure you’re in the room. Over time, your presence in these meetings should become normal.
• Actively promote marketing’s ability to make a difference: Marketing should never forget to market itself – develop ways to make sure key parts of the organisation understand what marketing is doing and working towards, especially if campaigns/projects are long-term and you don’t have results to shout about on a regular basis. This will help to avoid the perception that marketing isn’t pulling its weight.
• Break down barriers and destroy silos: Set up regular meetings with leaders of other business functions, and look at doing ‘job swaps’ between more junior marketers and other parts of the business. This will help marketing to develop cross-departmental relationships and understand other business areas, and vice-versa.

Keep up the pace and be responsive

The pace of change within business is relentless, and the fact that marketing isn’t always able to keep up can prove problematic in the eyes of other business leaders. But there are some key things marketing leaders can do to alleviate the frustrations felt by other parts of the business.

• Review working methodologies and operational setup: Consider adopting a methodology like Agile in order to move more quickly – it’ll also allow you to provide feedback on a regular basis, rather than wait a whole year in order to see the results of a campaign. Agile isn’t for everyone, but if it’s something you want to explore, check out our How to apply Agile successfully to your marketing guide.
• Proactively and enthusiastically contribute to product or service development discussions: Make sure you’re involved early on in product design stages if you work in a product-focused company rather than a service-centric business. This will allow you to plan ahead and make sure you’re in sync with product teams right from the start.
• Review your use of external resources: Are you getting the most out of your agencies, or other partners? Are you working in a way, which taps into their expertise? Increasingly the walls between client and agency are becoming less discernible, and in some instances are breaking down altogether.

Master the art of persuasion

Being persuasive – and even convincing – is considered to be a crucial trait by the board, especially CFOs. This means senior marketers need to be great communicators, as well as confident and passionate. Not much to ask, then. But there are a number of tactics marketers can employ to improve their persuasiveness – here are just some of them:

• Identify your supporters: Pick out those who are already on your side, and use them to help you persuade those who aren’t so easily swayed.
• Pick your moment: Knowing when to bring up difficult conversations is a skill in itself, so think carefully about what else is likely to be on people’s minds before you bring something up they’re likely to be resistant to.
• Be prepared: Consider what people’s objections will be to what you’re proposing, and make sure you prepare your counterargument in advance.