Most Boards Intuitively understand that marketing is a vital part of a company’s growth engine. Not only does it feed your short-term sales engine, it also influences your future performance.
Done right, marketing drives any business. But I’ve noticed a growing tendency on the board to relegate marketing to a single metric: the pipeline.
While it’s true that marketing plays an important role in generating new leads, the strategic marketing department can play a much bigger role in a company’s short-term and future performance. In addition to generating demand, shape your market positioning and increase visibility and brand reputation among existing customers, partners, press, analysts, employees, investors and potential acquirers .
As your company grows, it creates impact and consistency across global teams, sales, recruiting, customer success, delivery and nearly every department.
Why Short Sell Marketing?
I think the biggest reason is that marketing is a mystery to many directors.According to a survey from spencer stuartFewer than 3% of publicly traded Fortune 1000 boards include active marketing leaders.
For Series A companies, this percentage is probably even lower, whose boards tend to be made up of founders and investors, most with a finance, product, or operations background and little marketing experience. (Big mistake from my point of view, but this is a topic for another post).
When talking to data-driven board members, stick to what you can measure: marketing’s contribution to the short-term pipeline.
Second, all business leaders need to become more data-driven. Events and digital demand-generation activities such as paid social campaigns and webinars tend to be easier to track and attribute to short-term revenue than brand, content and corporate marketing.
Whether it’s brand campaigns, PR, analyst relationships, or even internal communications, the return on investment is difficult and expensive to measure. Most companies know these aspects of marketing are important, but it takes data, systems and time to prove their ROI and many young companies don’t have them.
This is why business leaders who talk to data-driven board members are obsessed with what is measurable: the contribution of marketing to the short-term pipeline. But that’s only half the story, and let’s be honest, it hurts marketing (and the board’s value).
Board Rebuild Update
The job of the board of directors in a growth company is to guide and support future performance, not just governance. That means boards need to know that marketing is doing well over the next few quarters and looking ahead.
When you put together your next board update on marketing, think about five slides covering the 5 P’s.
- what is marketing Priority?
- how are you play Is it against those priorities?
- how is your health pipeline?
- what is the company and its products Positioned For future growth?
- what? Planned For next quarter or next year?
Clarify your priorities
A sample quarterly marketing review with highlights and lowlights. Image credits: Michelle Swann
Start with the business areas that your marketing promotes or supports. This can be expressed as quarterly goals, annual goals. OKRsor strategic initiatives that respond retroactively to larger business objectives.
For example, if hiring and retention is a strategic imperative for your business, talk about how you are helping to raise and promote your employer brand awareness. If customer retention and growth is a priority, it may be important to discuss ways to strengthen cross-selling within your team or further your thought leadership in specific new areas. If you’re prioritizing your team’s budget and time, let the board know and tell them why.
show me your performance
Create a scorecard for your marketing priorities that you can update and share at future meetings. Image credits: Michelle Swann
As the board looks at trends and progress, we create a scorecard based on these priorities to be updated and shared at future meetings.
If you’re doing something new every month, that’s a red flag. Make it easier to consume by giving areas a red, yellow, or green rating based on data, milestones achieved, or customer feedback.Make Sure You “Own Red” Rattan Conant, the author and CMO of The Sixth Sense likes to say: Recognizing where the gaps are will not only build credibility, but it will also give you the opportunity to seek help from your board.
