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We all know that marketing is both an art and a science.
It’s hard to measure brand impact on sales, but we marketers know it has an impact. However, we work for companies that have tough number targets and little interest in art.
Therefore, one must properly understand the science of marketing in order to have the freedom to make the art.
If you can do both, you get…
- A seat at the board table and the ability to direct the direction of the company
- The freedom to do the things you know are great, meaningful, and right for your department and the company
- And (perhaps closest and dearest) the ending – or at least a minimization – of “Hey, look at what ‘Company X’ is doing. We should do that.”
Like Rodney Dangerfield, marketing gets ‘no respect’
I can’t think of any other business profession that’s changing faster than marketing. Just for geeky fun, I recently made a list of every technology I’ve mastered in the last 20 years – without training:
Acrobat, PowerPoint, Word, Excel, InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Salesforce, Marketo, Pardot, SharpSpring, HubSpot, HootSuite, Buffer, SurveyMonkey (now Momentive), Zoom, ZoomInfo, Constant Contact, Mailchimp, Act-On, Google Analytics, Omniture (now Adobe), Dropbox, Basecamp, Slack, WordPress, Sitecore, Drupal, Homegrown CMS, Wix, Avid, Final Cut, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Semrush. And I’m sure there’s more I’m forgetting.
Can you think of another profession that requires all of these tools in its wheelhouse? I can not. And that’s just technology.
Let’s talk strategy and tactics. We need to understand how branding, social media, web, search, paid ads, events, direct mail, PR, analyst relations, lead generation, webinars, videos, podcasts, blogs, messaging, sales tools, articles and reporting are executed flawlessly – all with a view to how these tactics generate revenue, influence purchasing decisions and improve our brand position.
To top it off, most of us haven’t attended marketing school; and even if we did, marketing changes so rapidly that a college degree becomes less helpful with each passing year.
Is it any wonder marketers…
- Tend to have short tenures in organizations
- Often turn into little balls of stress and anxiety
- Feel alone and overwhelmed
No, your CEO doesn’t know marketing better than you do – here’s how to prove marketing is effective
I’ve never heard a CEO go to the accounting department and say, “Hey, have you seen how the competitor does their spreadsheets? We should do that.”
Yet it happens to us in marketing. The whole time.
What you’re really hearing is frustration: CEOs can’t get a handle on what marketing is doing and how it’s helping the business. They see what other companies are doing (because marketing efforts are very visible) and wonder what their own investment is getting them.
Here’s how to prove marketing effectiveness and avoid those awkward conversations.
1. Start backwards
Know your business goals and align yours with them. Set a revenue (or at least pipeline) goal for your marketing team.
If you can’t prove the impact of marketing on sales, you need to fix it. It should be your #1 priority. You’ll never get a bigger budget, more staff, or a promotion if you can’t demonstrate a real impact on sales—and saying a customer or prospect received an email doesn’t typically count in B2B.
This is where many marketers say, “But my sales team isn’t following up on the leads I send them” or “You’re not tracking data properly in Salesforce.” I’ll say it again: fix it. This is your #1 priority!
Familiarize yourself with the sales manager, make Deal Source a required field in Salesforce, set up an SDR to track marketing leads by promising a real deadline they need to meet, attend regular team sales calls Participate, make new deals in Salesforce, and ask sales where they’re from. Whatever is necessary.
2. Invest in your team
HR, accounting, sales – almost every other department in your company receives regular training. However, in a recent (non-scientific) survey I conducted on my LinkedIn page, 0% of respondents said they received formal marketing training from their company, and a whopping 78% said it was theirs located. The lucky ones (11%) said they received training at conferences a few times a year.
We can and must improve our profession.
If you’re saying, “I don’t have the budget for this right now,” remember that the average CMO tenure is the shortest of any C-level executive. I’ve just listed all the technologies and tactics marketers need to know right now, and I’m sure there’s more to come. Marketing teams must constantly learn and evolve to deal with what is now and see what is next.
Yes, marketing departments are way too small to handle the massive amount of heavy lifting they have to do. Yes, budgets are always being cut. But too many new tools and tactics bombard us every day for everyone on the team to not be cross trained and exceptional.
3. Get really good at reporting
Every time we talk about engagement, clicks, and opens, our CEO, CFO, and CSO roll their eyes. These are important leading indicators for us, but we don’t have to report them at management level.
By using a marketing automation system, having a good relationship with sales, and setting up a few simple processes, marketing teams can and should be able to report on:
- Marketing-related deals that went straight into the pipeline (from events, downloads, webinars, contact forms, ads, etc.). I set it up like this: What is the primary activity that caused a contact to become active again? For example, the prospect downloaded a paper which resulted in an SDR being followed up which led to an appointment and then a deal. Deal Source is “Web Download” because that action started the chain. C-level financiers can accept that.
- Channels that drive most pipelines
- ROI per channel (pipeline and closed deals)
- Lifetime value of marketing activity (a customer who came to the company through marketing and continues to buy)
- Lead Flow – Names for the pipeline
The great thing about such reports is that you can find interesting gold nuggets for you and your team. You can start to spot changing trends and make really informed decisions about where to spend your larger budget.
Then you finally have the freedom to make the art.
More marketing effectiveness resources
Proving Executive Marketing (Part 1)
Three ways to strengthen the relationship between marketing and finance
These four data points show the C-Suite the marketing ROI
