For Marketing to be taken seriously, and for professionals to show their worth and that of their strategies and activities, I believe they need to prove the impact across and on the organisation:
✅ Impact on revenue (ROI/ ARPA/ MRR etc.)
✅ Impact on cross-functional teams and joint objectives
✅ Leading the way in customer conversations and driving insights
✅ Looking at all data - product usage/ client feedback/ rev opportunities/ process improvements
✅ Ask yourself constantly - is what I'm doing helping the whole business - is this going to support and drive our Growth ambitions?
✅ Seek out and demand strategic alignment and don't operate in a silo!
Reduce the tendency to "speak marketing" when it doesn't show value to others in the organisation:
❌ Impressions served/ engagement levels etc? Apart from the marketing team who else cares about this?
❌ Clicks and click rates etc. - ask yourself is this activity delivering me the right audience, is it ultimately delivering customers and providing ROI?
❌ Jargon and Bamboozling - complicated SEO, optimisation or paid ad lingo - again that's great you know this stuff but who else in the organisation cares? Can you prove your strategies are working?
Being able to work through what YOU need to know to improve your working strategies and execution, and what YOUR WIDER organisational audience, including the Exec and the Board, need to know, always think - what do they care about?
Worth a try next time you need to prove the success of Marketing in your organisation? (Feel free to disagree with me 😉 we won't all be aligned on this!)
And to be fair to Marketing Professionals - the organisational setup must be optimal and Growth-mindset-led for you to deliver this successfully. If it's silo driven, your value will still be seen in the silo driven reporting you present. There are small changes you can make to think GROWTH and not just communicate traditional Marketing metrics.
I say this all from a place of empathy and learned behaviour, hopefully not preachy. It took me a long time in my career to figure this out by doing the opposite! And I'm still learning how to be as effective as I can IN and FOR a business. 🙏