Marketers constantly navigate a complex landscape of expectations and change, both internal and external.
While continuing to deliver value at increasing levels of efficiency, we are also called upon to make sense of the impact of external factors—technological, economic, societal, and structural—on consumer behaviour. In justifying one of the largest spend items on the profit-and-loss sheet, we strive to demonstrate that marketing is an investment not a cost.
It is in the intersection of these expectations that we often fall short. While we are primarily audience and communication experts, we too often fail our most important internal audience by choosing to speak the language of the marketing industry, tech platforms and evangelists: engagement! views! virality! ride the trend!
It is a language that has always been irrelevant in the boardroom and, while all of these measures are important in our own minds, I have never seen them move the needle on investment and our long-term credibility.
Data and measurement
- Build first-party data: This data can be used to test the relationship between a typical marketing metric (growing purchase intent) and the actual behaviour that matters on a scorecard (revenue).
- Do CRM right: When done correctly, customer relationship management (CRM) can establish behavioural links, segment consumers and deliver highly optimised results-oriented marketing. If someone bought a baby crib from your furniture business, its likely they will need a bigger bed in a few years. Building a direct link between a highly targeted marketing campaign and specific business outcomes is easier.
- Own measurement and results: Aligning measurement with the C-suite is the biggest favour you can do for your organisation. Communicating failure and learnings will increase credibility. Your CFO already knows that a subset of your marketing activity is not effective. You’re better off measuring it and having an open discussion about what you’re doing differently.
Abandon the jargon
The allure of clever marketing jargon can be intoxicating. It fosters a sense of insider knowledge, a secret language understood only by the chosen few tasked with making sense of technological shifts.
But in the boardroom, this esotericism falls flat. Boardrooms run businesses, and businesses ultimately care about revenue, profit, or, ideally, both. While we fixate on tech jargon, we often neglect to demonstrate how it affects customer acquisition cost, conversion or, most importantly, revenue and profit. We sound impressive but, over time, we inadvertently undermine our value proposition.
Understand the business
Too many marketing functions are focused on delivering ‘marketing’ without understanding where the business’s pain points are and how we can help.
We must invest time to understand these pain points, and how progress is recognised on the company’s scorecard. Is our product category declining? Is private labeling deflating margins? Is the cost of conversion rising faster than new customer acquisition? Are alternatives to our product emerging?
But the real game-changer is being clear on what customer-attitude or behaviour marketing can change (and measure) in a way that will have a meaningful impact on these challenges.
If you establish correlation between marketing outcomes and business outcomes, then focusing the organisation behind that change will reposition the function’s role in the boardroom.
If telling consumers about your site’s 30-day return policy increases purchase intent, and every 10 per cent increase in purchase intent drives a 1 per cent increase in conversion, it becomes easier to justify a top-of-funnel investment for a company that measures conversion rates on its scorecard.
Link to the scorecard
Once we understand the business challenge, and what consumer behaviour we need to change, the next task is aligning our goals with the scorecard. This task has become easier for digitally native or business-to-consumer (B2C) businesses where marketing can see and influence the entire value chain.
But if you sell a product to a distributor, who then sells it on to a retailer and then a consumer, establishing a link to the scorecard is a more complex game.
Regardless of business model, technology has made establishing marketing’s impact easier, and the answer is always data and measurement.
Communicate outcomes clearly
As we translate jargon into impact and establish clear links between marketing outcomes and scorecard measures, we also need to do what we do best, which is tell a compelling story. We need to focus on the ‘why’ before the ‘what’, establishing a clear rationale for our programmes, how we will measure them and how we are helping the business.
The boardroom cares about growth, revenue and profit. We bring so much to the table if we see ourselves as partners in these goals. We owe it to our companies, our teams and ourselves to position marketing as a strategic partner in growth, not the folks who print the pretty t-shirts.
By Tarek Abdalla, Senior Vice President and CMO at Visa, who leads the brand’s marketing teams across Central Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
