Switching The Exec Team’s Focus from Macro to Panoramic View – Long Term
The overall increase in marketing budget proves that the Exec team recognises that Marketing is not an overhead, but an investment that generates revenue. But this investment is often the victim of closer inspection at Exec level.
As a CMO or a CEO, the hard part is justifying the marketing budget, and that means its urgent that you prove marketing’s performance. The Exec Team isn’t interested in the details (they can come off as excuses). You’ll need a long-term focus that links investment against outcomes. Not so simple, when you consider all the uncontrollable flying objects out of your control. The good news is that progress is being made on defining some of those important benchmarks … ones that prove the marketing returns over a longer timeframe. But you’re going to have to adjust the Exec Team’s camera mode – from the macro view of instant revenue, towards the Landscape view – Showing balanced development of long-term demand and sustained growth delivered by marketing.
Propolis (the global body of B2B marketers) pinpoint the three areas where your marketing has to drive results:
- Efficient demand generation
- Customer experience (CX)
- Brand strength
If you are hitting these 3 areas, Boom! … you are on your way to becoming an outstanding marketing organisation.
If you aren’t doing this yet, let’s find out more about these three:
What is Efficient demand generation?
You need a combination of net new business and long term growth potential. This is where ‘Marketing yoga’ comes in – Flexibility allows you to support complex buyer journeys, meet new business models and actively engage customers.
Tech brands need close connections and a deep understanding of their customer’s needs to set up new products and routes to market.
Collaborating with sales and customer-facing teams keeps a customer voice, whilst sharing responsibility for pipeline generation and lifetime value.
How does Marketing affect CX?
Covid, IOT and AI has made significant impacted customer experience (CX) processes and customer expectations. Generating insights from your customer data throughout the entire customer lifecycle means you can take the lead in cultivating one-to-one customer relationships.
The goal is to achieve a unified view that shows what each customer really cares about.
Brand strength
Brand clarity and investment finds your brand’s purpose and values. From a customer’s perspective – if your product looks similar to your competitors, a trusted and liked brand is going to be your differentiator that creates efficient demand, and long-lasting customer relationships.
How can you measure these 3 pillars?
You’ll need a combination of traditional KPIs and reporting techniques but, remember, keep it high level of the 3 pillars for any presentation to the Execs of marketing’s contribution.
Let’s chat
If you’d like to discuss how to measure these 3 pillars and justifying your spend or winning more budget, drop me a message or book a complimentary no-obligation meeting and find out how I can help your business.
