Esther Flammer, CMO, Wrike.
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This year has already proven to be a challenge for marketers, as many face smaller budgets, reduced head count and the pressure to do more with less. But anyone who works in marketing knows this isn’t far from the norm. Marketers have always faced major headwinds when it comes to access to resources and maintaining a seat at the table. So what can we do about it?
Marketing leaders need to reestablish the role that marketing plays within the organization and position their department as a strategic driver of business, rather than a support arm. This means building strong, cross-departmental relationships, aligning strategy and tactics to measurable business outcomes, and keeping a finger on the pulse of what is happening in the market.
This might seem like a major undertaking with the amount of work already on marketers’ plates, but making this shift is key to sustaining the long-term health of the organization. There are a few actionable steps marketers can take to make this happen.
Building The Foundation
Ensuring that marketing has a seat at the table starts with relationship-building. This is where marketers can really dig in and start developing trust with other key stakeholders. Part of this trust comes from interpersonal communication and demonstrating team mentality, but the other half must be shown through contribution and dedication to larger business goals. From here, the shift in perception can begin.
For marketing to be seen as a strategic driver of business, leaders should look to introduce new ideas that are backed by market data and initiate thoughtful discussions around existing priorities—for example, “Should we still be doing X, or instead considering Y?” And if you do take the lead on making a change, be able to come back to the group with results to show whether or not the move was successful.
By inserting—and, in some cases, driving—marketing conversations around ways to grow the business, marketers can start to be seen as key players. Not to mention, these relationships will increase the chances that marketing is at the forefront of conversations before they even happen. That’s when you know the shift has begun.
Providing The Numbers
Once the trust is there, it’s time to reinforce it by demonstrating impact. A strong marketing organization should be laser-focused on dominating its particular market. This means relying on market insights to gain a deeper understanding of the customer or target buyer (get granular!), knowing where you show up against your competitors in every facet of the business, and understanding what trends are shaping your industry—both macroeconomic factors and new technologies. Having this data will allow you to build a strategy that differentiates you as an organization in a highly saturated space.
Once the strategy is there, leaders must rally the entire marketing organization to execute it. All teams need to be aligned and working in lockstep to deliver meaningful, measurable outcomes. This may seem obvious, but our research found that only 37% of marketing leaders understand how their teams are performing against goals and objectives. And when you consider how much data goes into building an initial strategy, it feels wasteful to then activate in a way that isn’t easily quantifiable.
On the subject of measurement, the same thing applies to budget. Leaders must be able to showcase that for every dollar spent, a target was achieved or at least contributed to. This ties directly to needing visibility into what your teams are working on, but also to the trust factor discussed earlier. As a marketer, a huge part of being recognized as a strategic driver is the ability to maximize resources and think critically about spend—and numbers don’t lie!
Thinking Organizationally
The moral of the story here is that to be good (and strategic) partners, marketers must think organizationally. The resource constraints and limited head count I mentioned earlier can make this difficult, but ultimately, leaders must learn to flex on occasion and prioritize work that benefits the business as a whole. And that is why it’s so important to have full visibility into the work your teams are doing on a daily basis, so you can quickly course-correct or shift responsibilities if needed.
It’s all about showing continued value for the marketing organization—value as a revenue driver, value as a window into key market knowledge and value as a strategic partner.
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