Growing is a constant business goal. It is therefore essential that CEOs know how their marketing department, along with Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs), can aid in the target. There are few who do, and a misalignment can prove costly.
What do we know about this? Since using our own research and the input of the Association of National Advertisers, we conducted a survey of more than 100 top marketers and 21 CEOs across a variety of industries and businesses of various sizes. We also focused on marketing-related issues within Fortune 500 companies.
The findings of the study are clear. Businesses that choose to make marketing the heart of their growth strategies outperform their competitors. Particularly, those who see branding and advertising as their leading growth method are two times more likely to achieve a revenue rise of five percent, greater than companies who do not (67 percent to 33%). This is the case with all B2C and B2B firms.
Furthermore, high-growth businesses that are who are ranked in the top quarter of the market are able to invest at least three times more in marketing. A senior executive at an industry that sells consumer goods said to our reporter, “Finance identifies where the money goes; marketing identifies where the money comes from.”
For CEOs and businesses that don’t use marketing to fuel growth, it’s time to press”reset.. Here’s how.
1. Determine what you require.
Do you have an innovative growth strategy? Are your relationships with customers solid? Have you got the skills, personnel, and technology to build an internationally recognized brand?
If you don’t understand what marketing is capable of, you don’t know what it’s supposed to be doing. It’s a common-sense principle; however, the practice isn’t widely used.
We asked CMOs and CEOs of the same business what their primary job was — building brand customer experience and digital growth, loyalty, or sales supportalmost all the time, they offered diverse responses. Additionally, nearly half of CMOs have rated branding and advertising as the top two growth tools, but less than 30 percent of CEOs agreed. About two-thirds of the time, they didn’t agree or weren’t certain if they shared the same view of what the ROI is. Less than 30percent of the CEOs believed their CMOs were efficient at growing their businesses.
It’s more than an absence of communication’s a major gap. The CEO has a duty to equip their marketing managers with a map that they are able to use to interpret the map of strategic importance. Together, they should develop a framework for measuring marketing that connects the company’s performance to strategies for growth in marketing.
2. Choose a chief advocate for customers.
Growing is a team-based activity. At a minimum, it is essential that the digital, marketing, product, and finance functions work together. Different teams will be responsible for different aspects of the growth plan; however, you require a growing unifier who will provide what is the opinion of the customer. In essence, this person is the quarterback.
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In many organizations, the care of the client is split. For instance, two-thirds of CMOs who participated in our survey stated that they had more than one C-level customer job in their organization. This could be a problem because if everyone owns the customer, nobody does.
The definition of the role of the chief advocate for customers is essential. The CMO can play the role of another person. What matters is that there’s an opportunity to sit at the table, occupied by a person who is the representative of the consumer. The chief advocate for the customer should have a real voice and be a key part of any strategic discussion. According to research conducted by Adweek, the research shows that there is a strong connection between highly-performing CMOs and strong backing from CEOs.
However, the support for this is often weak. Our study found that four of the Fortune 500 companies don’t have people with marketing or customer-related positions on their executive boards. Those who have these roles tend to perform better than the rest. We found that companies that have CMOs who are heavily engaged in planning strategic strategies are 1.3 times faster. One marketing executive from the world’s largest beverage company stated, “Strategy should be multidisciplinary, and if marketing doesn’t have an opportunity to participate in the table, the entire system is in trouble.
3. Learn to become a growth coach.
With a top quarterback, CEOs have to accept their role as a coach. Their role is to develop the plan, not throw the ball across the field.
CEOs need to be knowledgeable about the opportunities and challenges of the modern world of marketing. Are the marketing strategies aligned with the growth plan overall? The answer, often, can be either “no” or “not enough.” Also, the results of our survey were shocking. The CEOs of fifty percent declared that they were extremely satisfied with the modern approach to marketing. However, only three-quarters of CMOs believed in them.
Marketing today is much more than advertising and branding. It’s a multi-dimensional technical field. Take a look at the fact that the number of solutions for marketing is increasing each year, and will reach more than 11,000 by 2023. CEOs with no marketing background (which is the case for the majority of them should invest in their education by having a conversation with their CMOs to improve their understanding of the latest tools in marketing. This will allow them to develop into a better coach.
It’s also essential to make sure that CMOs are in the proper mindset. Reliability isn’t just for the business unit’s leaders. Create CMOs to act as if they have their own profit and loss responsibilities. Make them accountable for delivering tangible results that are in line with the growth strategy.
In order for this to happen for to happen, the quarterback must be in the game; having multiple customer voices could be just as unproductive as not having any at altogether. Over a range of industries, we observed that Fortune 500 companies with one customer position in the executive committee are growing significantly faster than companies with multiple roles, which range from 20% faster in the production of materials and chemicals to more than two times as fast in travel and logistics.
