How CMOs Can Take Control of (and Credit for) Revenue Growth

When Eric Hollebone and I wrote Change Agents, we aimed to pull together the thinking that we believe drives growth and revenue for an organization – through one of the most powerful teams in business today: Marketing.

We are speaking to the marketers that feel restless and hungry for change, and we want to help them push the envelope and make big things happen for themselves, their team, and the companies they work for. Each week, through July, I’ll be sharing a topic from the book discussing digital transformation and how it applies to marketing, sales, and business growth. Follow my page to make sure you don't miss any posts. If you want it all in one easy to digest book, you can download the Change Agents Book and new Playbook here.

Last week in the #ChangeAgents series, we talked about how marketing leadership can future-proof their roles by connecting your organization’s greatest resources—people, processes, technology, and data—to support insight, agility, collaboration, and a better customer experience at every step. This week, we’ll be exploring the first element in the framework: Revenue Growth and why this is the greatest imperative for today’s marketers.

From Cost Center to Revenue Generator

Every business exists to offer a unique value to the marketplace and to generate revenue in exchange for that value. And every business function exists to further that aim.

But marketing has always occupied a precarious position: while it is directly responsible for growing market share, it has struggled to demonstrate its full contribution to revenue.

John Wanamaker famously summed up the problem with this quote: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half.”

Hence marketing’s ongoing battle – how to prove that marketing is a revenue generator and not simply a cost center.

Luckily, advances in technology have made it possible for marketers to win that battle once and for all. When every mouse click and eyeball movement can be tracked, and when every lead can be followed throughout the buyer journey, we can prove that marketing is moving the revenue dial.

When every lead can be followed throughout the buyer journey, we have the tools we need to prove that marketing is moving the revenue dial.

This means that marketers can finally demonstrate their value. But there is still some work to do in order to nix the cost-center narrative and it starts with a change in marketing’s language – replacing the marketing-centric language of clicks and leads with the business-centric language of revenue and growth.

The New Marketing Imperative

Revenue growth: Every business exists to generate revenue, and revenue is driven by the customer journey. Re-envisioning that journey transforms the organization’s revenue potential.

When the marketing mission is driven by revenue, it changes everything, from the talent you seek to the goals you set to the business units you collaborate with.

When the marketing mission is driven by #revenuegrowth, it changes everything, from the talent you seek to the goals you set to the business units you collaborate with.

To start the process, you need to understand where your company is now, where it’s heading, and what you need to do to support those goals:

Step 1: Examine your business imperatives

Start with your business imperatives. These are the goals set out by your executive leadership. Whatever those imperatives look like, your plans for digital transformation need to be in alignment.

Look ahead to the one-, two-, and three-year mark. Shift the focus from short-term, campaign-based, tactical thinking to a broader horizon. The further out you look, the fuzzier things get, but long-term planning is crucial to get you moving forward. Accept that the first year is fixed, the second year is flexible, and the third is fluid. Whatever the time frame, you need to set out with a clear vision of what you want to achieve.

Step 2: Align your marketing initiatives

Once you’ve documented the organization’s top business goals, it’s time to identify the marketing initiatives that support them. For example, if the goal is to reduce customer acquisition costs by 33%, perhaps marketing automation could streamline efficiency and reduce the department’s headcount.

Once the business goals are documented and the marketing initiatives are identified, these elements will form the foundation of your case for transformation.

Step 3: Conduct a self-assessment

Now it’s time to assess where you are right now in terms of your ability to deliver supportive, meaningful customer experiences. This involves a deep examination of your customers, your competitive landscape, your supporting technologies, and your human resources. At the end of the process, you will have an understanding of your organization’s readiness to become customer centric, which will help you prepare for the next step: engaging your CEO.

Step 4: Engage the executive leadership

Digital transformation needs to happen from the top down or at the very least be wholeheartedly endorsed by the senior ranks. Before you can get buy-in from your colleagues across business units, you need to get your executive team aware and on your side. The executive team doesn’t need details about the “how,” but they need to understand and support the “why.” Plan to engage them early and present them with enough of the big picture that they can appreciate the issues at stake and visualize the plan for the future. 

As a result of completing this process, you'll understand how to align marketing's initiatives with your organizations big picture goals and get the executive team on board. You’ll be able to answer questions like:

• Does your organization have clear revenue targets in place? Are you confident that your marketing activities will support those targets?
• Do you have the technology you need to simultaneously scale up and support greater personalization at scale?
• Where are bottlenecks that automation could help to improve?
• Do your existing technologies enable you to measure the impact of marketing on revenue generation?

For a more in-depth guide to developing your executive plan (with examples and downloadable templates to help get your ideas onto paper), download a copy of the Change Agents Playbook.

Carrying Out this New Marketing Directive

CEOs are recognizing marketing leadership’s potential and giving CMOs a new directive to find ways to play a measurable and significant role in setting, predicting, and reaching revenue targets. (The rise of new roles such as “Chief Growth Officer” and “Chief Revenue Officer” are evidence of this shift towards measurable, attributable revenue acceleration.)

To meet these expectations, marketers need to acquire new tools, new talents, and a commitment to disrupt the status quo. The traditional skills—creativity, persuasiveness, and communication—are now more important than ever, but they must integrate with new skills.

As customer data flows through digital channels, marketing is increasingly a technological discipline, requiring numeracy skills, data analytics, and a familiarity with the processes by which technology is implemented, managed, and optimized.

Check back here next week for the third post in the #ChangeAgents series. We’ll be digging into the next element of the Revenue Ecosystem – The Mindset: Digital Transformation and uncovering how marketers can engage their entire organizations in the digital transformation journey.

Follow my page to catch the post as soon as it’s live. If you’re ready to begin building your own revenue ecosystem, download the Change Agents Book and Playbook box set today.