How to solve modern marketing problems from the boardroom

I recently published a whitepaper to help board directors address modern marketing problems at the executive level. Here I provide highlights from my research. The full whitepaper can be downloaded here.

PROBLEMS

Marketing has evolved greatly over the last 20 years, growing in both breadth and complexity. The addition of online marketing and social media marketing to the traditional marketing mix provides both opportunities and challenges. Many of the opportunities and challenges can be up-skilled and addressed within the marketing department. However, there are a few problems that only board-level leadership can address. This whitepaper summarizes five significant problems that the board should investigate, provides research-informed perspectives and visuals, and, finally, solutions to address the five problems.

1. The brand has been diluted. Companies change with time and technology: as new CEOs update their vision for the company, as the competitive landscape changes, and as public perception ebbs and flows.

2. FTEs are great at executing campaigns, but the big picture is unclear. If you find yourself asking: What are we doing all these marketing and communication activities for? Are they effective at achieving our goals? How do our marketing efforts fit together with our products and services, and what is it all leading up to? Then, the daily actions are not in alignment with strategic company-level objectives.

3. The focus has been on sales and lead-gen for so long that marketing and customer engagement are lacking. Close and retention rates slipping consistently over time are indicators of this problem. It’s a loss of resources to have your salespeople doing upfront work to gather and qualify leads if marketing isn’t there to instill trust and confidence in prospective customers.

On LinkedIn, I'm providing only three problems and solutions download the full whitepaper here.

RESEARCH INSIGHTS

• Social media has fueled the rise of cancel culture. Reactive crisis communications are no longer enough. To avoid PR pitfalls in the first place, protocols must be set at the board level. To do that, “Board members should assess the quality and timeliness of information from management and seek outside expertise and input from key stakeholders who can provide perspectives and highlight trends that could impact the business.” (EY, 2021)
• A comprehensive study of 64k director biographies from S&P 1500 firms summarized that "Only 2.6% of firms’ board members have marketing experience” and “determined that marketing-experienced board members positively affect firm-level revenue growth and that this relationship is strengthened or weakened by important contingencies that occur in the firm. The findings suggest that the common practice of not including experienced marketers on boards of directors puts firms at a competitive disadvantage." (Whitler, et al, 2018)
• Marketers’ experiences in areas like digital and social media represent a tremendous opportunity for companies, and they can provide the crucial insight and fresh perspective that boards currently lack. (SpencerStuart, Sanderson, Welch 2019).
• "Organizations with at least one marketer on the board had a 3-percentage point increase in total shareholder return compared to a board with no marketing-experienced directors." (Whitler, et al, 2018)

Additional research and insights can be found in the full whitepaper here.

SOLUTIONS

1. The board should revisit the marketing strategy every 3-5 years. Companies change with time and technology, therefore a renewed strategic vision is required to leverage current marketing tools and techniques in order to keep competitors at bay. Even the best marketing leaders can get comfortable after several years, and this can lead to a lack of innovation.

2. KPIs that roll upward and look sideways. To test that campaigns aren’t siloed and divisions are working together toward larger (known and tracked) goals, ask one division how their goals are informed or impacted by another division. Then challenge leaders to create KPIs that tie marketing actions and output directly to top-level organizational goals, then insist on incremental updates on progress.

3. Education is needed. If your company is sales-led and marketing ambivalent, then close and retention rates are sure to suffer. A CMO-level marketing advisor is needed to sit at the leadership table and have educational conversations about the role that marketing can play in an organization. HR recommendations: additional roles may be needed in key positions to ensure marketing is a gateway for sales and not a hindrance or afterthought.

CONCLUSION

Marketers are trained to generate demand and can and should help the primary functions that dominate boards (finance, operations, governance), shape board-level strategies and decisions. Adding a marketing executive to the board diversifies the board and increases shareholder return.

On LinkedIn, I'm providing only three problems and solutions, a bit of research, and an astoundingly brief conclusion; download the full whitepaper here to learn more.

Thank you for reading!

If your private or corporate board is considering adding a marketing executive, we should chat!

Corinne