I don't know what I don't know. As a CEO, Do you know what your Marketing team does not know?

First things first. Why should CEOs even care about Marketing team? Isn't the CMO supposed to lead and manage the marketing team?

Fifteen years back, Marketing meant activities pertaining to branding, advertising in print, radio and television, events and conferences and traces of relationship marketing could be seen (Lenard Berry coined the term 'Relationship Marketing' in as early as 1983). Account Management was in its infancy even though with the wake of TQM Philosophy in the 1980s, businesses had started to focus on few quality vendors rather than many, thereby making it important for B2B marketers to focus on getting into the sole, trusted vendor roles. Most importantly, marketing focused on things which needed dollars to be spent other than the compensation paid to the marketing team. The role of the CEO (or the CFO) was to approve the budget for the marketing team and then mostly the Head of Marketing, or the CMO's office managed the budget. 

The rise of Internet and more specifically Google, screwed this. And then a host of other players such as the Facebooks, Twitters, Linkedins, Youtubes joined the party. Together, all of these, along with the other newbies like Marketing Automation, Account Based Marketing, Influencer Marketing & more changed the dynamics of marketing altogether. Free & Open Source contributed immensely to this change.

Digital Marketing, along with Marketing Automation, Account Based Marketing, Influencer Marketing & more are changing the dynamics of marketing altogether.

How?

Earlier, when the CEO approved budgets, he had absolute knowledge of where the dollars are being invested - be it a bill board campaign, be it a snail mail reachout campaign, be it a conference and so on. Today, the customer conversion points have exploded with the wake of digital media. The marketing team can leverage free tools to identify and segment the target market, identify decision makers and run email campaigns which attempt to solve problems of the prospective customers without spending a dime. Free marketing automation platforms help to scale up this outreach activity. Marketing teams can connect to influencers in the domain and co-create thought leadership content and build relationships which does not cost a fortune yet impacts the buyer's intention to purchase in a highly positive manner. There are a zillion other things which have emerged which marketing teams can leverage to be super-effective. But the million-dollar question is - do they know how to? And the next important question is - As a CEO, do you know what your marketing team knows and what it does not know?

Ok. I now have your attention.

If you have not focused on marketing as something you need to understand as a CEO, you are not alone. I personally know CEOs who understand the critical role marketing plays in the organization's success but have not been involved with marketing in a detailed level, possibly because of multiple reasons - lack of bandwidth, lack of interest, low priority assigned to the function or possibly lack of knowledge. But the fact is, marketing is far more powerful today than any other function because of the results it can potentially drive home. 

Marketing is far more powerful today because of the results it can potentially drive home.

Now that you do not know what your marketing team knows, here are three things which you can do.

1. Learn - Understand - Analyse

This is the most important step of all.
Sometimes, CEOs prefer to have a joint head of Marketing and Sales. Such a strategy may possibly have relatively lower chances of success, solely for the reason that both sales and marketing are cut from different fabric. While one is aggressive in wooing a prospective customer into an paying customer, the other is busy filtering the prospects from the humongous crowd of people with varied interest levels, varied knowledge levels and most importantly, varied levels of purchasing power and authority. Both the activities are fundamentally different as are their objectives. 

As a leader, when the CEO appreciates the variety of things which marketing can do, it helps the marketing team in taking informed decisions. It makes them responsible, alert and also ensures the goals of the marketing team are well aligned with that of the organisation.
The first step towards this is to know the strengths of your marketing team and more importantly things which they are not capable in doing. While you might be happy because a lot of things are being done, marketing as a discipline would be doing multiple other things which is necessary to be done, to stay relevant. Investing in the learning of the team, competitor benchmarking, reliance on global reports, words from the marketing thought leadership, attending marketing conferences are some of the things you could definitely try to understand the how marketing is changing globally and how do you leverage marketing for more. Spend towards this would result in a massive non-linear reduction in the actual marketing spend. 

 2. Enable - Empower - Entrust 

As a leader, it is imperative for the CEO to surround himself with people who will challenge him and tell why a decision is right or wrong. Marketing today is a powerful force; In-depth analysis and a strong CEO at the helm is all what is needed to steer the marketing ship in the right direction. 

And no matter what business you go into, you only win when your customer says you win - Mary Barra

When you keep customers in focus, you tend to do things which are aligned towards a great customer experience. Enabling your marketing teams with the necessary toolsets to understand, record and monitor prospective customer data and generate insights from them will help change the relationship and the reputation your organization has within your client circle and business ecosystem. 

Everyone understand that with great power comes great responsibility. The more you entrust your marketing team, the more responsible they will feel and the better will be the outcome. 

3. Experiment - Measure - Inspire

Every business makes mistakes. How you deal with those mistakes will largely determine how you’ll be judged. While I continue to be a strong proponent of NO Monkey Marketing, I believe that marketing teams should continue to have a strong experimentation budget - experimenting with marketing avenues, models, skillsets and focus on generating insights from the data they collect during these experiments. Focus on experimentation with a fail fast approach centered around metrics driven insights is what is needed from the top leadership in the company.

As a CEO and a visionary leader, you should be thinking far ahead - possibly the next 5 years rather than the current year about how you want to build your organization. Anything and everything which can help build on the insights and use them to create a better customer experience should be encouraged. Leaders inspire. When CEOs believe in a people first culture and inspire them, people believe in the leadership & go a long way in building genuinely successful businesses which not just listens to the customer, but also observes them and is responsive to their latent needs. 

Go Mobile. Go Social. Be Human. Fail Fast. Measure. Repeat. Succeed.

What do you think? Does this resonate with what you have been thinking? I would love to hear your thoughts. If you are a CEO and Business Head, or a Head of Marketing or CMO, I and my readers would love to hear your inputs for sure.