My CEO Doesn't Understand Marketing - What Do I Do?

If you have been hired as a marketing expert within a company, but your CEO still doesn’t particularly understand marketing or see the true value in it, don’t panic – you aren’t alone. This is more common than most people realise. 

However, it might not be entirely their fault. In the space of a few years, we’ve gone from “content is king”, heat mapping to marketing automation, retargeting, AI and TikTok. That’s not to say that content marketing and social media scheduling platforms are no longer important – there’s just a lot of buzzwords to keep up with if marketing isn’t your forte.

According to a Forbes Insights survey, 69% of CEOs said they thought their companies waste money on marketing. So, how can you educate your CEO so that they see the true value in their internal marketing function?

Explain How Marketing And Sales Work Together

First of all, you need to ensure that they understand that marketing and sales go hand in hand. It’s not a competition between the two functions, it’s a long-term relationship. 

If you want the easy option, email our blog on the benefits of sales and marketing alignment to them and see what they say. Alternatively, you could give them examples of why marketing and sales, in your business specifically, go hand in hand.

There are usually two main issues when it comes to CEOs understanding the relationship between marketing and sales. These are:

1. They think that sales are more important than marketing.
2. They think that marketing can replace sales.

The problem is that they aren’t grasping one key point – no business should have one without the other. It’s not a choose one and lose one situation. Marketing and sales go hand in hand, supporting one another and maximising lead generation, brand awareness, improving your reach and increasing sales – to name just a few top-level benefits.

If your CEO or MD thinks sales is more important than marketing, give them examples of how marketing can actually increase and improve sales figures. Show them the data. If they have hard proof that PPC campaigns, for example, have brought in more leads which have resulted in sales, they will be able to see that marketing is just as important as the sales function within the business.

However, if they are under the impression that marketing can replace sales, inform them that this also is not the case. Your marketing team is there to support the sales function, and unless you’re an e-commerce company with a “buy it now” option, marketing and sales should be working together.

Read more here.