Repositioning Digital Marketing for the C-Suite

Whether you’re in house, contracting, or working at an agency, the smartest marketers think like the CEO, CFO, and executive teams.

Putting yourself in the shoes of the people who write the checks can help you objectively look at how your contributions are viewed through the lens of the people who plan budgets and set company goals. It’ll help shift your mindset from tactical to strategic.

And with that mindset and understanding of big picture goals and thinking, you can reverse engineer how you approach your management team and how you position your contributions to the business.

Repositioning Digital Marketing Contributions to Showcase Business Impact

Below are some examples of how simple job functions can be repositioned to help executives understand the outcomes of the things you do.

Do you “Do SEO” or do you save the company ad spend by ranking organically for competitive keywords?
Do you do email marketing or do you nurture warm leads and convert them into customers, and grow the lifetime value of existing customers by tactfully upselling or cross-selling?
Do you write content or do you create sales support materials and case studies that help your sales team overcome common objections and improve sales conversion rates, helping them to use their time better and close more deals? Sidebar: Every marketer should try to learn more about sales’ funnel numbers. If these numbers are not available to you, you could build strong allies with Sales by expressing interest and thinking more analytically about how you grow the business.
Do you design ads or do you help the business determine its top performing creative and messaging in order to improve conversion rates and lower customer acquisition costs?
Do you run ads or do you help grow the business at a sustainable, margin-friendly clip that easily pays for itself over the customer’s lifetime?

Hopefully by now the main idea is clear. Being able to talk about your contributions in a way that executives most care about–versus the inside baseball technical speak that only the marketing department understands–is a transformative change. This adjustment will promptly yield dividends, bringing clarity to your contributions and generating heightened enthusiasm for your role.

It’ll also show that you “get it” and know how to connect the dots between your contributions and the business, showcasing an invaluable trait possessed by top-tier professionals.

Immediate Application

Implement this approach in your meetings, slide decks, team calls, etc. The change from being overly tactical to being able to align your contributions with business outcomes will undoubtedly help your career and lead to significant strides in professional growth.

It will take several months if not years to get good at this, but it is a surefire way to differentiate yourself for the better.

My Shift in Mindset

I say all of this with the acknowledgement that I am admittedly a work in progress.

I spent almost a decade learning how to be a digital marketing super nerd, and then reporting to two Founder CEOs after building my foundation and being part of leadership teams both in-house and at an agency totally changed my outlook on how to position my contributions and inform my priorities – mostly through many tough experiences and, quite frankly, getting my shit kicked in (of course, not literally). Founder CEOs are wired differently, there’s no way around it, but the transformation is something I’m thankful for.

Digital Marketing Metrics The C-Suite Will Care About

Anyway, here are some metrics to track that can easily be connected to both business goals and a marketing team's tactical efforts. Furthermore, gaining clarity on some of these metrics could help guide a marketing team’s goals. Collaboration and buy-in across teams is encouraged to avoid having reactive conversations.

Value of SEO keywords. For example, how much would your company have to spend in Search Ads if it didn’t get the clicks for free? Ideally this would be focused towards converting pages and keywords versus simply all keywords.
Conversion rates
Customer acquisition costs
Customer lifetime value
Churn rate (SaaS); may have to come from leadership
Purchasing frequency (eComm)
Average order value (eComm)
ROAS (eComm). Decide in conjunction with leadership based on other factors like overhead, shipping costs, etc. ROAS will also apply to eComm brands who aren’t necessarily retailers (i.e., self-serve subscriptions RE: Netflix).
Time to convert. This is especially critical for eCommerce and can guide how channels can feed each other more effectively (i.e., getting downloads from SEO content and converting them to customers).
Sales conversion rates (and average revenue from a sale). This helps guide how many leads you actually need to get customers. Details may have to come from Sales, and sales figures may vary by product type, line of business if the company is larger, etc.).

It should be acknowledged that every business is unique and there may be some missing KPIs depending on certain situations. Either way, notice what’s missing from all of this?

A lot of the baseline marketing metrics intended for internal team use like click through rate, bounce rate, impressions, etc. Not that those metrics don’t matter; they can be helpful. But ultimately, those are mostly intended for marketing teams versus executive teams. The CEO and the CFO will almost certainly care more about the details above and how your efforts support them.

What Now?

Once you’ve got the data you need, it’s time to create some models (the fun part!).

Example 1: Website Conversion Rate

For instance, suppose there are opportunities for improving website conversion rates. Model the growth in conversions and consequently revenue at various conversion rates aligning with existing figures and traffic averages.

For e-commerce, factor in the average order value; for lead generation, consider the growth of web conversions while accounting for sales conversion rates and average deal size. This approach allows you to quantify recommendations and assess potential expenses or resource allocations accurately.

Example 2: Sales Conversion Rate

Consider another scenario: if the sales team identifies seven key factors leading to inquiries but lacks supporting content like articles, case studies, videos, and customer testimonials, it makes sense to allocate resources to enhance sales conversion rates through sales support materials. Modeling out this data provides a tangible example.

Let's break it down below. In this instance, the average deal size is $5,000.

For every 100 leads, sales generates 30 proposals.
Out of those 30 proposals, 10 convert into customers.
This gives us a sales conversion rate of 10%.

In this instance, with a 10% sales conversion rate and an average deal size of $5,000, generating 100 leads results in $50,000 in revenue.

Now, consider a scenario where the sales conversion rate increases to 15%. With the same lead volume (and ad spend), this translates to $75,000 in revenue. For SaaS businesses, it's essential to assess the impact on monthly recurring revenue (MRR), especially since CFOs appreciate predictable revenue, a key advantage of SaaS models.

For products with perpetual ownership, a straightforward revenue growth calculation will suffice.

This is just an example. But modeling out these scenarios enables the leadership team to grasp the value of recommendations and contributions more effectively.

Example 3: New Customer Growth

For another illustration, let's explore the scenario where a company aims to boost new customer growth, understanding that the lifetime value surpasses customer acquisition costs significantly (with a benchmark of 3:1).

Model out the necessary expenditures in ads and/or resource allocation to acquire #X customers, followed by #Y customers, considering different scenarios where customer acquisition costs may fluctuate, potentially reaching a plateau in returns due to saturation and audience size. The latter is important for determining the point of diminishing returns and working with your team to pinpoint optimal efficiency and sustained profitability.

Regardless, there are many potential options. But gaining a better sense of the metrics that matter to your exec team and desired outcomes will help to narrow the options and guide prioritization.

What Do You Do Here Again?

If the positioning of marketing's contributions doesn't make the business outcomes clear, whether it's right or wrong, people might not grasp the value that digital can offer, which could lead to many undesirable outcomes.

Strategic alignment isn't just a best practice for securing buy-in; it also helps avoid unnecessary challenges. When there’s buy-in, it creates a unified and cohesive team, all moving in the same direction. And yes, there will likely be difficulty and changes along the way (nothing is perfect) but at the least, this is a necessary step in minimizing volatility.

Strategic Buy-In and Positioning Digital Marketing Wins

Don’t let tactics aimlessly guide your digital strategy. This creates a siloed and incohesive team with competing interests. As a result, that team’s muddled priorities and added value will be questioned in the organization.

Instead, strategy is top-down and should guide all of your team’s tactics, time allocation, and priorities.

By thinking like execs and business leaders, contributions will be easy to understand and better rewarded.

If your business is ready to rethink or launch its digital strategy, Gravity Labs can help. Reach out to us today to schedule a brief introductory call.