5 Ways Marketers Get C-Suite Buy-In

Proving marketing’s value to other departments or the C-Suite can seem like a futile effort. When there is a disconnect across departments and a marketing campaign’s KPIs are vanity metrics, the first touchpoints in a long running brand awareness ploy, or the foundation of what’s to come - it can be hard for the C-Suite to see the full picture to get on board.

That’s why we reached out to marketing leaders from Danone, LEARFIELD, RE/MAX, Stratasys, and Invesco for answers on how they team up with their company’s leaders to get C-Suite buy-in and financial support. 

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TLDR? The best way to prove marketing’s value to the C-Suite is by:

1. Aligning goals across the company as partners.

2. Relying on numbers for support. 

3. Educating everyone about the target audience. 

4. Assessing current and past proceedings and working across departments to capture all metrics for a comparison point. 

5. Measuring everything.

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#1 | “We are partners in solving problems for our clients.” Jennifer Davis | Chief Marketing and Communications Officer | LEARFIELD

“It starts back at that theme of hospitality,” Davis remarked. Data is important, but in order for everyone to understand and appreciate marketing’s efforts, people need to be invited into the conversation. “Inviting others who have different backgrounds and perspectives into the conversation where they can actually be a voice and influence where we go [is important]. So whether it's a rebranding exercise, a new campaign development, or an event that we might be throwing, feedback helps bring others along and obviously makes it all better.” 

Davis stated that she stays curious to learn new things because other people may have a different, more informed background that contributes to the overall success. She stated that when working with other departments, it is important to never forget that “We are partners in solving problems for our clients.” 

Having aligned goals and common metrics for the business to measure throughout the customer life cycle also gives everyone a stake in the outcome and is critical for success. 

#2 | “Distill it down to numbers.” Tal Cohen | Chief Marketing Officer | Stratasys

Tal Cohen believes that proving value “should be distilled down to numbers.” Good analytics and data prove what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and how it’s performing. “I'm a big advocate of performance marketing, working with numbers, and proving it because it creates a very solid foundation for the discussion,” Cohen shared.

He remarked that numbers don’t lie and that “creative is very subjective, but performance is rarely subjective and actually combines the two (data and creative). 

#3 | “We educate.” Abby Lee | Senior Vice President of Marketing and Communications | RE/MAX

Because of how the franchising system works, Lee’s team at RE/MAX only needs to explain why they’re making calls, but doesn’t need to fight for every marketing dollar. 

Franchises and corporate sometimes differ on marketing methods, but, overall, the partners RE/MAX is working with and targeting are real estate agents who are also marketers in their own way, so marketing to them is different. Educating the C-Suite about the difference between marketing to an agent and a regular consumer is what helps prove the value of their marketing efforts. 

“Once we educate and explain it to them, they kind of have this light bulb that goes off. They still want more billboards, but they understand the strategy behind it and why we're doing that, and also appreciate the fact that we're being cognizant of making sure that every dollar counts.” 

Lee also stated that listening to feedback is important, because everyone has an opinion. Her job, however, is to take feedback into account and move forward with the best ideas for the brand. 

#4 | “Marketing could be a differentiator for the firm.” Emily Pachuta | Chief Marketing and Analytics Officer | Invesco

Pachuta expressed her gratitude towards her company for providing an environment that appreciates both Sales and Marketing equally. “I was hired because there was a belief that Marketing could be a differentiator for a firm like Invesco,” she shared.

“The first thing I did when I got here was an assessment of where things were from standard marketing metrics (website traffic, social level, all the metrics) just to do a competitive analysis…That really helped me understand.” Having a grasp on current proceedings not only inspires what you can improve, but helps create a differentiator point to track your initiatives and progress. 

“There was this need for future proof marketing, so that helped me really understand where we stood, and I'd go back to those methods periodically every year or two to see if we were improving because they're signals of effectiveness.” 

Invesco does brand trackers and prioritizes NPS (Net Promoter Scores). “It is really critical - not just the big studies of NPS that you do every couple of years, but capturing the client experience to understand the user client.”

Aligning net revenue and net growth goals across departments is a priority for the company, in addition to capturing traditional marketing metrics like “tests around marketing mix model optimization to see contributions of marketing from an ROI perspective.” 

#5 | “We measure everything.” Linda Bethea | Head of Marketing | Danone

“I’m a very results-driven, analytical person,” Beathea shared. “I’ve always been very close to my analytics team, and leveraging the data and insights to show the value of marketing. We measure everything. We do marketing mix analysis and quarterly media pulse reports, and it's our team's job to show that value to the rest of the organization.” By using data to show progress and impact, Bethea’s team is able to get C-Suite buy-in and deliver more. 

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Read and watch more advice from marketing leaders in our CMO Spotlight and Marketer Musings series for inspiration and tips to optimize your marketing efforts.