The Setup #MarketersBreakfast is a chance for marketing leaders to congregate together as peers to network with, learn from, and inspire one another.

Each quarter we focus on a topic addressing the obstacles marketers face in their role. In addition to the Setup agency partner network, brand representatives from The Coca-Cola Company, Interface, Red Bull, Salesforce, and many others were present to discuss the breakfast’s topic: Getting Buy-in From The C-Suite.

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We teed up the discussion with three questions:

• What common objections do you encounter when presenting marketing initiatives to company leadership?

• How can marketers build a business case for more budget?

• What are best practices in demonstrating ROI to company leadership?

A marketer without an aligned team can oftentimes be powerless. By gathering a number of decision making marketers to pick their brains and assess how they deal with their executive teams, we unlocked key secrets to developing a successful relationship with the C-Suite. 

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The discussion provoked most every attendee to contribute - leading to these four insights. When getting buy-in from the C-Suite, marketers will see more success if they:

1. Build relationships and empathy across company departments.

2. Solve business-wide problems. 

3. Frame their strategy in terms of opportunity cost. 

4. Challenge company norms. 

Insight #1 - Build relationships + empathy with other company departments.

In any company, there are organizational objectives, and then there are departmental objectives. When discussing the relationship between marketing and the C-Suite, oftentimes the main source of friction is between the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). The CFO is concerned with return on investment (ROI) and minimizing costs… While many marketing teams are focused on trying to break through the crowded advertising space with innovative tactics, which often requires a significant investment. 

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That said, because the line between marketing and technology has blurred in recent years, marketers are increasingly facing conflict with another part of the C-Suite: the Chief Information Officer (CIO) or Chief Technology Officer (CTO). 

At the breakfast, attendees shared some valuable tips around this issue:

1. “Be judicious. Use data to speak their language,” said Hector Pages with Response Media.

2. “Find things that correlate with IT success,” said Josh Ball with Dagger. In other words, co-plan goals with IT to become a strategic partner.

3. Joe Koufman with Setup advised attendees to “Make an effort to understand and empathize with their operating reality.”

4. Articulate improvements in current processes or, as Todd Skidmore from The Coca-Cola Company said, “show them why an existing tool doesn’t work.”

5. Market the marketing department internally. Share the marketing department’s purpose and tenants with the rest of the company via newsletter.

6. James Peacock, from PulteGroup, mentioned how it makes sense for IT to empower marketing by making technology accessible. It drives efficiency when marketers can make simple website changes without notifying IT every time. 

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Insight #2 - Solve for higher level problems.

When working within siloed teams, each working toward their own department-specific objectives, it can be hard to see the forest through the trees. Therefore, emphasizing how marketing goals ladder up to larger company goals is essential to building a business case for any ambitious marketing initiative. 

“Everything starts with an insight that ladders up to the company objective,” shared Rene Hallock, Advertising Manager at Red Bull.

“What makes the difference is the corporation goals and strategic vision,” echoed Tom Ellis, CEO of Swarm Agency. 

Pam Alvord, VP of Marketing for DEKRA, offered the following tips for marketers who are struggling to gain C-Suite buy-in: 

1. Frame the initiative in terms of the longer-term value, while offering potential milestones along the way. This helps force stakeholders to consider the lifetime value and the different ways that value could present itself.

2. Fail fast and learn.

3. Emphasize the importance of the emotional brand attributes. Any competitor can replicate services - the emotional brand attributes help to differentiate a company in the market.

Rob Farinella, CEO of Blue Sky Agency, echoed this idea, offering an example of a client that was nervous about a campaign that would give 5% of profits to charity. In the end, the campaign impacted the company’s overall bottom line positively because of the positive attitudes people have towards companies who give back. 

Insight #3 - Frame the problem in terms of opportunity cost.

Michael Pietryka, Director of Marketing and Communications for Paradies Lagardère, mentioned that sometimes it’s important to be straightforward about what problems need to be solved and the cost of inaction. 

To ensure the marketing department has the money to take bigger risks, Sandy Zusman, Director of Marketing for GLOCK, suggests making the budget as granular as possible because, “when the budget is in the big buckets, it’s easier for the C-Suite to cut.” Showing the specific line items makes the opportunity cost apparent to company leaders. 

Particularly when it comes to marketing, the opportunity cost of inaction could be greater than the price tag on an initiative. Framing marketing initiatives in terms of what the company will lose - market share, awareness, customer loyalty, or revenue - if it fails to act can be particularly effective in gaining buy-in. 

However, if playing nice isn’t getting you anywhere, don’t be afraid to leverage fear as a tactic. For Bryan Reksten, VP of Marketing for VITEC, it’s all about identifying a “boogeyman” that scares company leaders.

Insight #4 - Challenge the norms.

The status quo is a trap that leads to the oversight of organizational problems. When trying to obtain buy-in from the C-Suite, marketers are not only selling the benefits of the solution, but also selling why this particular solution is better than the status quo.

Beyond that, people’s perceptions are not always reality - even if those perceptions are communicated as fact-based. Stacey Vogler, VP of Digital Marketing at Assurant, advised attendees to “find the absolutes and challenge them.” 

Gone are the days of marketing without measuring ROI, yet the marketing department is still fighting an uphill battle when it comes to perception. Moira Vetter protested this lack of trust in marketing, saying “Marketers have been pushed into a box where they have to extract the risk. And the reality is, risk is good for business.” 

Each time Setup hosts an event at the inspiring, creative Miami Ad School @ Portfolio Center space, we make a donation to help fund minority scholarships.

Setup hosts quarterly breakfasts with marketing professionals throughout the year. If you would like to see recaps of past events, click here. If you are a marketing agency interested in joining the matchmaking business with Setup, please contact us. If you are a marketing leader interested in attending our next event being a part of the conversation, request an invite here. 

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