The Setup #MarketersBreakfast is a chance for marketing leaders to gather with fellow marketing leaders to learn and network with one another. 

The beauty of our #MarketersBreakfast is that we gather a collection of marketing leaders with years of experience who are eager to connect and share their expertise when discussing an array of topics. For example, one of our recent breakfasts dove into “Marketing Therapy,” or marketers’ main challenges. This led to dedicating an entire breakfast to proving ROI and the Value of Marketing to the Executive Suite. 

While our events attract an array of marketing leaders from both the Client and Agency side, we noticed that this event in particular attracted a number of B2B Client-side marketers. During the discussion, we uncovered that with B2B businesses, proving ROI attribution tends to be particularly complex and harder to define as compared to B2C. 

To inspire our conversation, the Setup team pulled insights from over 75 CMO Spotlight interviews with marketing leaders to get their advice on how to prove marketing’s value. We will release those insights next week - subscribe to the newsletter to never miss a post!

During the #MarketersBreakfast discussion, we were able to address a few of those findings in addition to the following topics:

1. Attribution

2. Collaboration

3. Customer Information

#1 - Attribution | How do you track marketing efforts in your organization? What has been most impactful? How do you credit multiple touch points?

These questions are the reason for the discussion. People want to see evidence that their money and effort is being poured into something that provides results. 

“Everything must show value,” shared an attendee. From Sales, to Marketing, every person’s role in the organization should show value, and show that their efforts impact the organization’s overall goal. In order to have attribution, people need to know the goal, progress towards that goal, and align around what the goal is across the organization. 

Detailed analytics that showcase marketing’s influence and what results sprouted from a marketing initiative are helpful to track each touchpoint and reveal where value is being added. Even if it is indirect, marketing plays a part in brand awareness, and tracking the timing of certain campaigns or posts is a great way to harness statistics to prove value. 

Displaying these results on dashboards at quarterly All-hands meetings are a great way to:

1. Know who and what is providing value

2. How much value is being generated

3. Align on goals and where changes need to be made

#2 - Collaboration | How do we make partnerships and collaborate with different areas of an organization and the C-Suite?

Marketing and Sales need to work together. Everyone needs to work together and “speak the same language.” 

This could mean the entire Marketing team takes a finance literacy course to speak the same language as the CFO so that they can advocate for themselves better, or it could be a trip to the Sales floor to gauge how customers interact or resonate with the product so that Marketing can dig deeper into those elements. 

Speaking the same language, having the same goal, and getting in the same room are all methods to harness connection and collaboration. An attendee advised, “Sometimes it's important to include the people you need to convince earlier on in the process to help them have an understanding of the project before it is complete and ready to go live.” 

Marketers need to approach other departments with a “systematic approach.” 

An attendee profoundly said, “You need to run a nurturing campaign internally.” In order to get the organization onboard with marketing, Marketing needs to market themselves. This approach is all about storytelling. It’s knowing your audience, and how Marketing fits into the bigger picture or goal. Telling this story can be done with dashboards and insights shared at quarterly meetings with quantitative results as well as qualitative results like customer reviews. 

#3 - Customer Information | How do we ensure we are reaching the right customer base?

Research. Some attendees referenced partnering with research companies to collect an in-depth look at their audience to create customer journeys and customer personas. Certain groups are harder to predict than others, but a well-rounded approach including comparing and contrasting the internal and external data collected can help identify pain points and priorities. Instead of doing what the company wants, it’s important to “let that data tell the story of what customers are actually doing rather than what we want them to be doing.” 

Also, marketers need to be willing to adapt and evolve. One guest pointed out that their audience’s values and priorities have drastically changed in the 20 years of their business, so being able to adjust how they are marketing and what they are measuring to track success is important. 

We know marketing adds value to an organization. But then why is it always cut first? With data becoming more trackable and concrete, it’s easier to present hard metrics instead of soft metrics to numbers-oriented executives. What really takes the cake though is articulating the numbers in the shape of a story that credits Marketing for achievements. So learn the language, and paint them a story using their goals and their words.

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