Michelle Swan
Most board directors intuitively understand that marketing is an important part of any company’s growth engine. It not only feeds the near-term sales engine, it also tees up future performance.
Done right, marketing is an accelerator for any business. Yet, I’ve noticed a growing trend in board meetings to relegate marketing to a single metric — pipeline.
While it’s true that marketing plays an important role in generating new leads, a strategic marketing function can play a much bigger role in a company’s near term and future performance. In addition to demand generation, it also shapes market positioning, elevates awareness and brand reputation among existing customers, partners, press, analysts, employees, investors and potential acquirers.
As a company grows, it creates leverage and consistency across global teams, sales, recruiting, customer success, delivery and nearly every other function.
Why are we selling marketing short?
I believe the biggest reason is because marketing is a mystery for many board members. According to research from Spencer Stuart, fewer than 3% of publicly-traded Fortune 1000 boards include an active marketing leader.
The percentage is probably even lower for Series A companies whose boards tend to be composed of founders and investors, most of whom come from a finance, product or operational background and have little marketing experience (a big miss in my perspective, but that’s a topic for another post).
Second, is the need for every business leader to become more data-driven. Events and digital demand-gen activities like paid social campaigns and webinars tend to be easier to track and tie back to near-term revenue when compared to brand, content and corporate marketing.
Things like brand campaigns, PR, analyst relations and even internal communications are both difficult and expensive to measure with regard to return on investment. Most companies know these aspects of marketing are important, but proving ROI on them takes data, systems and time that many younger companies simply don’t have.
Which is why business leaders talking to data-driven board members stick with what can be measured – marketing’s contribution to the near-term pipeline. However, that only tells half the story, and honestly, it does marketing (and the value of your board) a disservice.
Reshaping the board update
A board’s job in a growth company is not just governance, but to guide and help support future performance. That means your board needs to know that marketing is performing well over the next few quarters and is thinking ahead to future years.
When you put together your next board update for marketing, think about five slides that cover the five P’s:
- What are marketing’s priorities?
- How are you performing against those priorities?
- What is the health of the pipeline?
- Is the company and its offerings positioned for future growth?
- What’s planned for the next quarter or year?
Clarify the priorities
Start with the areas of the business that marketing is driving or supporting. This can be expressed as quarterly objectives, annual OKRs, or strategic initiatives that map back to the larger business objectives.
For example, if recruiting and retention is a strategic imperative for the business, talk about how you’re helping to refine and drive awareness of the employer brand. If customer retention and expansion is a priority, it might be important to talk about how you’re empowering cross-selling within teams or promoting thought leadership in a certain new area. If your team’s budget and time are going to that priority, let the board know and tell them why.
Show your performance
Boards look for trends and progress, so create a scorecard against these priorities that you can update and share at future meetings.
If you’re doing something new every month, that’s a red flag. Make it easy to consume by giving areas a red, yellow, green rating based on data, milestones reached, or customer feedback. Make sure you “own the red” as Latane Conant, author and CMO of 6sense, likes to say. Acknowledging where there are gaps not only helps build credibility, it also gives you an opportunity to ask for the board’s help.
No board expects 100% perfection, but they do want to see progress, a focus on ROI and clear plans to fix what isn’t going well.
Dive into the pipeline
This is the money slide… literally. The board needs to understand the health of the pipeline so it can plan for the future. Fundamental questions such as:
- How much is currently in the pipeline and what is most likely to close (weighted pipe)?
- How does that compare to the plan (actual vs. plan)?
- What needs to get added to the pipeline to hit the goal (the go-get)?
- Is there enough in the pipe to cover bookings targets next quarter (coverage)?
The board doesn’t need to see 15 slides analyzing every segment of the business, but there are likely areas where they’ll want to dig into more detail. For example, if you’ve invested recently in a new product, segment or region, they may want more detail there. If there is a growing focus on customer expansion, focus there.
Or if deals are getting stuck in the pipeline, highlight deal velocity, conversion rates, and more importantly, how you’re addressing the situation. Spend time ahead of the meeting to understand where board members want more detail, and above all, make sure the CEO, sales and marketing are aligned on the data.
Highlight brand and positioning
Spend at least one slide talking about how your brand and positioning is performing (or evolving) within the broader market. Are there competitive forces or market trends (hello generative AI?!) that require a shift in your positioning?
Have you recently launched a new campaign to broaden awareness? How are you performing in media coverage, analyst reports or marketplaces?
The board will lean in when you talk about the pipeline. If they start to tune out here, remind them that the future pipeline depends on it.
Share your plans or wins
Set expectations for what’s coming up and alert them to changes or a reordering of your priorities. Describe campaigns, big events, or thought leadership pieces you’re planning and how they will drive the company forward. Board meetings are often filled with numbing amounts of data. If you can end with a visual, a big win, an upcoming announcement or a customer endorsement that’s getting traction, do it!
Marketing is part of playing offense: it’s OK to spike the football when you’ve put points on the board.
Packing this much information into five slides isn’t easy, but then again, marketing’s job is to simplify the complex. If you can’t fit it all in, use appendix slides so board members can read through ahead of time and ask questions.
The goal of the five P’s framework is to show the board the full value of marketing, and the impact it is having (and will have) on the business. If you put your report out in context of the business’ larger priorities and market dynamics, it will help up-level the conversation and give your board an opportunity to weigh in and guide, which is why they are there in the first place.
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