How to Capture the Focus of CEOs in Strategic Marketing

Approaching a CEO is a short hike, you just have to build up the confidence. Now, whether or not you truly get their attention is like summiting Everest. So how do we make the climb?

Arduous climbs require persistence and endurance, but the goal is still within reach. Let’s examine strategic approaches to marketing and discover the correct preparation to reach the summit.

Every marketing manager wants to impress a CEO with their strategy. The reality is that doing this will require hours of planning, metric measuring, and trouble-shooting to find what solutions stick. Below are four tips we recommend to capture the attention of the CEO and secure their investment in on-going and future marketing projects. 

Here they are:

1. Capture KPIs that Correlates Directly with ROI

We hope this doesn’t sound shallow, but CEOs are focused on the bottom line. They don’t want to focus on key performance indicators that fail to show return on investment (ROI). If a function, software or service doesn’t accrue revenue–is it helping your business? 

The KPIs we are attempting to influence should bend toward the acquisition of new capital. A thought leader we ran across suggested that even language can be important when talking to a CEO. They want to hear about dollar amounts over numerical value or marketing jargon. They want to see results. They said:

“Converting your numerical results into their dollar impact immediately allows CEOs to quickly see their relative impact on the firm’s overall revenue, profit, and costs.”

If you want to capture the attention of a CEO, you must learn how to measure ROI. Studies show that “62% of companies don’t know how to measure the ROI of their campaigns.” Finding which key performance indicators cause KPI to fluctuate most frequently will give you a gauge of where to head with measurements. In the same vein, if a method, process or structure is causing your company to lose money and failing to accrue revenue, your CEO might be impressed that you had the wherewithal to cut that program. It shows that you are thinking about business in a dynamic framework. Don’t just think about accomplishing mundane, day-to-day tasks and getting through the day. Think about the larger vision of your company and how certain processes now might affect your company in the future.

2. Conduct a Content Audit

Our sister company, Marketing Eye, spoke recent wisdom on how to impress a CEO. Primarily they suggested conducting a content audit. Similarly to financial audit, a content audit is “an official inspection of an individual’s or organization’s accounts.” 

However, this audit is conducted in house and focuses on social media and omnichannel marketing accounts. Reviewing the content that you create and post will inform you of how to revise it for the future. In the omnichannel approach, some avenues will prove to be more effective than others for your business. Delivering quality EDMs might be more important than posting three days a week on Instagram. To review your content and assess which avenues are dispersing the messaging of your business most effectively consider the following questions:

• Is it accurate?

• Is it relevant?

• Are people using it?

• Does it support our mission?

• What can we add?

3. Curate Content that Enable Sales Teams

Enabling our sales team by solidifying the quality and quantity of content we produce will also impact our sales teams. CSO reports show that:

“32% of a sales rep’s time was spent looking for or creating sales content and 90% of the content created for sales by marketing is never used.” 

That’s a major issue with strategic branding and planning. Without strategic branding, your sales team won’t dutifully execute leads. If your sales team is hardly using content created by your marketing department, then you’re misplacing the small amount of capital you have entirely. Marketing and sales teams working together in an effective manner points ultimately toward team unity. Every CEO desires team unity in relationship and vision!

4. Innovation is a Flagship of Efficiency

In ROI, content curation, and sales enablement improvements are all working toward one thing–innovation. Innovation is a flagship of efficiency. You are sure to catch the eye of a CEO if you are creating processes that creatively provide solutions to problems and stop the drain where resources and time are leaking from your company. 

Strategic marketing is rooted in innovation. If you can show your CEO that you are innovatively working toward solutions with persistence and endurance you’re likely to go beyond an initial conversation. If you are invested in what you are doing others will be too. For more tips on strategic marketing and innovation in your marketing decisions, continue to follow Robotic Marketer.