You’re a marketing executive, a marketing manager, maybe the Marketing Director or even the CMO, but if you took the simple test below, what would the results tell you?

Test: Explain how your day to day activities and your role delivers the business benefit that helps the CEO to run a successful business.

That’s okay, take your time. But if it does take some time to think of a ‘good answer’, maybe you need to think carefully about what it is exactly you do.

As marketers, we busy ourselves with doing the ‘right things’. We argue about brand usage and we are ace at lead generation. We spend quite a lot of time looking at markets and how we leverage our position in them. We work with creative agencies to make sure we have the very best SEO.

But can we draw a direct link between the activity we do on a daily basis and the activity that the CEO does on a daily basis? Can we go home at night knowing that what we’ve done is going to enable, grow or protect the interests of the business and our CEO?

These are tough questions to answer and maybe they are the cause of marketing being undervalued, underrated and sometimes dismissed.

We may be great about communicating externally, but I suspect many of us have our heads down, doing what we think needs to be done and we fail to manage upwards in a strategic way, letting the board and the CEO know the value we bring to the organisation.

The next time you have an appraisal  ask your manager to help you to understand the CEOs objectives. If you want to succeed and be recognised for your part in the company’s success, you’ll need to make sure there is absolutely no  reason  for anyone to doubt that what you’ve got planned on the marketing agenda will deliver the goods. Specifically, directly  and unequivocally.

 

 

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