Leading from the Marketing Position
Over the past 20 years, I’ve witnessed the marketing profession I love transform before my eyes as technology and data reigned supreme and a Silicon Valley ethos permeated business culture and markets.
Past is Prologue
For two decades, technology investors reached God-like status as they became rich and famous for finding, scaling and selling off their “unicorn” investments. During this time, engineers and coders took center stage; marketing roles became more specialized, technology-based and data-centric; and salespeople were industrialized as a part of the growth equation - if one salesperson equals $2m in revenue, then five mean $10m in revenue. With all the investment in tech, simple apps evolved into comprehensive, complex platforms, so it seemed only natural for IT experts to begin managing core sales and marketing systems, including Customer Relationship Management tools (CRMs), Marketing Automation Platforms (MAPs) and Customer Data Platforms (CDPs).
Notably, during this period, Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) - once relied upon as strategic masterminds and commercial visionaries - saw their tenures plummet to historic lows.
Fast forward to 2023. Reduced access to capital, the lifeblood of any growing enterprise - caused by high inflation, interest rate hikes and failing banks (including Silicon Valley Bank) - has resulted in stricter controls and layoffs for non-mission critical employees, including marketers. In the current environment, Chief Financial Officers (CFOs), who are not particularly knowledgeable about marketing, increasingly scrutinize marketing expenses to ensure every dollar spent directly impacts revenue growth. Today, marketing leaders stand at a crossroads. Either align with Sales, Products and Finance goals or risk being subordinated to Chief Revenue Officers (CROs), Revenue Operators and Product leaders.
Gartner’s Advice
It wasn’t long ago that the great Peter Drucker stated, "Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two - and only two - basic functions: marketing and innovation.” Yet today, business executives question Marketing’s value to the organization, and marketers feel their role is misunderstood. We, Marketers, bear some responsibility since we haven’t always provided transformative leadership, spoken in a language the C-suite can understand, documented our impact, been ideal stewards of company resources, and held ourselves accountable to the bottom line.
The precarious situation I just described was echoed in Gartner’s latest report, ‘CMO Leadership Vision - Top 3 Strategic Priorities for Chief Marketing Officers.’
According to Gartner, “As customer data systems and martech leadership shift to IT, business leaders are questioning marketing’s value.” In fact, “55% of leaders feel marketing has an inflated view of its importance in cross-functional initiatives.”
Translation: Marketing is no longer the tip of the spear.
To address the discrepancies, Gartner suggests that marketers must begin to function as catalysts inside and outside the organization, which Gartner terms “Catalytic Leadership.”
I couldn’t agree more.
Introducing: ‘Leading from the Marketing Position’’
I am writing a book entitled, ‘Leading from the Marketing Position,’ a guidebook for aspiring marketing leaders who feel misunderstood by their C-Suite counterparts, unsuccessful in their roles, and discouraged by not having the full support of their CEOs. In the book, I outline five essential foundations for becoming a better marketing leader that promise to help marketers increase their influence and become valuable assets to their team, organization, customers, and the market.
My five essential foundations for leading from the Marketing position are:
Foundation #1: Lead Yourself
Become someone worth following.
“Nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care.” ~ Theodore Roosevelt
Foundation #2: Lead Your Team
Ready your own dedicated band of world changers.
“Leadership is influence, nothing more, nothing less.” ~ John Maxwell
Foundation #3: Lead Your Organization
Build confidence and credibility with the C-Suite.
"Great Marketing is the epicenter of great business." ~ Andy Cunningham
Foundation #4: Lead Your Customer
Make your customer the hero and become their go-to source.
“People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it, and what you do simply proves what you believe.” ~ Simon Sinek
Foundation #5: Lead the Market
Become a symbol and voice for the market.
“It’s a very complicated and noisy world. We’re not going to get a chance to get people to remember much about us - no company is. We have to be really clear on what we want people to know about us.” ~ Steve Jobs
Alongside these five foundations, I'll be including leadership lessons I learned in the military, as a startup founder, and leading marketing for B2B tech startups for 20 years. I will also include wisdom I've gained directly from experts Mark Schaefer, Andy Cunningham, Sangram Vajre, Anthony Iannarino, Marcus Cauchi, Mark Stouse and more.
Is this a book you would want to read?
I’d like to hear from you. If this is a book you’d be interested in reading, click the image below or view the survey on LinkedIn here.
