5 questions you should ask your marketing team

Unless you’ve come from a marketing background, it’s not always easy to understand exactly what your marketing team is doing and whether their work is having the impact on your business that you’re looking for. If this is you, you’re not alone. A study by Fournaise found that 80% of CEOs admit they do not really trust and are not very impressed by the work done by marketers.

Often this is down to one of two things:

1) A misalignment between the marketing team’s focus and the company’s strategic plan

2) Poor communication around reporting and ROI from the marketing team

If you’re unsure of where to start tackling this, here are 5 questions that you should consider asking your marketing team and 2 your team would (probably) love you to ask of yourself.

Qs every marketing team should be able to answer

How are the marketing objectives linked to the business goals?

Your marketing team should be working to an overall strategy linked directly to your business objectives, strategic vision and growth strategy. If they aren’t, how are they measuring the financial and commercial impact they are having on your business. If there’s a gap, it needs to close as quickly as possible. It may be that the team are not privy to this information, or it could be that they aren’t sure how to align their goals to it directly. Either way, it’s crucial that this is addressed first to avoid wasting time and resources on marketing activity that isn’t serving your business.

How do we message our unique selling point to stand out from the competition?

If your marketing creative or copy lacks a compelling message, you may as well be shouting into an empty room. Competition, especially online, has never been greater and having a strong message that differentiates you from the competition is critical. Can your marketing team communicate this back to you in simple language, do they know what your unique selling points are, and do they push these through your marketing in interesting and creative ways? Testing and refining these messages should be built into your marketing execution.

What % of our revenue do we spend on marketing?

Does your marketing team work to a target cost per sale? Do they understand how the budget is calculated? If your most senior marketing person isn’t involved in leadership discussions and decision-making, there’s a good chance they don’t have the answer to this question.

If they can also answer the question of how each channel contributes to the cost per sale, you’re onto a real winner as this allows for strategic decision-making around where to allocate time and resources in the most effective way. If they work purely to pre-agreed budget lines and report on output (e.g. the number of social posts, articles published, ad spend) you could be missing out on growth opportunities.

What metrics do we use to measure success?

The good thing about marketing is it’s not short of metrics to measure. From follower numbers, impressions, website traffic by channel/demographic/referral site; it’s easy to lose sight of the ones that really matter. All marketing activity should have a set of core KPIs that are measured in terms of impact on the business, this could be; Leads organised by channel or product type, enquiries from new or returning customers, revenue if you’re an eCommerce business measured by average spend or new vs repeat customers.

Underneath those KPIs are a whole bunch of metrics that your team will use to monitor the impact of their work, but if those metrics become your standard KPIs, they’re measuring output rather than impact.  

How much time do we spend testing and innovating?

Marketing is constantly evolving, behaviours change over time and platforms/channels ebb and flow with demand. In order to remain effective, marketing professionals need to carve out time for their own learning as well as for testing new channels and tactics. Many industry leaders still support the 80/20 rule for marketing whereby 80% of your time and budget is focused on your core activities, with 20% focused on learning and testing.

It's important to separate your marketing budget in this way to give your team the ability to test (and fail in some instances) without impacting the reporting of your ROI. It may seem counter-intuitive to risk ‘wasting’ 20% of your budget on untested activities, but often these will uncover new opportunities and those that don’t deliver important learnings for your business. If your team has zero time for testing, the risk is that your marketing will become stale and more expensive over time to deliver the same results.

Qs every marketing team would like to ask you

Am I allowing my team to work on long-term as well as short-term strategies?

Everyone wants to see results quickly from their investment and marketing is no different. There are some activities that deliver results quickly such as Paid Advertising or Direct Marketing but these can often be expensive and sensitive to the ever-changing platforms they rely on. Others such as SEO or brand-building content or social campaigns are a slower burn but failing to invest in these will keep your business reliant on more expensive and less stable short term strategies.

Keep some time available to invest in building your brand organically as this will serve you well in years to come.

Am I prepared to receive feedback from marketing on other areas in my business?

Your marketing team is often best placed to understand how your business is seen externally within your core customer base. They’ll be monitoring and responding to customer feedback on social media, measuring changing behaviour from your website visitors and aware of common complaints on review sites.

They may also have some visibility around how your customers navigate through the sales process if this sits outside of your marketing team. Give them the opportunity to share those insights with you and strengthen your product or service offering as a result.

In my experience, most marketing teams are fully invested in delivering great outcomes for their employer and in seeing their work received positively by senior leaders. As a leader, you shouldn't need to become an expert in marketing to understand what your team is delivering.

If you'd like to find out more about how I can help to improve the effectiveness of your marketing outputs, contact me to arrange an informal chat.