How to make marketing matter in the boardroom

How to make marketing matter in the boardroom

Marketing deserves a seat at the boardroom table… or so many marketers believe. What they sometimes forget is that this means talking about the things the management team, CEO or board actually care about: growth, revenue, margin and return.

Leadership is certainly interested in a successful trade show, a well-attended webinar or a new case study. But in the end, the question is always the same:

What’s the return?

Marketing isn’t an end in itself. It’s a means of achieving the organisation’s commercial goals.

TL;DR

Marketing becomes relevant to leadership when it reports not just on what it did, but on what that delivered. Website visitors, downloads, trade show contacts and webinar attendees are useful milestones along the way. In the boardroom, though, what ultimately counts is qualified leads, sales opportunities, revenue and return. Boil that relationship down to one clear slide, and marketing goes from a cost centre whose results are hard to judge to a demonstrable driver of growth.

Stop reporting on what marketing does

“We had 137 attendees at our webinar.”

“The new white paper has been downloaded 426 times.”

“We scanned 83 contacts at the trade show.”

“We had 22,000 website visitors this month.”

These are all numbers a marketing team can use. They show which topics resonate and which channels are working.

But on their own, they mean very little to leadership.

After every number, ask: and then? Or better still: so what does that mean?

Of those 137 webinar attendees, perhaps 18 asked for more information. Nine of them turned out to be genuinely within your target audience. Six led to a sales conversation. Those produced three concrete opportunities with a combined potential value of €180,000. One of them is now a customer and has placed a €60,000 order. Suddenly you’re having a very different conversation.

Leadership and marketing often look at different numbers

Research by McKinsey reveals a striking gap. Of the CEOs surveyed, 70% say they judge marketing’s impact partly on revenue growth and margin. Only 35% of CMOs name those same metrics as a key measure.

That’s a big part of the problem: marketing reports on marketing, while leadership looks at the business.

LinkedIn’s research into the relationship between marketing and finance reaches a similar conclusion: marketers need to back up their results with numbers that matter to the business.

From activity to revenue

That doesn’t mean visitors, downloads, reach or attendance figures are worthless. Quite the opposite. You need them to understand what’s working, so you can adjust course where necessary. But they are intermediate results.

The chain you want to make visible is:

Marketing investment → reach → response → qualified lead → sales opportunity → proposal → customer → revenue

LinkedIn advises B2B organisations to look beyond activity, at qualified opportunities, their value, customers won and, ultimately, revenue and return.

That isn’t always straightforward. A customer might first see a post on LinkedIn, attend a webinar months later, then read a case study, and only then get in touch. Meanwhile, sales may have been talking to them too.

So it wouldn’t be realistic to expect every euro of revenue to be traced back to a specific marketing activity. That said, it’s still important to show as clearly as possible what marketing has contributed.

One slide for the board

A marketing report for leadership doesn’t need twenty slides. Start with a single slide that shows, at a glance, what marketing has contributed commercially.

For example:

Marketing investment this month: €25,000 New qualified leads: 32 New opportunities from marketing: 11 Value of new opportunities: €275,000 Deals won from marketing leads: €85,000 Cost per qualified lead: €781 Expected revenue from open opportunities: €110,000

Below that, you can show which activities contributed most.

And suddenly that webinar with 137 attendees does become interesting. Not because of the 137 attendees, but because it generated, say, €60,000 in new sales opportunities.

Not everything pays off tomorrow

There is an important caveat here. Judging marketing purely on revenue booked this month is far too simplistic.

Especially in B2B, there can be a long gap between first contact and a signed contract. LinkedIn points out that B2B buying cycles can be long, which means traditional attribution can give an incomplete picture.

So brand awareness, thought-leadership articles, case studies and visibility can have real value, even if they don’t produce a lead straight away.

But even then, marketing must be able to explain the link to the business objective. Why are we investing in this? Who do we want to reach? What behaviour do we want to influence? And how will we know whether it’s working?

Marketing as an investment

As long as marketing mainly talks about everything it’s doing, it’s easy for leadership to see it as a cost.

Once marketing can show where money is being invested, what that sets in motion and how much commercial value it creates, the conversation changes.

It’s no longer about:

“What is marketing actually costing us?”

But more and more about:

“What happens if we invest more in this?”

That’s the moment marketing earns its place at the boardroom table.

How Marketing is Mensenwerk helps

Marketing is Mensenwerk helps B2B organisations tie marketing much more closely to commercial goals. It starts with the question of what the organisation wants to achieve.

From there, we determine which marketing activities are needed, which metrics genuinely reflect progress, and how to set up the link with sales and the CRM properly. We then bring the results together in a concise report that even board members without a marketing background can grasp straight away.

With our Fractional CMO approach, we can also take a real seat at the leadership table, so that marketing makes a demonstrable contribution to the goals the organisation is measured on.   Frequently asked questions

Which marketing metrics matter most to leadership?

Focus on metrics that connect marketing to commercial results: the number of qualified leads, the number and value of new sales opportunities, customers won, revenue from marketing, and the cost of creating a new customer or opportunity. Reach, visitors and downloads can be useful supporting metrics, but they’re rarely the end point.

Does every marketing activity have to generate revenue straight away?

No. Especially in B2B, it can take months for marketing to turn into revenue. Activities around visibility, reputation and sharing expertise can play an important role long before anyone is ready to talk. So make both the intermediate results and the eventual commercial results visible.

How do you tell which revenue came from marketing?

It can’t always be pinned down exactly. At the very least, make sure marketing and sales data are properly recorded in the CRM, and track where leads come from and which marketing touchpoints have taken place. Then be wary of bold claims: “marketing influenced this opportunity” is sometimes more honest than “this revenue came from marketing”.

How do you secure marketing a permanent seat at the boardroom table?

By linking marketing to the company’s objectives. Don’t just discuss campaigns and activities; talk about investments, commercial results, future opportunities and choices. A marketing lead who can hold their own in that conversation gives leadership information it can actually steer by.