Marketers say winning boardroom support is a skill that needs more focus

Having the right strategy and understanding customers does not guarantee that marketers will be allowed to act on it, according to a survey of graduates of the MiniMBA in Marketing.

The research questioned 216 marketers who have completed the course since it launched in 2016 about what marketers and their organisations need. Earlier findings pointed to gaps in strategic skills, less concern about AI than might be expected and worries about the pull of short-term results. The latest results suggest one of marketing's enduring problems lies outside the marketing department.

Securing buy-in from leadership was named the biggest current challenge by 11.1% of respondents, making it the third most frequent response. In a separate question, 10.7% said a lack of alignment with senior leadership was the biggest organisational barrier to effective marketing.

Asked which capabilities will matter most over the next five years, 10.6% chose communication and influence, putting it joint third with commercial understanding.

The link between those answers is straightforward: knowing the right answer and persuading stakeholders of it are separate problems.

A wider concern

The issue is drawing growing attention in the industry. Mercado Libre CMO Sean Summers has argued that marketing's loss of influence in the boardroom is partly its own fault, because marketers have moved too far from showing how their work produces business results.

Chief executives' views support that concern. Separate research found CEO confidence in CMOs is falling, with just 43% saying they had confidence in the role overall and 60% now regarding marketing as a cost centre rather than a profit centre.

Shakeela Williamson, a CMO who took part in the MiniMBA research, said stronger commercial understanding would help marketing gain senior attention. It will “show what marketing can actually do and it will gain the focus it deserves from the C-suite,” she said.

Another respondent said marketers need to “bridge the gap between the CFO, CEO and marketing.”

Evidence is not enough

That gap came up repeatedly. Several alumni said the difficulty was no longer just proving marketing's commercial impact but getting leaders to understand and trust the evidence once it is presented.

“Our problem used to be demonstrating commercial impact, but that has subsided with the wider adoption of MMM and similar tools. Now, the problem is getting leadership to understand those tools and to buy into the results,” one said.

Better measurement can give marketers stronger evidence, but it cannot ensure that evidence changes a decision.

MaryLee Sachs has described a similar issue when examining why CEOs and CMOs are frequently out of step on growth. Chief executives tend to focus on margin, revenue and predictability, whereas CMOs more often speak of demand, brand and lasting market advantage, so both may discuss growth while measuring different things.

Some respondents said the problem starts with how the rest of the business understands marketing. One described “a huge knowledge gap within the C-suite of smaller to mid-sized companies on what marketing actually is, how it works and what can actually be measured.” Another said marketers must become “experts in communicating the function to the wider business and advocating for the role.”

Under budget pressure

The effects are clearest when budgets are squeezed. Henry McIntosh has argued that marketing is an easy target for cuts when it is presented as a set of activities rather than a system for generating demand, and has advised marketers to spell out the commercial consequences of cutting investment to the board instead of defending a list of activities.

The alumni research had already found that 28.4% of those surveyed see short-term commercial pressure their biggest organisational barrier. Persuading a CFO or CEO to protect long-term investment requires marketers to set out the return to the business, the measures by which success will be assessed and the reasons the spending deserves to survive competing claims.

The problem is not new. Research by McKinsey and the ANA found marketing was “sliding to the side” of the boardroom. In that work, just 70% of CEOs said the C-suite clearly understood marketing, down from 90% the year before. The study also found the measures chief executives valued differed from the ones marketers monitored most.

In the MiniMBA survey, 10.6% of alumni rated commercial understanding among the top capabilities marketers will need over five years. Another 8.3% said commercial and financial understanding was marketers' biggest training need, and 7.4% chose leadership and influencing skills.

Doing marketing and winning support for it are becoming increasingly hard to separate, the findings suggest.