A staggering 80% of CEOs say they have no trust in marketing teams and are unimpressed by the results of their work.
This, according to a survey conducted by The Fournaise Group, one of the world’s leading marketing effectiveness specialists.
The research showed that more than three-quarters (78%) of CEOs say marketers are not focused on strategic business objectives, and tend to get side-tracked by the bells and whistles instead of delivering (quantifiably) more customer demand for more of the company’s products and services.
This sense of frustration and scepticism has, in the past, led many CEOs to disengage with the efforts of their marketing teams – perhaps understandably.
In the digital age – and in the context of a pandemic where ‘selling’ looks very different for your sales team - it is more critical than ever for successful CEOs to re-engage with and support their CMO.
Here’s why:
1. Digital marketing is highly measurable.
CEOs have traditionally struggled to ‘believe’ in marketing because often, the ROI is hard to measure. With digital marketing, that all changes with a plethora of metrics, using web tools like Google Analytics, that can help measure campaign success:
Overall website traffic
Traffic by source
New visitor vs. returning visitor
Sessions (visits) and session duration
Page views
Exit, bounce and conversion rates
Impressions on social media or pay-per-click ads
Social reach and engagement
Email open rate
Click through rate
Cost per click
Cost per conversion
Cost per acquisition
Return on investment!
The good thing is that as CEO, you don’t necessarily need to have intimate knowledge of these metrics or their inner workings – you just need to be reassured they can, and will, be measured.
The right analytics tools combined with a structured plan can give you truly useful insights into your audience behaviour.
2. The sales funnel: digital tactics for every stage
What CEOs may not know is that there are digital tactics for every phase of the sales funnel. The digital marketing toolkit has become increasingly diverse, encompassing everything from vlogs to entertaining interactive tools to high-value, gated e-books.
For CEOs, this diversity of options is incredibly powerful because it allows for marketing spend to be tailored to specific goals, whether that means building awareness, nurturing leads, closing sales or maintaining existing customer relationships.
3. Digital channels reign supreme
The migration from traditional channels like television, newspapers and radio to digital platforms has accelerated thanks to the huge increase in smartphone usage. Digital platforms account for nearly 50 per cent of all time spent with media: consumers now spend as much time engaging with digital channels as they do with TV, print, and radio combined.
For CEOs this means that having digital fluency as a core part of your business isn’t just a nice-to-have. It’s absolutely essential for engaging and retaining valuable customers.
4. Digital marketing works
If for nothing else, CEOs should care truly, madly, deeply about digital marketing for one simple reason: it’s effective.
CMOs are spending more of their digital budget on social advertising, online video, social engagement campaigns, retargeting, and SEM (66%) – many of which are digital marketing tactics that have been around for a number of years and are clearly delivering bank for buck.
Ultimately, CEOs should care about digital marketing because it unquestionably delivers what they’ve always dreamed of: a set of measurable, adaptable, tactics that effectively boost demand and drive sales, brand loyalty and repeat business.
