Show ‘em what you’re made of: how to demonstrate the value of marketing to internal stakeholders

1. Demonstrate efficacy

To improve the perception of marketing internally, you need to share your results. But not all of them. 

Results demonstrate your value, but too much data bores people and obscures the truly important information.

Strip it right back to what matters, choosing only a handful of the most important metrics to communicate. Forget Facebook likes or website clicks for now; these are hard, when you’re not a marketer, to contextualise or assign any real value to. When it comes to efficacy, the most important metrics are going to be those that demonstrate the impact marketing has on the bottom line.  

For example:

• Leads 
• Conversion rate 
• Revenue 
• Return on investment 

When you give them commercially-focused stats like these, the rest of the business feels like marketing is speaking their language and it’s much easier to get colleagues to see the value of what you do.   

2. Build on this improved perception of marketing

Don’t stop at commercial results.

Sure, they are perhaps the most important metrics in terms of demonstrable business impact, but this stuff is only a part of what you do, and you don’t want to devalue the work that has less tangible results. 

The less financially-measurable aspects of our work, such as public relations, content marketing and social media presence, all have a key part to play in supporting the commercial results. We, therefore, need to communicate some attitudinal and behavioural metrics, in a way that makes sense to someone sitting outside of marketing.

Again, metrics like Facebook likes, while valuable to the marketing team, are not going to bring a huge amount to the table here. You need to identify the metrics that stakeholders can link to the bottom line in some way.  

For example:

• Click-through-rates 
• PR placements 
• Active engagements 
• Lead sources 
• Customer retention rate 

Don’t shy away from including comments with your metrics when you report. Give context and draw out insights. For instance, if PR activity has boomed this month, along with organic website traffic and qualified leads, you could cite a likely connection between PR and commercial impact. 

3. Don’t forget to touch on team efficiency

While a lot of what we have already covered touches on marketing efficiency, it’s also nice to show stakeholders about your team’s time and resource efficiency. Including your key activity for the month and planned activity for next month in your report shows them just how effective your team are at getting stuff done. 

The perception of efficiency as a team is also tied inextricably to the way you function with other parts of the organisation. If you can get your team responding positively to internal requests, turning important tasks around quickly for colleagues and being proactive in suggesting and supporting positive changes to processes, the wider team will have great visibility of your team. Without that visibility, they may feel like they have no idea what you do or how you apply your resources. 

When it comes to writing that proposal to grow your team, you’ll be on a much stronger footing when the rest of the organisation sees and appreciates the hard work that you do. 

4. Don’t employ a one-size-fits-all approach

Different stakeholders are going to want different things. If that means altering what and how you communicate results with different people, so be it. It may take you a little longer to do it this way, but when all your stakeholders are aligned on marketing goals and marketing value, you will reap the rewards.