5 Things CEOs Do to Undermine Marketing

CEOs may become fixated on short-term results, short-term customer feedback, a demanding sales rep, or how many people opened a specific email rather than focusing on the long-term strategy. Marketing teams then shift their priorities, feeling pressure to produce quick results and building expertise in whack-a-mole rather than long-term thinking. As a result, the company's overall growth suffers, and marketing is targeted as the culprit for not thinking strategically enough.

To avoid this, CEOs have to see the long view of marketing. CEOs have to shift their chair, becoming a student of how marketing campaigns build on each other (more on this below) and subjugating the temptation to react to squeaky wheels.

We've focused so far on narratives where marketers are doing "amazing" work, and CEOs don't see it. But this is often not the case. In many scenarios, CEOs are aware of their weakness in the marketing area, allowing mediocrity to flourish in their marketing departments.

Executives are hesitant to hear constructive criticism or suggestions to marketing other than the most pedantic, fearing exposure for not knowing what they need to know. As a result, a codependent relationship between an under-informed C-suite and an underperforming marketing team develops—one where marketing as a discipline becomes devalued across the organization.

To avoid this, execs have to be in an informed position to know what to expect from marketing, how to empower them, and how to hold them accountable. Execs who excel in this in other departments often struggle with marketing teams and may need outside support to train leaders and marketers to break the Culture Clash.

Over and again, we've seen how organizations that have yet to opt for a CMO struggling with reporting lines for the marketing team. In many cases, they report to marketing novices weighted down by imposter syndrome who have no idea what marketing should be doing or why. Poor leadership reinforces the short-term thinking cycle noted above because at least complaints and metrics are easy tools for feedback.

Beyond the C-suite, companies love to say they embrace failure, but there aren't structures to support that. Marketing succeeds or fails based on its ability to be agile and make iterative mistakes. In your organization, when can marketers take risks? What decision rights do they have? The C-suite must communicate where the "waterline" is and when an idea requires executive approval versus small risks that the team can test & implement on their own.

The simplest solution here is to invest in a skilled CMO with direct engagement with the executive leadership. But suppose your marketing investment is less than 10% of your revenue. In that case, it may be hard to justify a CMO seat at the executive table (often a $400K+ investment, including bonuses, stock options, and benefits). In these cases, the executive who manages marketing will need training and development on how to engage marketing for strategy and hold them accountable.

Operational debt is the accumulated work that needs to be done to maintain a company's day-to-day operations but has been delayed or neglected. Updating databases, fixing technical issues, updating software, and other tasks essential for the business's smooth running. CEOs throw tech at this issue, thinking a new CRM will solve it when it only makes the debt more expensive.

Marketers are often the bottom wrung of the operational ladder. They aren't resourced with the project management leadership needed to traverse broken systems, nor are they given the decision rights to fix those systems. Instead, marketing teams are playing by cultural rules set ten years ago, trying to lead the company into a market space that's in the future. It simply doesn't work.

CEOs and owners must include regular operational "house cleaning" in their annual strategic planning regular operational "house cleaning." As culture evolves (which it must do as a company scales), so must operations. Marketers have a unique vantage point to help as they often grapple with this bad debt.

In the final analysis, the Culture Clash between executives and marketing teams is a tale as old as time. The creative impulse of marketers is revered by leaders but also misunderstood. The power and influence marketers crave are often more than they are trained to handle.