As a fractional Chief Marketing Officer, I get to work with a lot of CEOs at growing organizations that are in moments of inflection. Most of them generally know they need marketing help – and understand when I talk about the benefits and value of developing a clear and cohesive brand and marketing strategy.
But there are also many leaders who, while understanding these best practices, believe that it’s a luxury they cannot afford, and, instead, decide to go on without marketing leadership and oversight. Often that means choosing to do things piecemeal, tactically and transactionally, without a consistent or holistic strategy.
When leaders choose to do to this, they may understand they’re foregoing the somewhat intangible benefits of developing an overarching marketing approach. But it’s also important for them to understand the risks they are taking on. Just as one would expect that a house built without an architect, an engineer, a blueprint, and holistic house-building expertise would likely be less successful than one with them, they should expect similar risks to building their brand, their go-to-market, their customer engagement, and so on, without a similar type of plan and oversight.
So here are some of the material risks to your business of not taking a more purposeful, strategic approach to your marketing, supported by research:
- Inconsistent messaging and confusion: Without marketing leadership driving a thoughtful, documented strategy, businesses are less able to create messaging consistency or drive recognition in the market, and risk distributing inconsistent narratives about their brand, products, or services. This can lead to customer confusion and weakened brand identity – in fact, a 2020 SmartInsights report showed that a company without a documented marketing strategy is less likely to differentiate itself from its competition.
- Inefficient spending and wasted resources: Start-ups and SMB’s naturally have tight budgets and scant resources – so it’s imperative that a companies’ efforts deliver on their intentions. However, research shows that without a marketing leader and a documented strategic plan, companies can waste time and money on poor resource allocation and sub-optimized tactics that don’t yield returns. Studies by Gartner, Forrester, and Workfront all show that teams without a documented strategy experience a lot more inefficiency and waste, including 55% more project delays and missed deadlines, 35% more time on rework and unproductive tasks due to unclear goals and expectations, and experience 42% more resource waste due to ineffective coordination or prioritization.
- Marketing leadership not represented on the executive team: Without strong marketing leadership that is woven into your overall company leadership and strategy, you’re likely to trail your competitors in business performance. Both HBR and Gartner research from 2019 showed that companies with CMOs that are highly involved in strategic planning and within executive leadership teams deliver better performance in achieving business goals and grow 1.3X faster. And Forrester found that companies with strong marketing leadership are 1.5X more likely to significantly outperform their industry average of revenue growth, market share, and profitability.
- Weak or non-existent measurement: Without a clear strategic plan, businesses generally lack clear and aligned-upon goals and metrics – making it impossible for them to identify the effectiveness of their marketing efforts or work to improve them. Which is why companies that don’t measure marketing performance tend to perform significantly worse than those that do. A 2017 HBR report found that organizations that measure marketing performance are significantly more likely to achieve better business outcomes (and can experience up to 2.5 times higher revenue growth).
- Worse ROI on efforts: If you don’t have a strategic leader and/or documented strategic plans and goals, it’s likely that your initiatives aren’t clearly designed to deliver on your business objectives. This can lead to scattered efforts, inefficient use of resources, and sub-standard performance. In fact, a 2020 HubSpot report showed that companies with documented strategic plans built around clear objectives see higher returns on their marketing investments and achieve higher ROI than those that don’t. A 2018 Forrester study indicated that companies with a documented marketing strategy see 10-20% increase in revenue growth compared to those without. And CoSchedule found that companies with documented strategies are over 400% more likely to report success in their marketing efforts.
- Marketing team stress and underperformance: There is also a documented negative effect on your marketing employees of not having a documented marketing strategy or strong marketing leadership. Studies by Gartner, HubSpot, Smartsheet, and CoSchedule all show evidence of increased team stress, disorganization, low morale, and high turnover – for example, marketers without a documented strategy are 60% more likely to feel overworked and stressed, have a 48% higher incidence of ambiguity and confusion, and a 70% higher turnover rate.
So, it’s time for CEOs who choose to go-to-market without marketing leadership and documented strategies to recognize that they’re making a choice. They’re not only deciding against accessing the benefits of them; they’re also choosing to be willing to live with the material risks of waste, poor performance, and unhappy and ineffective teams.
*Originally published in MediaPost’s Marketing Insider August 5, 2024
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