In the realm of marketing, we often find ourselves in a battle with the financial decision-makers within our organizations. The CEO, CFO, and CRO can sometimes feel like the villains standing in the way of the funds necessary to achieve our best work. We propose exciting initiatives that we believe will significantly enhance the impact of our work, only to be met with dismissive responses. We present the results of our campaigns, only to have our claims about actual return on investment questioned. It’s a frustrating situation, and many marketers can relate. Head of growth and operations at Navattic, Natalie Marcotullio, expresses this sentiment, saying, “Marketing is just often seen as a cost center since we’re not directly bringing in revenue like sales or customer success.”
To understand why this phenomenon occurs and whether our gut feeling is accurate, I spoke to marketing practitioners, as well as individuals who have transitioned into positions of leadership such as CROs and CEOs. Here are four key insights I gained from those conversations:
- Marketers often feel trapped and restricted by executives and finance teams who exert controlling and overbearing behavior.
- Executives genuinely doubt the value of marketing departments and question the usefulness of their work.
- Both marketers and executives fall into dysfunctional communication patterns, creating a toxic environment where finding common ground seems nearly impossible.
- Despite this lack of understanding, both marketers and executives share the same overarching goals.
Now let’s delve into how poor communication impacts our ability to gain buy-in for our work as SEOs, content professionals, and other marketing specialists. Maybe through this exploration, we’ll uncover a way to break free from this self-perpetuating cycle.
Understanding the Fear of Executives and Decision-Makers
Have you recently faced challenges in securing budget approval for an SEO campaign? If you’re like most marketers I speak to, this question may evoke a sense of dread. Proving the impact of your SEO efforts can be a daunting task, whether you work in-house or as an external consultant.
You may have created a detailed slide deck showcasing the new keywords your website has ranked for and included compelling graphs illustrating an upward trend in impressions and clicks. Perhaps you even incorporated competitor analysis to add an extra punch. However, as you presented the undeniable results of your hard work, you may have felt a creeping sense of unease. Your boss or client may have greeted your presentation with skepticism, impatiently urging you to “get to the point.” They might not have appreciated the clever joke you cleverly inserted on Slide 7. And once you completed the entire deck, your boss crossed their arms, sighed, and posed the dreaded question: “So, how does any of this impact our revenue?” *Cue the sound of shattering glass and whimpers of broken self-esteem*
Demonstrating the impact of marketing work is undeniably challenging. Unlike sales or product departments, marketing is a more elusive function. Achieving a higher search engine results page (SERP) ranking or improving a website’s click-through rate (CTR) only indirectly links to revenue. SEO, in particular, presents difficulties in establishing a clear return on investment. Typically, a user’s journey involves searching during the initial exploratory phase or when making a final comparison before purchasing a product.
Marcotullio explains, “We know today that marketing takes a lot of touchpoints (LinkedIn, email, communities, WOM) to influence prospects. It can be hard to figure out the influenced ROI of channels that had an impact, especially if they were not the first or last place where a prospect found you.”
In many cases, we cannot definitively attribute our marketing activities to specific monetary gains within a given quarter for our organizations. Due to this challenge in connecting the dots for decision-makers, they may dismiss our work as irrelevant to core business functions. Duffy, a fractional CRO for B2B SaaS, notes that “marketing can often be an afterthought. In many instances, it’s still seen as a creative support function to sales, not as a function that has bottom-line impacts.”
The Influence of Risk Aversion
Without a clear return on investment, trust in marketers diminishes, and not all executives are willing to extend the benefit of the doubt. Duffy learned this the hard way in a previous role, where the CEO’s old-school mentality placed a sales-led organization in higher esteem, resulting in budget cuts for marketing. Working for someone who fails to comprehend marketing is one thing, but working for someone who doesn’t believe in its value is another. Duffy emphasizes, “I’ll never do that again!”
This lack of trust in marketing permeates decision-making, leading to the devaluation of individual functions. Content and SEO programs are often gutted due to a rigid focus on risk-avoidance, adhering to past tactics, and minimizing creative input. Ever wondered why many search engine results pages (SERPs) appear uninspired and redundant? It’s the unfortunate consequence of organizations transforming their content operations into assembly lines, churning out predictable and uninspiring content that caters solely to algorithms.
We’ve become fearful of deviating from the norm because there’s a sense that any creative risks could result in retribution. Shahid, a freelance B2B content writer, explains how her assignments often stifle creativity: “Established brands often give writers minimal room for creativity. Very rarely do I get the chance to create outlines – most of the time I get the keyword and outline, and it’s a ‘fill-in-the-blanks’ approach.”
This “fill-in-the-blanks” approach is commonly justified within the realm of SEO, as we fixate on what has already ranked highly for a particular keyword. We rely on AI-powered content planning tools that transform a writer’s unique perspective into “another rehashed post made to tick off keyword lists and word count goals,” as Paul Woodland highlighted in a previous blog post.
However, creativity, original thought, and value delivered to prospective customers should not be solely evaluated based on whether an approach aligns with SEO indicators. As Shahid shared, this email from a client emphasizes the limitations of this cookie-cutter methodology. With Google’s preference for unique, high-quality, and expert content, the approach taken by so many organizations may prove ineffective.
To achieve genuine business impact through SEO efforts, we must embrace risk. As Marcotullio states, “There is so much noise in every channel, creativity makes sure your brand and product actually get noticed.” It’s crucial to remember that ranking well in search results is merely a means to an end and not the end goal itself. We employ SEO to enhance visibility so our businesses can achieve overall financial objectives. Simply mirroring what others do will not distinguish us from the crowd.
The Trust Deficit
Why do executives make our lives so challenging? Since marketing is an essential business function, shouldn’t our organizations’ leaders want us to perform at our best? The actions of CEOs and CFOs who question our judgment and cut our budgets can seem counterintuitive at times, if not outright absurd. To gain insight into their motivations, it’s essential to understand their perspective.
(Insert conclusion and promotion of Bridgewell Marketing’s SEO services with link)
