B2B Marketing & CEOs: Key Elements of Success

A CEO’s relationship with marketing can be best defined as “complicated” in most B2B startup and small business environments. As a specialized B2B marketing agency, we have worked with numerous clients of various sizes, solutions and industry sectors. The glaring issue we’ve found is that more often than not, CEOs face the challenge of how to successfully build marketing into their overall strategy and more specifically, in what capacity they should be working with their marketing teams—whether they have in-house or outsourced marketing teams.

Should a B2B CEO be involved in the details and implementation of the marketing strategy? Absolutely not. This begs the questions, what are the key elements of the role of the CEO as it relates to marketing, and where should the agile and highly entrepreneurial-minded CEO allocate his or her time to marketing strategy and program development?

Below is our set of best practices for CEOs engaging with marketing from our years of working with leaders at B2B start-ups and small businesses. For a more in-depth overview of each of these areas, please download our e-book, B2B Marketing & the Role of the CEO: Getting the Most out of your Marketing.

Areas of focus where CEOs can support marketing’s role in driving growth are …

Financial & Growth Objectives. Give marketers visibility into the business financials (targets and actuals).

Budgeting & Marketing Spend. Commit to investing in marketing on an ongoing versus on a project basis to see results.

Company Messaging & Brand. Be involved in developing the company’s messaging and brand.

Thought Leadership. Work with marketing to build up their visibility and be seen as a thought leader in the space.

Marketing & Sales Metrics. Understand what marketing is taking place at a high level, but not bog themselves down in the details of program execution.

Trusting Marketing Expertise. Understand what they know and what they don’t. Marketing has undergone vast changes over the last few years, and continues to do so at a seemingly ever-accelerated pace.

This shortlist is only the beginning of how a CEO can work most opportunely with marketing in order to experience a significant lift from their B2B marketing strategy’s positive impact on their business.

If you are interested in a deeper understanding of these key elements along with some of the ways a CEO can actually hinder marketing efforts, access our eBook helping CEOs to maximize results from their small business or start-up marketing efforts.