Empowering Business Strategy: The Critical Role of a Board-Level Marketing Representative

There are many reasons why The Property Marketing Strategists believe that most businesses would benefit from having a board-level marketing representative but the one we are going to focus on here is the influence someone at that level can have within a company.

In The Property Marketing Survey, only 48% of respondents said that marketing was a board-level position. Meaning the majority of people working in property surveyed, do not. 

To clarify, for the purposes of this blog, we are arguing for a board-level person to be able to influence other board members – this doesn’t necessarily mean they have to be an internal resource or be on the board but they should be of a level that has influence and trust within the other board-level representatives.

Influence and trust are the keywords here. In Episode 7 of the ‘Can Marketing Save the Planet?’ podcast, Jeremey Connell-Waite (Global Communications Designer at IBM) discussed how marketers need to make a connection between telling stories and economic drivers but very few sit on boards and very few have the ear of the CFO. He goes on to say “the key to making things happen is having marketers imbed themselves in a business. On the technical side, operations, HR and in the economics.” 

We couldn’t have said this better ourselves and this quote really summarises why someone at a senior level needs to be involved in all aspects of a business. They need to have the experience, knowledge, maturity and confidence to be able to comfortably sit amongst the C-Suite individuals and challenge them, educate them and persuade them that the stories the marketing team want to tell are going to bring about commercial gain.

We have seen time and time again what the alternative to this can result in and this can be marketers struggling to get budget or campaign sign-off, a lack of employee advocacy, a disillusioned marketing team who feel they are without a voice and most concerning, no one bringing true customer feedback and data to the decision-makers.

Senior marketers are less likely to ‘stay in their lanes’ – to coin a phrase Brian Welsh, Head of Student at Round Hill Capital mentioned in the first episode of The Property Marketing Lounge. Meaning, they are more confident and experienced and therefore find it easier to ‘impose’ themselves on other departments and get involved with ‘non-marketing’ related conversations. In property this would mean, inviting themselves to meetings about new acquisitions to see where they can add value based on customer feedback and data, or to have a conversation with the HR Director about employee advocacy and then bringing proposals back to the CFO to prove commercial viability. 

Some businesses may be too small to justify a Marketing Director as a board-level position full-time but that doesn’t mean that someone of an appropriate level can’t be involved in some way. You could hire an advisor, a part-time/remote marketing director or a consultant. As long as they have the years of experience and knowledge behind them to earn the trust of the board, they could be the perfect solution.

If you would like to discuss how The Property Marketing Strategists can fill a senior gap in your organisation, please get in touch.