Beyond Campaigns: The Visionary Role of Marketing Executives in Shaping Organizations

CMOs and other marketing leaders in the manufacturing sector have a challenging job. Keeping up with rapid changes in customer behavior, technological advancements, and market dynamics can be truly staggering. Yet, to be successful, you can't just keep up. The market requires you to lead your team through all its twists and turns, making the most of every opportunity, innovation, and change. When things change faster than you can say "next trend," having killer marketing strategies can make or break your company, and that buck stops with you. 

Effective marketing management is more than creative campaigns or riding the latest trends. It's about crafting innovative strategies that match business goals, speak to the right people, and make your brand shine in a crowded market. Savvy marketing execs, armed with a solid grasp of what's happening in the market, are the ones who are guiding their teams to create strategies that connect, stories that grab attention, and campaigns that bring in wins. 

While your heart and mind are there, your marketing operations may not be. Marketing success isn’t based on trends or campaigns. Without the right people, strategies, systems, and software in place, you could be wasting time and money on marketing that doesn’t move the needle. The real question is, how do you build up your marketing operational infrastructure to attain real, trackable return on investment?

The Answer Is Our Exclusive Framework: The Great 8 Pillars of ROI-Driven Marketing 

The Great 8 Pillars Framework outlines how to build a marketing operation that delivers a 2X, 3X, or even a 10X return on investment. It also reduces output and contributes to a stronger company bottom line.  We built it for those marketing leaders stuck in a cycle of whack-a-mole tactical marketing, as adding more and more trendy tactics to the mix doesn't work.

In this article, we’ll explore how you, as a marketing leader, can shape the destiny of your organization through strategic marketing. We'll use the Great 8 Pillars as the foundation. Understanding the principles of strategic marketing management can make the difference between your company merely existing and standing out in a competitive market.

Pillar One - Goal Setting for Marketing Success

Establishing clear, measurable goals and objectives is a cornerstone for any high-performing marketing team. It provides the roadmap that guides the team. Goals illuminate your path forward and enable you to track progress, make data-driven decisions, and celebrate victories. Clear goals create a shared understanding of what success looks like. They align the efforts of your entire marketing team with broader business objectives.

KPIs

Analyze key performance indicators (KPIs) to monitor and assess your performance. KPIs offer organizations a way to gauge, assess, and enhance their marketing endeavors. They facilitate decision-making based on data and foster ongoing improvements, ultimately contributing to more efficient and successful marketing strategies. 

For example, if your goal was to “Generate 30% more qualified sales leads through content marketing in the next six months,” your KPIs could include: 

• Website traffic
• Website lead submissions (Ex: request for consultation or quote) 
• Search engine ranking for targeted keywords
• Social media engagement and followers
• Email open rates and click-thru rates
• Website visitor to lead conversion rate

SMART Goals

To ensure all marketing goals are well-defined and actionable, utilize the SMART criteria. 

All goals must be: 

• Specific: Clearly define the results you want to realize.
• Measurable: Use quantifiable metrics that can be tracked and measured. 
• Achievable: Create challenging, yet realistic goals.
• Relevant:  Align goals with broader business objectives. 
• Time-bound: Set a specific time frame for achieving each goal.

Tie each KPI to one of your SMART goals. The SMART criteria is a structured and systematic approach. It enhances the effectiveness and achievability of goals. SMART goals promote clarity, accountability, efficiency, and motivation. This increases the likelihood of successful goal achievement.

Here are three examples of SMART marketing goals:

• Goal: Increase marketing qualified leads by 100% by the end of Q3.
• Goal: Generate 30% more qualified sales leads through content marketing in the next six months.
• Goal: Improve homepage click-through rate to 5% by the end of the year. 

Once you have your SMART goals, the next step is to develop key performance indicators (KPIs) to support your goals and track your progress. 

Industry Benchmarks

In addition, industry benchmarks for marketing in your specific sector may assist you in creating SMART goals and KPIs. By understanding how your performance compares to industry standards, you can make informed decisions, identify areas for improvement, and set achievable targets. 

Pillar Two – Crafting Engaging Messaging

It’s easy to forget that impactful marketing in the manufacturing sector is human-centered. You may be selling technology or machines, but people are purchasing them. This is why messaging is so important to your marketing strategy. Humans respond to storytelling and messages that show how your brand matches their principles and values. They also respond to messages that show how your product or service enhances their lives. Understanding who your target clients are is critical to driving sales. Knowing what messages resonate with them is also crucial.

The Value Proposition

A robust messaging platform starts with a clear value proposition. A value proposition should do three things:

• Highlight the primary benefit your product or service provides
• Emotionally resonate with your ideal customer profile (ICP) and buyer personas
• Differentiate your company from competitors

In essence, your value proposition is the promise you make to enhance your customers’ lives. You must be able to support your value proposition with case studies and testimonials that show your company has come through for specific customers.

Consistent and Human-Centered Messaging 

Once you’ve established your value proposition, a consistent brand message platform becomes your guiding compass. It provides clarity to your internal teams and external stakeholders, reinforcing your brand's identity and fostering credibility. Consistency across every communication channel enables a cohesive image that makes your brand memorable and competitive. 

Here are three tips for building a human-centered messaging platform:

• Understand your target audience and their buyer’s journey: Write comprehensive ideal customer profiles (ICPs) and buyer personas that outline your target customer's key characteristics and pain points. Check out our ICP and Buyer Persona Template to start your own ICP and buyer personas.
• Stay agile: Keep track of sector trends, technological advancements, and regulatory shifts and adapt your messaging to position your brand as an industry leader.
• Create benefits-driven messaging: Emphasize the practical benefits of your solutions over technical features, including how you solve operational challenges, increase efficiency, or drive productivity.

Pillar Three – Developing a Robust Marketing Strategy

In the B2B manufacturing sector, a well-defined marketing strategy isn’t a luxury. It's a strategic necessity. Without a written, formal marketing strategy document, you will struggle to achieve marketing goals or a positive ROI.

We always say, “A marketing department with a formal written strategy is a marketing department that reaches its goals.”

11 Essential Components of Marketing Strategy

A good marketing strategy provides an actionable approach to achieving business goals. It aligns your marketing efforts with broader organizational strategies and objectives. It also ensures that every marketing initiative contributes to the bottom line. 

There are 11 critical components to an effective marketing strategy:

• 3-year vision for marketing objectives
• Marketing ROI-driven goals
• Marketing KPIs
• ICPs
• Buyer personas and journeys
• Conversion strategy
• Marketing Tactics (including inbound and outbound tactics)
• SEO strategy
• Social media strategy
• Content marketing strategy
• 12-month marketing calendar and rollout plan

Integrate each component into your marketing and sales campaigns for consistency and reach. Personalizing and segmenting each component helps keep the message impactful for target buyers.

We offer a template to help you craft a marketing strategy that clearly understands your target audiences, identifies unique selling opportunities, and outlines the most effective channels and tactics to reach potential customers. 

Pillar Four – Structuring Your Marketing Team for Success

Many marketing teams don't perform well, even with a written strategy and clear goals. Why? Because you need the right people in the right seats, doing their best work to succeed. A well-designed team structure ensures seamless operations. It also maximizes the collective potential of each person on the team. This enables them to deliver impactful campaigns and drive business growth.

Four Types of Team Members

Structure your high-performing marketing team like a sports team. Identify each team member in one of these four roles: 

• Coaches or strategists
• Logistics or project managers
• Starting players or specialists
• Developing players or implementers

Strategists provide strategic direction and guidance to the team. They’re the marketing leaders who understand the importance of ROI-driven goals, and understand what they need to do to hit them. Their expertise and leadership drive the team’s success. 

Project managers (PM) are the team members who set timelines and budgets for marketing strategies. They also assign specific tasks to appropriate team members. PMs bring structure, organization, and effective management to the team.

Specialists contribute specific marketing knowledge, skills, and expertise to the team, such as: 

• Search engine optimization
• Web development
• Social media
• Email marketing
• Content writing and editing
• Graphic design
• Video production

Specialists can be full-time team members, hired as contractors, or through a marketing agency, as needed.

Implementers are generalists. They execute basic marketing tactics like uploading blogs to your website, building out email drip campaigns in your marketing automation software, and more, allowing your team's strategists, project managers, and specialists to focus on the big picture.

Culture is Critical 

No matter what role each member has in your team, they must feel supported and heard. A cohesive team fosters a work culture of creativity and innovation. Team members feel empowered when they understand and trust each other's strengths. They push boundaries, explore new ideas, and take calculated risks. This collaborative spirit is the catalyst for breakthrough campaigns and strategies that resonate with audiences. It can set your brand apart.

Here are several tips to enhance collaboration and innovation in your marketing team: 

• Encourage team members to share ideas, feedback, and updates regularly.
• Ensure that each team member understands their role and responsibilities. Clearly defined roles help prevent confusion, reduce redundancy, and allow team members to focus on their jobs.
• Cultivate a sense of collective ownership and shared goals. Celebrate successes as a team to reinforce the idea that everyone contributes to the overall outcome.
• Create opportunities for employees to learn from each other through internal workshops, webinars, or a centralized knowledge repository where team members can access resources.
• Ensure all leaders actively support and promote a collaborative culture. Set an example by collaborating with your team and demonstrating a commitment to teamwork.

Building a strong in-house marketing team requires time and effort but is crucial to achieving your marketing goals. If you have limited time or focus, outsourcing some marketing functions to an agency can help you leverage expertise while freeing up internal resources. A sound team structure will drive exceptional marketing and business results.

Pillar Five – Optimizing Your Website for Maximum Impact

Your website is the most valuable sales and marketing asset. It’s often where your target audience creates a first impression of your brand. It’s also where prospects research company and product information before they contact your sales team. Your website must provide the information they seek and entice them to take that next step. 

Eight Core Objectives of an ROI-Driven Website

Yet, we’ve found that most manufacturing companies’ websites are more online brochures than lead generation machines. They lack the eight core objectives of an ROI-driven website, which are: 

• Attract qualified buyers 
• Present a professional image of your company
• Educate, inform, and excite your target audience about how you will help them succeed 
• Educate and inform prospects about your company, products, and services
• Clearly illustrate how easy it is to do business with your company
• Build trust and credibility with your target audience 
• Encourage prospects to engage with your company 
• Collect information on buyers’ needs and interests to inform your sales and marketing strategies

An ROI-driven website will convert visitors into qualified leads. It’ll also provide significant value to each buyer during the buying process. By focusing on conversion optimization, your website becomes your most powerful tool for generating measurable business outcomes. It also helps you achieve a higher return on your investment.

Key Elements of a High-Performing Website

One of the most important elements is the content management system (CMS). A CMS is the platform on which you build and manage your website. A good CMS will save you time and money. If you are looking for a user-friendly and up-to-date CMS, we suggest HubSpot or WordPress. 

Another key element to keep in mind when building your website is User Experience (UX). UX is a visitor's overall experience when interacting with a website. It encompasses every aspect of the user's interaction, from the first visit to navigating through individual pages, completing tasks, and finding information on the site. A positive user experience influences visitor satisfaction and engagement. It also increases the likelihood that your website will achieve its desired outcomes.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is also critical to a strong website. SEO ensures your target audience finds your site using online search engines. Write content, meta tags, and headers with relevant keywords to align with user search intent. Informative and well-structured content attracts both website visitors and search engine algorithms. Search engines also evaluate engagement metrics, such as bounce rate, time on site, and click-through rates. Content that keeps web visitors on your site longer contributes positively to SEO.

A high-performing website will be your digital storefront and lead generation tool. It’ll also serve as a communication hub and powerful research source. Don’t take it for granted. Build, maintain, and nurture it every day.

Pillar Six – Leveraging Analytics for Informed Decision-Making

Legendary management consultant Peter F. Drucker wrote in his book, The Effective Executive, “What gets measured gets improved.”

No marketing leader should rely on intuition and guesswork to make critical marketing decisions. That is a recipe for disaster. Instead, use analytics and reporting to make data-driven decisions. This involves identifying and gathering the right data. It also means tracking the best metrics and developing a proper reporting schedule.

Start With Goals and KPIs From Pillar One

How will you know the right data, metrics, and cadence? Start with the goals and KPIs you identified in Pillar One. Track everything you measure back to one or more of your goals. 

Add ROI Goals

In addition to your marketing goals, you may be required to show ROI on every marketing strategy or campaign, ensuring your investment provides a return. 

Here are some metrics that are tied to ROI:

• Engagements (aka. marketing leads)
• Marketing-qualified leads (MQLs)
• Sales-qualified leads (SQLs)
• Closed Won
• Customer lifetime value

Reporting and Decision-Making

Once you’ve identified the metrics you need to track and analyze, develop a regular reporting process. Share this process with appropriate leadership and peers. Reports should include data with comparisons from previous periods and actual versus goals. It’s also helpful to include a narrative of the metrics to summarize critical takeaways and outline the actions that you will take based on the data.

Data and analytics empower you to make data-driven decisions. They also help you optimize team resources and results. Plus, they demonstrate the impact of your marketing efforts on business objectives. In a competitive manufacturing sector, leveraging data is essential for staying agile, responsive, and current.

Pillar Seven – Building an Effective Tech Stack

The right tools can significantly improve the efficiency and performance of your team. A well-designed tech stack automates repetitive tasks and streamlines workflows. It enhances marketing strategies through personalization and segmentation. It also assists in better and faster decision-making.

Core Tech Solutions

Your tech stack should include these three core technology solutions:

• Website content management system (CMS)
• Customer relationship management (CRM) software
• Marketing automation tools

We discussed CMS in Pillar Five. A useful CRM platform will manage and analyze customer interactions and track leads. It provides a centralized platform for collaboration between marketing, sales, and customer service teams. The best CRM systems will provide your team with a clear sales pipeline. It measures deal value to determine ROI from marketing-driven leads.

The right marketing automation tool helps your team work smarter, not harder. They free up resources to be available to accomplish more important tasks. At the very least, your marketing automation platform should: 

• Automate and send emails
• Create forms or landing pages to capture leads
• Create call-to-action (CTA) buttons
• Create workflows that can automate rote tasks like data entry and scheduling

As your marketing becomes more data-driven and complex, automation tools provide a foundation for executing strategies while optimizing resources.

Your tech stack can also include data aggregators, SEO tools, website heat mapping software, project management tools, and scheduling software. The contents of your tech stack will depend on your sector, target audience, and sales and marketing needs. 

Onboarding is Essential

No matter which solutions you choose, successful implementation relies on the training and onboarding process. Working with a partner agency well-versed in specific platforms ensures a seamless transition and helps your team feel comfortable with new technology and processes. 

My agency SyncShow is a platinum partner of HubSpot. We use their marketing automation and CRM for ourselves and our clients. Our experts can train your team to launch and manage your tech stack, improve your marketing and sales processes, and grow your business.

Pillar Eight – Creating Templates and Guides for Consistency

Lastly, building marketing and sales templates and guides gives you back one of your most precious resources: time. They also allow your team to scale their best strategies and techniques. 

This documented process allows you to produce a repeatable result with less effort. While your templates drive a desired outcome, your guides inform the template user on how best to use the template so that they reach the desired results. Templates and guides promote efficiency, consistency, and collaboration in your team and throughout your organization. When everyone follows the same templates and guides, it ensures a unified approach to marketing initiatives.

Templates

Templates should set the standards for the task for which they’ve been created. They should also reflect your strategic intent. Construct them to achieve scalable, repeatable, and high-quality outcomes. 

• We define two types of templates. Document templates and software templates. Document templates are usually Google or Word docs used by the creative team to create content. You may have a blog document template, a document template for landing pages, or more. A software template is a template stored in your software tools, providing the design and structure for webpages, emails, forms and more to allow you to easily upload and publish content. 

To create useful marketing and sales templates, consider these tips: 

• Clearly define the critical components of each marketing template, including headlines, body copy, call-to-action messaging, and visual elements. 
• Establish a consistent structure for each template.
• Ensure that your templates adhere to brand guidelines.
• Create visually appealing templates utilizing UX and creative design techniques. 

Guides

Guides should be straightforward and easy to follow. They should provide the insights and knowledge a template user needs to achieve the intended outcome. Guides can also serve as valuable resources for training new team members and onboarding them into your marketing processes. 

Here are two examples of guides:

• Brand style guide
• Writing style guide

To create effective marketing and sales guides, consider these four tips:

• Define the purpose and objectives of the guide. Ensure users understand why they need to use it and what the outcome should be. 
• Include clear instructions for the corresponding template. 
• Provide real examples or case studies to illustrate concepts and demonstrate how to apply the information.
• Schedule regular reviews and updates to keep the content current and relevant.

If you need help getting started, visit our free resources page for access to our downloadable templates and guides. 

Templates and guides are essential to the effectiveness, efficiency, and consistency of your marketing strategy. They provide a structured framework aligning with brand guidelines, streamlining processes, and enhancing overall marketing communication and execution.

The Great 8 Summary

As a marketing executive, your role extends beyond campaigns and promotions. You are, in essence, responsible for your company’s ultimate success. No pressure!  The Great 8 Pillars of ROI-Driven Marketing can illuminate your path toward sustainable growth and competitive advantage. You’ll have the unbeatable combination of the right people, strategies, systems, and software required to achieve your business goals now and in the future. 

Get G8P Certified Today

Embark on your journey to becoming the marketing superhero your organization needs with G8P Certification. Our comprehensive program equips marketers with the knowledge and tools to implement the Great 8 Pillars Framework and transform their departments into an ROI-Driven Marketing Operation.

With G8P certification, you gain access to:

• Our exclusive Diagnostic & Roadmap tool to identify and eliminate weak spots in your operation.
• The G8P Dashboard, brimming with templates and guides to steer you towards success.
• Personalized guidance from a G8P Coach through a free one-hour consultation.