Jani Hovila
Our client said it best.
“I thought before the engagement that the biggest value comes through your answers. But now 3 months in, the biggest value has been your questions and how those have helped me see our function from a totally different angle.”
Our role as advisors is twofold. We need to know when to challenge, when to ask questions, and when to provide options that move you further.
As many of you are just 3–4 months before the next yearly budgeting and planning starts, we’ve gathered the questions that have received the most praise and are, based on our experience, the most important to get right when you want to develop a stronger marketing function and become an important business partner.
Go through them and test yourself. Could you answer them? What feels challenging and what question feels easy?
In a situation when everything is kinda ok, but you still feel that something is lacking
• What 5 things would need to change for the “ok” situation to become a great one?
• Do you know what the "next step" is for your marketing function? How concretely can you describe it? If asked, would your team and stakeholders describe it the same way?
We strongly believe that clarity starts with you, the marketing leader. If it is not clear to you, we can bet it is not clear to your team and stakeholders.
When the marketing role is vague or it is hard to describe
• If you took 12 months PTO and I stepped in as your interim replacement, how would you evaluate my success? What would need to happen to be hugely successful? What would need to happen to make you stop your PTO and fire me?
• If I called your boss, how would they evaluate your success?
• What would management team members say is expected from marketing and how they define success? Would they describe tactics or outcomes?
These questions are designed to establish marketing's outcome, accountability, and ultimately its value. Is it clear what is expected from you and your department?
When your challenge is value communication
• When marketing succeeds perfectly, what in the business improves? Think processes and outcomes.
• Tell me in simple terms: what is marketing accountable for, and what value do you provide to the organization?
These are core questions to answer when you want to improve marketing value communication and improve stakeholder trust in marketing.
For most in complex B2B, it is not a matter of attribution or data. The most typical challenge is the lack of clarity around marketing value mechanisms.
When your challenge is ad hoc and visibility to the team management
• Who is in charge of deciding what campaigns you run? Who defines the goals for those campaigns, and is this clear to all team members?
• From A to Z—show me (or describe) the process of how you plan and decide what you focus on in the coming month/quarter/half? Would your team members answer similarly?
• What are your marketing team’s 3–5 core processes? Can you show/tell how you are executing those core processes, and would your team describe them similarly?
These questions pinpoint how clear the autonomy and managerial side of marketing is. When the autonomy level and roles are not clear, it typically shows as friction and ad hoc.
When your challenge is that marketing is viewed as a cost and not as an investment
• What would you do with 2–5 times the marketing resources? Does your management team know this? How would this investment improve your business?
• What is your vision for the marketing department in 3-5 years? Is your management team and team aligned with that vision?
• Can your management team answer what you want to impact as an outcome when marketing succeeds? What would they say?
• How would you defend your budget if it is in danger of being cut by 50%?
The goal is to take marketing planning to the management team level and the medium term. The basis of these questions is the truth that marketing is not under-resourced because it is marketing. It is under-resourced either because A) there are no clear options to invest more and/or B) the mechanism of value is not clear. Or maybe C) other areas in the business are better investments.
These have served our clients well. Hope these are helpful for you as well.
Were you able to answer all of them? What was the most difficult one?
–JH–
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