It’s common to see marketing not getting the attention it deserves in the leadership of businesses. Sometimes you’ll find a Marketing Director with little in the way of digital expertise. More often you’ll find a Sales Director in charge of marketing.
Although this can work fine, it misses out on a lot of marketing’s potential. A dedicated Marketing Director, especially one with that digital expertise, can unlock that potential.
Why not a Sales Director
A Sales Director will generally focus only on the leads that sales like to get. Marketing means much more than getting an easily converted customer through the door. You have to consider the whole market.
What does a Marketing Director do that’s different? A marketing expert understands the importance of the whole process, where sales may just focus on the end.
Drawing customers’ attention to your business, even at a low level, will still bring in sales from increased brand awareness. They’re also responsible for keeping your customers coming back, as return customers tend to cost less to market to and be more willing to spend larger amounts.
More efficient marketing is able to reach a much larger number of people with the same efforts. Going too in-depth too early can alienate a lot of potential customers.
Digital Marketing
There’s been massive growth in the field of marketing alongside the growth of the internet and digital technology. As it grows, the separation between sales and marketing will widen. With the wide variety of communications platforms and tools available, digital marketing requires its own set of skills and expertise.
A marketing team’s leader needs to keep up to date with all of these new developments. Being the leader of a business means a lot of personal training and development. The more widespread the subjects you’re trying to learn, the less in-depth you’ll be able to learn them.
A Sales Director will struggle to keep up with sales improvement and the more basic marketing skills. Considering the amount that adding in digital expertise would add, there won’t be much time left in the day to run either department, let alone both.
Both of these areas are important to your business’s growth. You can’t sell to people who don’t know you exist, but awareness means little if you can’t convert.
If you’re trying to balance both areas equally, they’ll both suffer equally. Two people doing the two separate jobs means that they’ll be able to get the attention that they deserve.
Having an expert
Your brand is your public face, how your business presents itself to its customers. While someone else can handle the basics, they won’t have the expertise to analyze your brand’s marketing growth strategies. They also won’t have the experience to use many of the available tools properly
Expert marketing leadership is often missing from businesses. Your Board of Directors could gain a lot by adding someone who brings this expertise.
A dedicated Marketing Director on the Board means that marketing can become part of your strategic thinking. It means you can build a plan that aligns with your business’s objectives but also informs your planning with regard to brand strategy.
John Courtney is Founder and Chief Executive of BoardroomAdvisors.co which provides part-time Executive Directors (Commercial/Operations/
John is a serial entrepreneur, having founded 7 different businesses over a 40 year period, including a digital marketing agency, corporate finance and management consultancy. He has trained and worked as a strategy consultant, raised funding through Angels, VCs and crowd funding, and exited businesses via MBO, MBI and trade sale. He has been ranked #30 in CityAM’s list of UK Entrepreneurs.
