Marketing doesn't always get into the boardroom at all, much less begin the meeting as the single most important growth lever a company has. Of course, marketing
is the single largest growth
lever most companies have, but the gap in communication and understanding prevents a stronger partnership from taking root.
To be clear, it's not that boards don't value marketing. It's
that marketing hasn't consistently shown up speaking the same language as the rest of the executive team. If marketing wants to claim its place as a growth engine, it needs to speak first and foremost
about business impact and less about creative wins/awards, earned media value, and channel-level media metrics.
Boards Think Leverage and Risk. So Should Marketing.
Boards are
not trying to micromanage ad budgets. They're focused on the levers that change the slope of the curve: market expansion, customer value, capital efficiency, and competitive positioning. Anything that
doesn't tie back to those themes sounds like noise.
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Marketers often assume brand awareness, audience engagement, and platform performance will impress a board. They won't. Not unless they're
reframed in terms of strategic leverage:
- Our brand is driving pricing power and/or margin resilience (and by how much.)
- Our campaign’s last quarter increased
customer lifetime value and/or accelerated payback periods (and by how much.)
These aren't marketing statements as much as they're statements the board
wants to hear. And only marketing can provide them.
From Metrics to Meaning: What Marketing Should Be Bringing to the Table
Boards would skip every dashboard they've ever seen
for just one ounce of additional clarity into how marketing drives business impact. In the modern media environment, clarity requires discipline in measurement—especially when dollars are
flowing across platforms with wildly different attribution models.
To earn credibility, marketing leaders should anchor their reporting in advanced measurement strategies that reflect true
business outcomes. That means:
Incrementality testing that goes beyond "Was the ad seen?" Exposure isn't enough. Boards want to know what moved the needle.
Incrementality testing should isolate the true lift generated by marketing—not just whether someone saw an ad and converted, but whether they converted because of the ad.
That requires
repeated testing with increasingly rigorous controls: frequency, channel, ad type, and even temporal variables.
Multifactor control experiments that reflect real market
complexity. In a vacuum, every tactic looks effective. The reality is more complex. Boards want to understand how different variables—creative, placement, platform, frequency—interact
to create outcomes.
For example: if higher frequency works on connected TV but backfires on display, the board should know. If audio ads lift unaided recall only when paired with search
campaigns, that insight belongs in the capital allocation discussion.
Business KPIs > Media KPIs CTR, video completion rate, viewability—these aren't even
metrics media practitioners should be using, much less showing a board. Boards care about revenue acceleration, margin contribution, and customer acquisition efficiency. That's where marketing's
reporting should start.
If the data doesn't connect to a business objective, it doesn't belong in the boardroom.
Marketing's Role Isn't to Defend Its Budget—It's to Justify
Its Multiplier
The best way for marketing to earn more resources is to demonstrate that it drives more value -- not clicks, not reach, but value.
When marketing delivers insights
that reshape product roadmaps, when it helps the CFO reforecast with confidence, then it stops being a line item and starts being a growth engine.
Marketing can earn a seat at the top of every
board's agenda, but only by proving its real business impact in a way board members can't help but get excited about.