CEOs who own the discussion on marketing ROI will lead change.

It’s said that CEO is the loneliest job in high tech. That’s certainly true, and probably industry agnostic. Although the pace of change in high tech certainly adds pressures and uncertainty that further challenge CEOs in technology -- or manufacturing-minded companies.

You know about the wrinkles, good and bad, that others don’t. You worry incessantly and sweat the small details. Your pan-enterprise perspective is unique. A focus of much of the worry is financial -- You carefully consider strategic decisions based on your broad and unique perspective.

Of course you’re willing to invest, even boldly and aggressively, when data (and occasionally your gut) tells you to do so. You can’t simply spend/invest according to a stakeholder generated rolling list of priorities. In fact, sometimes your perspective and financial responsibilities clash with the wish list of some of your employees, partners or even investors. Budgets for operational needs, R&D and strategic marketing clash like titans.

Marketing is a “Cost”

Be honest. We all know where marketing has historically sat on your P&L -- A drag on the bottom line. That treatment is a vestige of the days when marketing provided a bit of sand under the tires of sales to ensure they had traction. That perception of marketing as an enabler is deeply ingrained in high tech management psyche even today, however. And it’s easy to understand why many in the C-suite view marketing with a jaundiced eye -- It’s long been a black hole. Intellectually, we all agree that it’s important, somehow at some level, but it’s always an article of faith. And faith is hard to maintain when marketing’s claims so often challenge credulity.

But the sales process has become inverted. And no one, not even your most savvy competitors, has even noticed. You, the seller, no longer controls information asymmetrically in the sales process. Today, because of the internet and Google, buyers can control their buying process with game-changing efficiency. They often deliberately avoid sales people until they are far past the midway point of their buying process. That means that marketing isn’t just placing ads, running tradeshows, tracking competitors,and creating brochures anymore. Today, with automation tools like HubSpot and others, ‘marketing’ is managing much of the sales process….virtually, systematically, and personally.

So maybe strategic marketing for high tech ought to be treated as a cost of sales? But you can’t simply bump it up on the P&L without some justification.

Vacuous ‘ROI’ vs. Real Justification

It’s funny (or painful) depending on where you sit to hear many marketers toss about buzzwords and ROI calculations. One of our favorites was the argument that marketing budgets should be increased because the increase in cost would generate a return in tax savings (consuming otherwise taxable profits).

Marketers have long relied on the mirage of ROI, offering stats and metrics as a proxy for success; success which we all know in business is really measured in profitable revenue growth. You’ve heard of “investments” in “brand awareness”, “impressions”, “subscribers” and the classic “eyeballs". Have you tried paying investors back in eyeballs recently? But many marketers persist in citing “leads” as a return upon which your “investment” is justified.

That’s silly. It’s likely insulting to a CEO with financial acumen who uses projected return to select projects, rather than as some simplistic, absolute measure of efficacy as a justification. And it’s unnecessary. Today’s tools for strategic marketing for high tech are capable of providing nearly real-time dashboards of actual revenue and profitability for every campaign, tactic and channel that is used. With a bit of historical perspective many businesses can leverage data collected for very accurate predictive modeling. That’s not only incredibly valuable to sales managers, but converts marketing cost into a business asset.

Not just ‘MarCom’ but Strategic Marketing for High Tech

That “s” word is pregnant with implications. But it’s critical to distinguish marketing tactics from strategy. Social media is a tactic, as are SEO, blogging, trade shows and PR. But a plan which is founded on corporate goals and brand is strategic. It’s a distinction which shouldn't require clarification….except that often it does. Marketing according to a strategy allows for adjustment of tactics as actionable management information is collected.

For instance, you might assume that videos targeted at 30 to 45 year-old, mid-level engineers in your target accounts will be the most effective marketing tactic. And you might have substantiated this with some research. If that’s your strategy, and it doesn’t work, you fail. If that’s a tactic, you adjust. And when your strategy includes multiple tactics across channels mapped to phases of the buying journey and different buyer types (that’s a pretty complex matrix) you’ll collect a lot of data pretty quickly. It’s a bonus of today’s marketing automation. Aggregate, on-the-fly research not only effective marketing tactics, but also on market needs and wants.

Ultimately, as a CEO you’re interested in return on equity, not some naive agency pitch. Strand’s strategic marketing approach shares that goal and supports your investment initially, and routinely, with metrics that tie revenue, pipeline and product/region/model profitability to discrete activities.

That’s the ROI discussion forward-thinking high tech CEOs are having with their agency and marketing and sales teams today.