Bridging the MarTech Gap Between Your Work and Leadership's Strategic Vision
In the dynamic world of marketing technology, MarTech professionals often find themselves caught in a unique disconnect: the crucial "behind the scenes" work they do sometimes goes unrecognized by leadership, who are focused on high-level strategic objectives, hiring, and management. This gap can stem from leaders being unknowledgeable about the intricacies of MarTech operations, or simply from differing daily responsibilities.
Reshaping the Perception of MarTech's Value
One of the most critical challenges for MarTech is the tendency for colleagues and leaders to "bucket" teams, often stereotyping MarTech as merely "sending emails" or "generating reports." These initial perceptions can persist unless actively changed.
To break free from these limiting perceptions, MarTech professionals must proactively demonstrate their strategic impact:
Regularly Tie Your Work to Top Business Priorities:
Understand Tiered Goals: It's essential to know your organization's overarching "Tier 1" goals set by leaders like the CMO or CRO, and how these cascade down to director-level "Tier 2" priorities and your own "Tier 3" individual contributions. If these top priorities aren't clear, proactively engage leaders to understand their most important objectives for the year.
Demonstrate Positive Impact: Consistently show how your MarTech initiatives are directly helping the organization achieve these top-level business goals.
Highlight the Risk of Inaction: Crucially, communicate how these top-tier goals would be at risk without MarTech's contributions. This underscores the indispensable nature of your work. For example, explain how if "Tier 3" goals aren't met, it jeopardizes "Tier 2" and ultimately "Tier 1" objectives.
Conduct Quarterly/Monthly Business Reviews (QBRs/MBRs):
Your Platform to Shine: These regular meetings are MarTech's dedicated opportunity to explain and demonstrate your team's contributions to the business. It's a chance to remind stakeholders who you are, what you do, what you're working on, and how it aligns with company priorities.
Broaden Your Audience: To maximize impact, invite a wide array of stakeholders, including executives, sales operations, analysts, sales leaders, and various marketing leaders. Virtual formats make it easier to include 50+ attendees.
Report on Performance, Roadmaps, and Wins & Losses:
Performance: Share key metrics, such as email or Marketo performance.
Product and Project Roadmaps: Detail the initiatives your team is committed to delivering over a period, like builds, integrations, and process improvements. This shows progress on agreed-upon work.
Wins and Losses: Highlight successes. Don't shy away from sharing challenges or "improvement areas" (e.g., increased unsubscribes, headcount loss). A balanced view fosters authenticity, builds trust, and helps other teams see where they can offer support. Avoid an "inauthentic highlight reel" that makes your team seem perfect and unwilling to accept help.
Beyond Perception: Driving Business Outcomes
Reshaping perception also involves consistently connecting technical work to tangible business results. Leaders often only see the "front of the stage" (e.g., landing pages, emails), unaware of the complex "behind the scenes" MarTech efforts.
Explain What Your Work Unlocks: It's MarTech's responsibility to communicate how building a system or implementing a tool clearly translates into more leads, meetings, pipeline, and revenue. Use metaphors or analogies to simplify complex technical projects. For instance, comparing a centralized lead routing system to a single, efficient delivery system helps convey benefits like reduced campaign build time and eliminated errors.
Actively Advocate for Your Work: The myth that hard work alone will be recognized at work is often untrue. Proactively inform others about the impact of your contributions to ensure they are understood and valued.
Focus on projects with the highest potential return: This means prioritizing initiatives that drive qualified opportunities, aiming for those with a minimum 25% chance of closing or higher. Avoid getting bogged down by low-value tasks; it's rare for a low-value project to magically become high-value. Utilize product management frameworks like RICE (Reach, Impact, Confidence, Effort) to objectively assess a project's worth and prioritize effectively rather than leaving career goals to chance.
Narrow Down and Connect Metrics to Goals:
Start Simple for Insights: Begin by determining desired insights on paper or in a simple spreadsheet to avoid being overwhelmed by existing dashboards. Focus on measuring program effectiveness and revenue generation.
Observe and Act on Significant Changes: Track key metrics (e.g., conversion rates, open rates, number of campaigns, leads generated). While minor fluctuations are normal, significant changes provide the "signal" needed to adjust your work and drive change.
Link Metrics to Tier One Goals: Select metrics most likely to impact the highest-level company goals (e.g., increasing new sales). These chosen metrics should inform the projects on your MarTech team's roadmap.
Managing Workload and Fostering Alignment
MarTech professionals often feel overwhelmed by the sheer volume of tasks and "fires." This necessitates effective prioritization and strategic alignment.
Prioritize High-Impact Tasks: Acknowledge that successful professionals often have too much to do. The things that matter least should never give way for the things that matter most.
Use a Personal Roadmap: Gain buy-in on a list of committed projects for a specific period, using this as a "personal road map to actually defend your time."
Set Boundaries and SLAs: Combat a "people-pleasing mentality" by establishing clear service level agreements (SLAs) for responding to requests (e.g., a five-day response SLA). This manages expectations and reduces constant "firefighting."
Empathize with Sales: Understanding sales' goals (primarily having high-quality conversations to convert prospects) is vital regardless of team structure. MarTech should proactively provide sales with the necessary materials, intelligence, and data to operate efficiently, benefiting the entire business.
Address Terminology Confusion: Terms like "campaign" can have different meanings across systems (e.g., Marketo, Salesforce, paid media channels). Host regular "knowledge sessions" to explain the specific meaning of terminology within different systems, fostering shared understanding across teams.
By proactively adopting these strategies, MarTech professionals can effectively reshape how their work is perceived, demonstrating its critical value and direct contribution to the organization's strategic success.