Marketing should not be considered a cost center; it is really a company’s best revenue enabler. It’s true that marketing must make specific and measurable impacts on the company’s ability to generate sales. However, many marketers are so covered up in production work, that they barely have time to actually pause and consider the bigger picture: revenue enablement. There are literally dozens of ways marketing can and should help enable more new revenue; here are a few examples to consider:

• Marketing can take ownership of the sales funnel and ensure tracking of all lead sources.

• Marketing can team up with HR to drive an enhanced new-hire onboarding experience. Happy crew, happy customers.

• Marketing can partner with Ops and the AM team to ensure “early warning radar” type data is made more visible regarding client experiences with the brand.

There are many ways marketing can help enable revenue. Marketing can easily become the company’s Swiss-Army Knife for revenue enablement.

A central part of any marketing function is creative — in brochures, web and more. But creative is best when it helps achieve the primary business objective and not just a great design. I’ve known a number of truly talented creative people — artists and designers –– each with tremendous skill to accomplish what would otherwise be the impossible for anyone else. Yet, even with such ability, creative efforts must be aligned to the business objective and the brand’s persona. At times, this can be a challenge between the business team and creative team. But the solution is not to toss out the creative, nor dial back the business team expectations. Instead, it’s a balance of where creative insights intersect with, and help to enable, achievement of business priorities, and where business priorities help to maximize the impact of creative insights. They really do work together best when taken as two parts of the same task and not as competitors or defenders of their own turf.

With so many platform options for marketing, it can be difficult to choose –– nearly everyone has a favorite for this or for that. But if we zoom out and look at the big marketing picture, ultimately, the right platform for CRM, hosting/publishing content or ABM is the one that best allows you, your team and your budget to regularly get the best content in front of your target audience. Period. There should no other factors to consider. If your target audience is being impacted, engaged and responsive, you’ve got a winning approach with whatever platform combination you’re using. If the sales team is thrilled with the leads you’re generating, you’ve got a winning approach. If the CFO and CEO are excited about the new revenue you are helping to create, you’ve got a winning approach. The key is to track those marketing KPIs that clearly contribute to three things: revenue growth, improved employee morale and long-term client loyalty.

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, has been, and continues to be a HOT TOPIC for marketers and people who don’t work in marketing. But is SEO really worthy of so much attention? Maybe not. One of the most well-known opponents of “chasing” SEO is Guy Kawasaki. Guy is rightly a tech-silicon-valley celebrity and expert in social media and all things digital. He’s also the first Apple Evangelist and worked for Steve Jobs back in Apple’s early days. Like Guy, my thoughts on SEO are less about the typical focus on keywords and metadata. Instead, I believe with Google employing over 1,000 PHDs and scientists around the world working 24/7/365 to ensure the “house always wins”, I would put all my chips on a strategy that is heavy on:

•  compelling content that is

• regularly published and that

• exceeds the readers’ expectations

Marketing owns the brand, but there are other parts of the organization that influence branding. That’s Sales Enablement and the Sales Support team.

Perhaps the single most important piece of collateral is the proposal, or RFP response. The template may come from the marketing team, but it is the sales support team that customizes each bid offering. It either wins or misses. But its impact can be directly and quickly felt in revenue. Part of the Sales Enablement program, Sales Support covers a lot of ground and is essentially a complimentary team partnering with marketing. Sales Support touches copy, graphics, visuals, proofing and delivery of proposals. Keep that in mind when someone is quick to dismiss Sales Support. Sales Enablement and the sales support team are the marketing team’s cousins –– and own the other side of Branding.

Saying that Marketing is a cost center is so ‘old school’. And yet, that may be how traditional leaders think of Marketing. Instead, be the evangelist and tell them that Marketing is an omni-functional enabler to any organization’s culture and morale. With the very best go-to-market strategy and vision, a product, service or perhaps entire company is doomed if the employees — “cast and crew” –– are not onboard and support the go-to-market strategy. So, leave the old school behind and embrace marketing as a way to improve culture and morale. Doing so is the key to delivering a great client experience, building brand and growing revenue.

Sometimes marketers feel all alone because they think no one else really gets marketing. In fact, if they are honest, many leaders really don’t get marketing. These leaders just don’t understand it because it’s media, it’s content, video, digital platforms and many other things the typical non-marketing leader may not have had much if any experience with in their career. So, it’s up to the CMO and the marketing team to speak the non-marketer’s love language. That means keeping your marketing-speak to a minimum and instead relating what marketing is doing in terms of growing revenue, improving employee morale and enhancing long-term client loyalty. Chances are, spinning your marketing updates in this manner will score more kudos and “well done” responses by the leadership team –– those same leaders will then actually understand how you are helping them to grow the business.

It’s vital that sales and marketing partner on all go-to-market activities. Essentially two sides of the same coin, marketing cannot exist in a vacuum and sales cannot pitch and close deals without support. Silos do little good in the organization that has major interdependencies like sales and marketing. A few key ideas on creating a more synergistic relationship between sales and marketing would include: (1) joint weekly pipeline reviews of new business opportunities, (2) jointly examining the post-mortem data on lost clients and (3) ongoing monitoring of lead sourcing that typically predate proposals and contracts. These are just three examples of how sales and marketing can better team up to grow revenue, improve employee morale and enhance long-term client loyalty. The more these two teams and their leaders collaborate, the better the likelihood they will together grow the company’s revenue, improve employee morale and retain clients long term. No silos needed.

I love to know what the market is thinking about the brand. Understanding how the brand is experienced, helps marketers determine the vetting of value, the likelihood of referrals and the retention of revenue. As brand stewards, all marketers should be concerned about how the brand is delivered and experienced on an ongoing basis. That’s part of the three-part marketing approach that focuses on products, processes and people. And that’s key to growing revenue, improving employee morale and enhancing client loyalty.

THE CXO LOVE LANGUAGE – We can’t read minds and we shouldn’t try to, but there are a few well know or certainly presumable objectives that will bring smiles to the C-suite. Typically, those smiles will occur if the company grows its revenue, improves the team’s morale, or enhances long-term client loyalty. Why? Well, all companies need to continually grow revenue. The second one, team morale, is a bit more subtle. You see, even with the best go-to-market strategy in the world, execution will fail if the team is not behind it; if morale is low, the strategy will fail, so morale matters quite a bit. And client loyalty, that’s key to ensuring the company has revenue as long as possible. That will also help sales focus on bringing in new revenue and both will help improve team morale. Marketing can play a vital role in each of these areas.