Cultivating Organizational Support: How to Get Buy-In for Your Marketing Initiatives
As a CMO or Head of eCommerce, you know that bold marketing ideas need strong support to flourish—not because they lack merit, but because they deserve proper financial investment. Hesitation often stems from risk aversions and opportunities for clearer ROI measurement. But what if these challenges could be reframed as growth opportunities? What if, instead of viewing executive leadership as a gatekeeper, you recognized them as strategic allies?
At The Office of Experience, we've helped marketing leaders shift that dynamic—evolving from budget discussions to boardroom partnerships. Here's how you can do the same.
The Strategic CMO/Executive Relationship
A 2019 McKinsey study revealed that 83% of CEOs expect marketing to be the key driver of business growth in the digital age. And yet, many executive team members still view marketing spend as speculative rather than strategic. This disconnect isn’t due to lack of impact—but rather, lack of translation between marketing activities and business outcomes.
Google's “The Effectiveness Equation” report nailed it: one of the biggest threats to marketing budgets isn't underperformance, but internal misalignment. In high-stakes, growth-focused environments, failing to connect marketing initiatives to financial metrics and business outcomes results in missed opportunities and stalled growth potential.
To succeed, CMOs and eCommerce leaders must speak a language that executive leadership understands—grounded in a strong business case supported by meaningful financial metrics such as projected ROI and/or ROAS. This shared language of business impact creates alignment around marketing’s strategic role in driving sustainable growth.
Translating Marketing to Business Value
Even the most innovative marketing initiatives need to be framed through a financial lens. Executive leadership doesn’t want impressions and reach—they want measurable returns, value-based marketing strategies, and predictive forecasts.
Here's how to frame your initiatives to gain traction:
This approach shifts perception from marketing as a cost center to marketing as a strategic investment and contributor to measurable business growth.
Visualize the Opportunity: A Strategic Framework for Marketing Initiatives
Executive leadership tends to gravitate toward structured decision frameworks—it’s how they evaluate investments across the organization. By adopting a similar visualization approach for your marketing initiatives, you can bridge the communication gap and present marketing decisions in a format that resonates with executive leadership.
Read the complete article on our website to access the Marketing Initiative Quadrant—a strategic tool that transforms abstract marketing concepts into a business investment portfolio, complete with specific examples for each zone and the financial metrics to include.