Last Updated on March 21, 2023 by Dave Schoenbeck
It can be challenging for business owners who have grown their companies from the ground up to relinquish control as the business expands. Considering the importance of marketing in business, it’s understandable that an entrepreneurial CEO would want to have a high degree of oversight regarding marketing decisions. However, this can quickly lead to disaster. Please consider making more time for marketing activities in your business.
How Much Time Should I Spend on Marketing?
Business is all about marketing, but as a business owner, the amount of time you should spend on marketing is drastically less than the amount of time your marketing team should spend on it. Despite that fact, a UK-based study found that 80% of CEOs don’t trust their marketers. What’s happening here?
In many small businesses, the CEO is the first expert on brand voice, image, and copy. Initially, the business owner probably had to juggle all the marketing and develop strong opinions about what it should look like.
After a certain point, a business owner has much more to worry about than marketing alone. In addition, the skills necessary to be a great business owner don’t always carry over into being a great marketer. While a CEO might have marketing experience, they can’t possibly continue to devote time and energy to staying on top of the industry and studying analytics.
Knowing the importance of marketing in business, hiring a qualified marketing team, and trusting them to do their jobs is a much better idea. Micromanaging marketing decisions lead to missed deadlines and lost profits, in addition to taking time away from the high-level work that only the CEO can do.
Supporting the Role of Marketing in Business
If you understand the importance of marketing in business, you’ll accept that supporting your marketing team is one of the best things you can do to succeed. Here are 5 ways you can do that.
- Hire the right people. The best way to guarantee the success of your marketing team is to invest in the hiring process. Even if it takes a while to fill a position, don’t settle for less. A strong team can lead you to victory, but a weak one can sink your ship.
- Check-in periodically, but not obsessively. As the CEO, you want to walk a fine line between staying informed and being overbearing. It’s okay to involve yourself in the marketing process if you have serious concerns, but do not expect to be able to sign off on every single minor project.
- Remember that marketing is a long game. You might be used to specific measures of success from when the company was beginning to grow, but don’t panic if you don’t continue to see results immediately. Often, marketing initiatives take months to come to fruition. So be patient and trust the process.
- Be open to change. The marketing industry can shift drastically with a single Google core update. The strategies you used when first growing your business might be obsolete when you hire a marketing team, and your brand identity may need a refresh once you have a group of marketers at the helm.
- Stay humble. It’s not your job to be a marketing expert—your job is to hire and manage one. You want to hire someone who is the best at what they do, which means they will probably know more than you do about marketing. Ideally, you will learn a lot from them.
If you have a healthy respect for the importance of marketing activities, you should trust the marketing experts to handle them with care. Are you interested in more great leadership tips? Click here to sign up and have weekly articles about business, marketing, and leadership sent to your inbox.
Coach Dave
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