How to improve executive communication about your marketing work

As a marketing leader, a large part of your ability to get the job done is in proving that you're delivering value already  But it's also an area of marketing leadership that many get wrong  Are these 3 communication errors killing your ability to prove the value of your work?

1. Stating an observation without impact, importance, or insight
2. Using passive vs active voice
3. Giving inputs more airtime than outputs

🚩 Stating an observation without impact, importance, or insight

It's extremely easy to notice something and report it. But all you're doing is giving metrics, not meaning.

By understanding the importance of a metric, we can make a choice about what to do next. Want an example?

❌ BAD – Traffic is up, conversion is down

✅ GOOD – Traffic is up, but conversion is down indicating that there's a misalignment between our ICP's pain points and the topic of our most recent blog posts

🚩 Using passive vs active voice

Generally, you should avoid using the passive voice when reporting

It weakens the entire point you're trying to make by removing any sense of agency from that message.

Make yourself or someone else the owner of the action rather than the benefactor and you'll see a great improvement in your executive communication. Want an example?

❌ BAD – Changes are being made to XYZ

✅ GOOD– We are making changes to XYZ

🚩 Giving inputs more airtime than outputs

No one pays you to be busy. They pay you to produce results.

But the majority of your reports are likely focused on what you did rather than what you produced.

In fact, this is the most common problem with executive communication.

If you're suffering from this consistently and have tried to change it, ask yourself:

if I can't produce results worth reporting, am I doing the right things in the first place? Here's an example:

❌ BAD – We created 5 new ad campaigns this month and we refreshed 15 creatives

✅ GOOD – We generated 329 new SQLs by refreshing ad creative and running new campaigns

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