How to Build Internal Support for Marketing Initiatives

“Marketing used to be seen as order takers,” explained the CMO from a $190m services firm, “but after several years, we’re now seen as business drivers.” Several years! And that’s your internal audience. Imagine how long it takes to change external perceptions. Like it or not, marketing leaders must devote time to marketing their marketing. Not once at an “all hands” town hall. Not twice via follow-up emails. Relentlessly. Fearlessly. Consistently. Across all possible channels. Personally. And via surrogates. Why is this so important? Marketing often gets a bad rap in the C-suite which trickles down to disrespect across the org. Disrespect that manifests as unsolicited advice on all aspects of marketing. Advice that can derail your well-conceived plan especially if it is centered on tactics.  Marketing is not a snowball fight. You can’t just gather your ammunition, and hurl it at your target one toss at a time. Well, you can try. But that approach inevitably fails to leave a lasting impression. Instead, think of marketing as the ball of snow rolling down a mountain, gathering girth and speed (i.e. force = mass x acceleration). Marketing is the cumulative impact of all your activities over time – starting with your internal audience. Here are several sure-fire ways of marketing your marketing internally: 🐧 Involve employees in your repositioning work. 🐧 Field and share quarterly employee surveys 🐧 Own and indoctrinate BDRs 🐧 Help employees build their personal brands 🐧 Orchestrate innovation days 🐧 Create an entertaining “this week in marketing” update Involve employees: If you expect employees to believe in the brand, make them part of the process from Day 1. Keep them updated throughout the process. Before launching publicly, create a brand certification program (easily done now with GenAI) that all employees must pass. Quarterly surveys: Don’t leave this to HR. Surveying is too important. Measure eNPS. Ask if they are proud to work for your company. Include at least 2 open-ended questions. [I’m happy to share a sample survey] Indoctrinate BDRs: Half the CMOs in CMO Huddles “own” BDRs. Ensuring that Marketing delivers qualified opportunities to Sales, BDRs also become marketing evangelists once they move up and around the org. Enable personal branding: Employees are “free” brand ambassadors and can be awesome advocates if properly trained. By teaching employees how to build their personal brands, you’re helping their careers and your company. Orchestrate innovation days: Ask your employees to work together in small teams to develop innovative solutions to your biggest challenges in one day. Have a panel of judges. Offer prizes. Implement winning ideas. Count the smiles. Update weekly: A pithy yet entertaining weekly update will educate employees on how Marketing is helping to drive the business. After a few weeks, employees will look forward to your reports.    What’s your approach to marketing the marketing?

Internal Marketing is a valuable tool as it's becoming harder for external marketing to break through (Sam Jacobs shared the cost of growth has increased 72%. YIKES!) How can you make internal education more effective across departments? Make sure others understand how your ask impacts THEM. I've been in situations where other departments see the task of promotion as "that's marketing's job." Fair, but we all have networks. The adage is cliche, but it's true: people buy from people. They trust a human they know over an ad any day of the week. Today, I asked our entire team to help promote an upcoming webinar. I made sure to include "What's In it for you" info, because let's be honest, we all ask "so what?" or "why should I?" when someone asks us for something. Asking a developer or finance colleague to pitch in on marketing could intrude on their daily tasks unless there is a culture which everyone contributes to revenue. By proactively anticipating their questions and sharing information "why", you help build buy-in. Don't forget to communicate with different learning styles. Asking to take a few steps is one thing, using a Loom video to show the steps and how little time it takes will sit better with visual learners. Just like creating content for external prospects in their preferred formats is key, the same counts for internal marketing. As marketers, we must continually educate internally on how our efforts help other departments. Make it as simple as possible for your colleagues to help you. #internalmarketing

At Circle, I’ve built Pricing, Product Marketing, and Strategy from the ground up, and contributed on other early teams (FP&A, Sales, Growth). Some thoughts on building new teams: 📊 Adding value is the priority There is a natural desire when starting a team to “lay the foundation” by doing everything by the book. OKRs, roadmaps, systems, processes, etc. Don’t burn too much time here. Solving problems immediately will help validate the team and give others a taste of what you can do. Somebody probably took a bet on you to go build this thing. Now it’s on you to show them they played their cards right. Also, the process of adding value early will highlight the foundational stuff you SHOULD prioritize. For example, early on when we started Pricing, we had many drawn out philosophical debates… “Is now the right time to monetize? Or should we give stuff away to grow?” This highlighted the need for company pricing principles. Boom. High impact foundational work to prioritize next. ⚖️ Balance generalists and specialists The old advice of ‘hiring people better than you’ is gold for starting new teams. Specialists with deep functional experience will spot patterns you can’t see, build faster than you, and have more reps in producing great output. That said, don’t forget about the generalists. Their biggest superpower? Empathy. Deep understanding of the needs and motivations of different teams is crucial for scaling yours. You need to add value for other teams, tighten relationships, and build R&R. A generalist or two on the team is your “connective tissue”. 📣 Don’t forget about internal marketing The rest of the company needs to know what you do. People don’t even know to think about including you, cause you’re new.  Don’t leave it to chance. Internal marketing will reinforce your team and help get you in the right rooms. Write a two pager on your team’s mission, success metrics, your customers, and key outputs. Meet with leadership, pitch it, and get feedback. Establish a reporting cadence to communicate wins and milestones. This may feel like overhead, but consistent effort early here will solidify your home in the org. Own that sh**!  So much more to say on this topic that won’t fit on a LI post 😅 deep dive on The Work Flow Podcast coming soon Have you ever started a team? What worked well for you? What should people watch out for? ________ I share lessons and ideas from my first 10 years in tech and business every week - be sure to ring the bell 🔔 in my profile if you’d like to follow along and join the conversation!