Tara Kinney

Communicating marketing performance to a Board of Directors is nearly as difficult as communicating marketing value to your own sales team. Marketing and sales alignment drives revenue growth and profitability, but marketing leads the customer acquisition charge and must set the tone for accountability tied to corporate objectives. Anyone who says that marketing KPIs are all fluff and vanity metrics has never seen marketing KPIs tied to profitability. Let's learn how to communicate those metrics, and by doing so we will improve the outcomes of both marketing and sales.

How many agencies get fired, not for poor performance, but because sales don't scale with the marketing budget? In-house teams don’t fare much better, touting vanity metrics that will never justify budget approval. Understanding the full customer acquisition process will help you communicate key performance metrics that management actually cares about, and teach you how to identify holes in the customer acquisition process before you drown in lead management. Your CEO and CFO will appreciate marketing accountability toward customer acquisition and reward you with budget approvals

Whether you have a large cash reserve or no cash reserve, all budgets should care for balanced Cashflow management. Cashflow-driven management decisions are particularly critical when building marketing and sales budgets–missteps here are a key downfall of most small businesses. However, all strategic business decisions should enable effective Cashflow management. For example, the pricing structure and payment terms for cash inflows must align with timing of cash outflows for costs of goods sold (COGS) and costs of sales within your revenue model. If your payables and receivables are structured properly to care for the ongoing operational needs of your company, then the appropriate Key Performance Metrics will be leading indicators of future Cashflow opportunities and constraints.