The life of a marketing executive can be a challenging one. Sure, there is prestige that comes with the title and maybe a corner office, but there is plenty of headache and worry too.

Knowing what keeps your marketing executive up at night means you will be more in sync with the person that signs off on your budget, headcount and technology investment. And that can only be a good thing, both for your department’s success and for your own.

5 concerns that keep your marketing executive up at night:

1. I need to move the needle on revenue.

Sure, it’s obvious, but as Web Presence Managers focused on the day to day of tracking and reporting on search visibility, social networks and content, we sometimes lose sight that at the end of the day the goal is to move the revenue chart up and to the right.

So how can knowing that revenue is top of mind for your marketing executive help you?

By advancing your own thinking to be more inline with his/hers, you can shift your thinking to look at your analytics with an eye not just towards marketing KPIs but towards “how can I move the needle on revenue?” And, you can take this opportunity to adjust your vocabulary to be more in line with your executives.

For example, you may talk about backlinks and keywords, but your executive is more interested in revenue and sales. See How to Get Marketing Budget to Build Your Web Presence Team for more.

2. Where am I wasting money?

There’s nothing that gives executives more sleepless nights than knowing he/she is wasting money. That means that any opportunity you have to identify instances where you can save money without impacting performance will cast you as the hero.

One way of doing this is to identify keywords on which your company is spending a lot of money in paid search. Then, as Charity Stebbins described in a recent blog post, 4 Ways to Boost Conversions and Budgeting by using SEO and PPC Together, as you move up the search rankings in organic search for these keywords, you can turn the nozzle back on paid spend without sacrificing traffic.

Isolate expensive PPC keywords and then optimize those to rank well organically. Once you have presence in the natural search listings, you have the option to lower or stop bidding on those terms and save budget for other things.

After all, why pay for traffic when you can get it (earn it) for free?


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(Searchlight users: You can automate this by creating a keyword segment of your highest spend paid search keywords.)

As final step, be sure you let your executive know how much money you were able to save the company.

3. Where is my competition eating my lunch?

A close second cause of sleepless nights for your executive is when his/her competition is beating him/her. For many, even before they can worry about being beaten by competitors, they toss and turn at night because they feel they don’t have a good handle on where they stand relative to the competition.

What can you do? You can start by giving your executive hard data on where you stand relative to the competition. It may not turn out to be exactly where he/she would like to be relative to the competition in all instances, but he/she will appreciate being better informed.


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To take it a step further and really be a hero in the eyes of your executive, once you’ve given them insight into the competitive landscape, develop a plan that shows how you will make headway against your competition. Then, report on the progress you make on a regular basis.

4. How do I keep my good people?

Good people can be hard to find, and the possibility of losing them gives executives insomnia. If something is not working for them, many employees move on, but most executives want to know when something is not working so they can fix it. Every day, in executive offices, around the world, employees tell executives they are moving on and the reply is “why didn’t you tell me something was wrong—I could have fixed it”.

So, keep the lines of communication open with your marketing executive. If something is not right they’ll usually want to fix it. Read The Sacrifice You Have to Make to Hire Good Digital Marketers for more on how to find and retain great digital marketers.

5. How do we expand into new areas?

A worry that gives your executive gray hair is that the business will stagnate and stop growing. You can help by identifying new growth opportunities. But, don’t just come with “we should get into x”, back your proposal with hard data that identifies the size of the opportunity, your company’s current standing in the space and other relevant data that will help your executive make an informed investment decision.

Do that often enough—identify growth opportunities that result in successful expansion into new markets—and you’ll soon find yourself in your own executive office.

Stay in Sync with your Marketing Executive

The way your Marketing executive looks at the world may differ substantially from your day-to-day view. That’s ok–distinct views are healthy in any organization, but knowing what keeps your executive up at night will keep you in sync with your leadership. And that can only be a good thing for your career.

This post originally appeared on Business2Community.