PR and marketing pros may feel like the Rodney Dangerfield of the business world: They don’t get no respect.
Most marketers, 61.8% to be exact, believe marketing is only somewhat understood or not understood at all by their business as a whole, according to Marketing Week’s annual Career and Salary Survey. In addition, while percentages vary by industry, more than half of marketers believe their organizations perceive marketing as a cost rather than an investment.
Surveys show similar lack of understanding of PR. An early survey by Wakefield Research reveals that more than half of executives (59%) said they do not fully understand the role and capabilities of PR. Three-fourths say they spend a half hour or less each week discussing their PR strategy.
These are some recommendations on how PR and marketing can gain better understanding and respect from other departments and C-suite executives.
Measure and Explain Your Work
“You can’t just sit back and expect the business to really understand what you do and the benefit it brings without talking to them and explaining it,” Annabel Venner, global brand director at insurance provider Hiscox, tells Marketing Week. “There is an onus on marketers to look at what their marketing is doing and be able to measure it in some way – whether that’s through brand tracking or econometrics – and then present it to people across the business.” In other words, tell the story of what marketing has accomplished. And tell it in terms that the audience understands.
Marketing was traditionally perceived – and maybe still is – as being mostly concerned with “arts and crafts,” focusing on the colors and fonts for company logos and brochures, says HubSpot founder and CTO Dharmesh Shah.
However, marketing is now strategic and measureable. Marketers can employ social media measurement to tap into a treasure trove a data on their customers, products, and competitors.
“Today, marketing is as much about calculating ROI as it is about creativity,” Shah writes. “We can demonstrate how we’re creating value by looking at actual metrics. And, marketing is what drives growth for many organizations by attracting and engaging people that can then be followed-up with by the sales team.” The same idea applies to PR.
Ditch the Jargon
Although jargon can provide communications short-cuts, many marketers over-use buzzwords like advertainment, clickbait, disruptor, ‘#growthhacking’ (always with a #), millennials and programmatic, says Marketing Week columnist Thomas Barta. When they do, they lose the attention and respect of colleagues and executive superiors. Buzzwords make it hard for people to understand your contribution to what matters: revenue and profit. Acronyms, too, confuse people and cause them to lose attention.
“Nobody in the C-suite gets excited about programmatic, brand positioning or click rates. But when you talk revenue, costs, profit or impact on society, the eyes are on you,” Barta says.
Speaking marketing jargon can hurt your career. However, speaking your company’s internal language, — that is, its product or services language — is a surprisingly effective career driver, Barta says, citing research by the London Business School. While Barta refers to marketing jargon, the same can be said of PR jargon.
Get Management Involved
Involving management in establishing strategies can help PR and marketing gain additional facetime, engagement and respect. Executive involvement is critical for setting PR & marketing strategy, just as it is for product development.
Getting the CEO and other decision-makers to agree on what constitutes success is one of the first steps to creating a healthy relationship with upper management. Quantifying goals can gain the support of management. That means learning how to use analytics and measurement.
The numbers most likely to make an impression on senior management involve impact on sales and profits (or donations if a nonprofit), rather than measurements like followers, likes, engagements and shares.
Bottom Line: Surveys indicate that many executives and professionals in other departments don’t understand and may not respect PR and marketing. However, PR and marketing professionals can follow these three steps gain more influence – and larger budgets.
William J. Comcowich founded and served as CEO of CyberAlert LLC, the predecessor of Glean.info. He is currently serving as Interim CEO and member of the Board of Directors. Glean.info provides customized media monitoring, media measurement and analytics solutions across all types of traditional and social media.
