The root of stakeholder buy-in: How better attribution can impact organizational buy-in

If you’re not a decision-maker within your marketing department, getting stakeholder buy-in can make or break your strategy turning into execution.

But what really earns stakeholder buy-in at the end of the day? Anecdotally, it seems most marketers struggle with stakeholder buy-in — we all have frustration stories either personally or from our peers about executives or managers not seeing the value in our proposals. Yet according to CallRail’s Attribution Report, only 8% of us cite a lack of support as our most pressing problem.

Instead, 36% of us say poor insight into what’s working or not working is the biggest hindrance to successful campaigns. This may seem at odds with the fact that marketers still struggle with stakeholder buy-in, but in reality it simply reflects how data-driven marketing has become. It could be that in order to achieve stakeholder support, marketers need to provide sufficient data to prove their efforts are working. As a result, more of us consider attribution a pressing issue than we do stakeholder buy-in — you need the former to get the latter.

What’s a marketer to do? Look for where stakeholder interests and marketing attribution overlap. Below you’ll find ways to inject the soft skill side of stakeholder buy-in with the data-driven side of attribution.

Know your personalities

Not everyone responds to the same information the same way. Your CMO may love lead numbers, but your Creative Director may respond better to hearing customers rave about the new website layout.

Know your audience. Just because some stakeholders aren’t data-oriented doesn’t mean you can’t quantify their looser success metrics. In doing so, you’ll make both left brain and right brain stakeholders happy.

Check in regularly

On projects you already have buy-in for, make sure you check in with stakeholders regularly. When you present them with data throughout the initiative and not just at the end, it helps build trust and transparency and gives you better leverage for projects in the future.

Keep stakeholders’ goals in mind

This is particularly true when stakeholders have their own stakeholders they’re beholden to. If you can prove with numbers that your initiatives not only help the business but also the key stakeholders on your project, they will be more likely to support you in the future. It’s effective for the business’s bottom line and your personal growth within the organization.

Be honest

Marketing is both an art and a science, meaning there is rarely a foolproof strategy or campaign. It pays to be transparent with data, whether it proves your campaigns worked or failed. In either scenario, demonstrating what worked and what could be improved on demonstrates to your stakeholders that you have an understanding of how to repeat successes and avoid making similar mistakes in the future. There’s no such thing as perfect marketing, but with the right data you can show your stakeholders how you’re constantly progressing upwards.

Implementing marketing attribution is key to not only developing better campaigns, but also to getting the right people to sign on to your ideas. To learn more about how to incorporate marketing attribution to your business, download our Attribution Report for free.