How to Become a More Effective Marketing Leader.

• Author: Pomehene, Laura
• Position: STRENGTHENING YOUR CORE

ONE OF THE BIGGEST CHALLENGES MARKETING LEADERS FACE is navigating internal politics and applying the appropriate level of influence to achieve the bank's strategic objectives. The people you surround yourself with and how you build alliances could bolster the credibility of marketing and ultimately your career.

Why should marketing build alliances?

Today's marketing leaders must be jack-of-all trades and learn to get to know people outside their normal circle. Colleagues across different disciplines and diverse backgrounds will help marketers broaden their perspective. Marketing simply cannot function effectively without alliances. No matter how important or critical a marketing project is to the bank, marketers are unlikely to accomplish it without help from someone outside of the department. The strength of your internal relationships can determine the success of your marketing objective.

Which alliances are critical to marketing success?

At the basic level, we all build strong alliances with our sales teams. After all, sales can make or break the success of any campaign, product launch or ongoing sales initiative. Beyond sales, tapping into management, supervisors or other influential leaders in the following departments can go a long way:

Executive team: Communicate with the team in their language. Understanding and using financial terms and metrics to explain what you do in marketing is crucial to establishing credibility and justifying your contribution.

Finance: Finance must be involved in the numbers or else your figures will constantly be questioned. Calculating product profitability, even at a basic level, is essential to applying customer and lifetime profitability and allocating your limited marketing resources.

Training: Building a connection with training ensures marketing projects are given appropriate priority in light of the increasing demands today of compliance and operational training.

IT: Marketing and IT are increasingly more tethered. Creating a bond with this department can ensure marketing has a voice in technology decisions that affect the customer experience.

Compliance: Regulations and their interpretations are often subjective. A good relationship with your compliance officer is crucial to navigating regulatory waters and avoiding unnecessary obstacles along the way.

Operations: The back office can be a huge resource for system knowledge, customer-data cleaning, product implementation, record...