Why focusing on business priorities defines lasting success

Early in my career, I learned a valuable lesson that has stayed front and center. I was working for a company struggling to meet its marks. We were doing fine, but not knocking it out of the park. I walked into a quarterly business review, confident in our marketing metrics. We were hitting or surpassing every KPI, and I presented our achievements with pride. My CEO made a statement that stopped me in my tracks: “Marketing success means nothing unless the company as a whole is winning.”

That moment was a turning point. In our focus on metrics, it’s easy to overlook what really matters. It’s a lesson I was grateful to learn early and one I believe every leader should embrace.

THE POWER OF MEASURING WHAT MATTERS MOST

As business, and particularly marketing professionals, metrics are drilled into us. It’s what we were taught, so it would be predictable for me to operate like that. Don’t get me wrong, metrics still matter. But they aren’t the only thing that matters.

The problem with a laser focus on your individual department’s goals is that it tends to be myopic, focused only on your stats. We track what’s measurable. We celebrate what’s improving. We report on what highlights our team’s productivity. However, it’s easy to optimize for your own scorecard without checking whether those scores are driving company growth.

The harder work is asking whether we’re moving the needle on the larger business goals and aligning your metrics to that.

Unfortunately, your department dashboard can show improvement while the company and customers need something different. Your team can hit targets while overall revenue needs a different kind of support.

My CEO’s feedback helped me see this gap. Marketing wins that don’t translate to business wins are just activity, and this insight applies to all areas of the business. Fortunately for me, this CEO knew that I was early in my career and provided me with a teachable moment.

MY APPROACH NOW

Since that conversation, I’ve changed what my team measures and how we define success. Every initiative has to answer two questions: How does this support overall company growth and health? And how does this help our customers?

Not just “how does this improve our brand score” or “how does this boost engagement?” Those might indicate progress, but they’re not the end goal. Business impact is the goal.

This means:

• Throwing support behind products customers will actually buy
• Building brand equity that translates into customer preference and pricing power
• Improving customer experience in ways that drive retention and expansion
• Creating demand that converts to revenue

4 WAYS TO ALIGN METRICS WITH BUSINESS GOALS

If you lead any function, here are four things to consider to better align your efforts with business outcomes. See if any of these resonate with you:

• Start with company goals. What three to five outcomes would make your CEO and board happy this year? Revenue growth? Customer retention? Market share? Margin improvement? Build your metrics from there.
  
• Connect your work to those outcomes. Draw clear lines between your initiatives and company business goals. If you can’t make that connection, you have an opportunity to refocus.

• Celebrate progress, not victory. Improving KPIs shows progress. That’s worth acknowledging. But it’s not the finish line.

• Make your metrics achievable, with room for growth. The best metrics show you where you’re creating value and where you have room to improve. They help you make better decisions about where to focus your efforts.

WHY BUSINESS ALIGNMENT CREATES BETTER RESULTS

When you tie your success to your company’s success, several things happen.

You make better decisions about what to prioritize. You have clearer opportunities for collaboration with other departments, reducing silos. You create more customer value. You build stronger cases for resources because you’re speaking business impact language.

HOW MY TEAM OPERATES TODAY

When my team presents quarterly results now, we start with how the business is performing. Then we show how our work has contributed, or the opportunities for improvement. It connects our work to what matters. It helps us focus (or refocus) on creating real value rather than just checking boxes.

The CEO was right. Marketing success means nothing unless the company as a whole is winning. But here’s the good news: When you align your metrics with business goals, everyone wins more often.

Melissa Puls is chief marketing officer and SVP of customer success and renewals at Ivanti.

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