OVER TO YOU
Architect growth
Why marketing is uniquely placed to build the foundations of growth.
Resources to accompany chapter 1 of Make Marketing Matter: Change perceptions. Drive performance. Architect growth.
Chapter snapshot
The way we buy has changed, and the line between business buyers and consumers has all but disappeared. Buyers are human beings, buying for themselves or for the businesses they work for. Businesses grow by selling to them.
Marketing has a vantage point no other function has. Sales sees the buyers ready to buy now. Finance sees the ones with the highest returns. Operations sees the ones most profitable to serve. Marketing sees all of them, plus the much larger group not yet looking to buy. That perspective is what makes marketing uniquely placed to be the architect of growth: drawing up the plans that the rest of the business builds.
That role only works if the rest of the business understands and values what marketing brings. Chapter 1 names the five disconnects that stand in the way and makes the case for marketing leaders who are bilingual: fluent in marketing to drive effectiveness, fluent in business to drive understanding.
Definitions in this chapter
architect growth objective.
To deliberately establish marketing that designs and enables the conditions, connections and capabilities that drive performance and growth.
Check In
Take a moment to reflect honestly on where you are today, whichever side of the table you sit on.
- As the marketer, when you're challenged on marketing's approach, do you retreat into technical explanations, or translate the strategy into revenue impact and competitive advantage?
- If you sit outside marketing, how often do you pull marketing into work outside its longer-term focus, or question the budget or timescales before fully understanding what's proposed?
- Which marketing investments in your business are being treated as "done" rather than continuously optimised?
Take Action
Identify the disconnects. Work through the five and answer each question honestly:
- Lost in translation: Does marketing communicate in marketing language or business language?
- Measuring what moves: What does marketing currently report on, and does it connect audience metrics to the outcomes others are measured on?
- Creative vs commercial: When marketing presents creative work, does the commercial intent come through?
- Random acts of marketing: How much of what marketing delivers is strategically driven versus reactively requested?
- The "job done" delusion: Which marketing investments are being treated as complete rather than continuously optimised?
Ask your boardroom peers or marketing leader to answer the same questions. Where your answers differ is where the conversation starts.
Bring it to the room
At your next leadership meeting, ask everyone around the table to describe the ideal customer for growth in one sentence. Put the answers side by side. You'll likely see each function's lens at work. Then ask how you decide which definition is right.
Don't try to settle on one answer in the room. Instead, agree to test every view against the data. Look for the customers who consistently show up across all the lenses: satisfied, efficient to win and serve, and valuable to the business. Cross-reference sector, size, buying behaviour, speed to value and retention with revenue, margin, lifetime value, and cost to acquire and serve.
Bring the findings back as a shared definition of your perfect pairing, two to three sentences everyone can recognise their own lens in. Chapter 2 walks through how to build it.
Related reading
Marketing’s moment is now: The C-suite partnership to deliver on growth, McKinsey & Company
This 2019 McKinsey and Company article put numbers on the disconnect between marketing and the boardroom. It's still relevant to help understand the scepticism marketing leaders are up against and why the partnership with the C-suite matters so much. Read the article >
Back pocket arguments
- When marketing shapes strategic direction, long-term shareholder returns shareholder returns and short-term return on assets both improve.
H. Feng, N.A. Morgan & L.L. Rego, ‘Marketing department power and firm performance’, Journal of Marketing, 79(5), 2015. - Firms with a Chief Marketing Officer outperform those without by around 15%.
F. Germann, P. Ebbes & R. Grewal, ‘The Chief Marketing Officer matters!’, Journal of Marketing, 79(3), 2015. - Board members with marketing experience actively improve firm growth by prioritising it as a strategic objective.
K.A. Whitler, R. Krause & D.R. Lehmann, ‘When and how board members with marketing experience facilitate firm growth’, Journal of Marketing, 82(5), 2018.
Get the full picture
This page includes additional resources to support Chapter 1: Architect growth in the book Make Marketing Matter.
The chapter looks at what it means to architect growth, why marketing's perspective makes it uniquely placed to do so, and the five disconnects that can stop it from happening. Make Marketing Matter is a comprehensive guide for marketing leaders and boardroom colleagues who want to build a marketing ecosystem that shows impact, links to outcomes, and leads to recognisable revenue.
30
Definitions
Clear, precise language that gives you a shared vocabulary for your ecosystem approach.
40
Practical Exercises
Consistent, repeatable actions that bring the ecosystem approach to life.
Preorder Make Marketing Matter
Make Marketing Matter: Change perceptions. Drive performance. Architect growth. is out on 20th October 2026.
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