Marketing executives should be interested in…  

…the font? No, instead they should be interested in how their company’s receptionist welcomes the visitors.

…new tools? Well, possibly. Though you need to check whether you’re utilizing your existing tool & media portfolio systematically and with quality.

…number of marketing team members? I don’t know your approach, but mine is that the whole organization works in marketing. In best cases I can add customers and partners into my team as well.

…metrics? Sure. But not just analytics. Benchmark sales management systems. Do you have a system that tells you on Mon morning how your marketing week will look like? Do you know where you need to place your management efforts? Do you have metrics for activities and their quality, beforehand? And it goes without saying that on Fri evening you want to see results on your week, what should be done differently in the future, what did you miss and what did you learn. Include your stuff into your company’s management systems and there is no need for separate marketing reports. Everybody can see what will be done and they can follow up on the results.

…technology? To some extent. But if you have nothing to say or you don’t have content creation resources, the technology is not going to do marketing for you. Get a good team around you and think if you could do whatever it is that you want manually first. If it turns out to be important, I bet there’s a ton of technologies delivering it.

…strategy? Of course. But do you know how to take it into the level of copy texts? Do you have the tools to dive deep enough into the strategy in order to come up with the most appropriate ways to apply and enforce it in the daily marketing activities?

…sales? Yes. If you know how to sell it, you’re in the best place to market it. In addition you avoid the pointless marketing material requests by sales people (note, just the pointless ones, not all by any means). You will be a valuable sparring partner for sales and there is no need to go into the debate on whether marketing and sales should co-exist and support one another. Consider yourself married with sales and always be the first one to volunteer to take sales cases and meeting customers.

…customers? YES. They will tell you everything you need to know on how to best market your services. If you’re willing to find out.

…hands-on? Oh yes. After all, marketing is an activity. Start being active.