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Marketing teams grow their internal reputation and credibility with clear communication with their key stakeholders. All team members benefit from leveraging proven templates when preparing a brief presentation for an executive audience. 

Why it matters: All steering groups and business reviews represent opportunities for team members to shine or to goof in short timeframes. 

This art affects all team marketing functions and is a golden opportunity for contributors to get visibly towards senior leaders. A high-profile communication situation where tools and templates come in handy. Short preparation times, high-stress levels, and high expectations are part of preparing these tasks. 

Streamline frequent communication situations! 

A marketing leadership team can either centralize reporting jobs to a small group of leaders or involve their broader team. By delegating, you increase the visibility of critical contributors across your team and give executives an opportunity for deeper dives into a subject. 

Great marketing leaders support their subordinates by streamlining typical reporting situations. Both to make it easier to develop a high-quality brief and to secure consistency in scope and levels towards executives. 

Using a blank sheet of paper as templates and wordy slides without highlighting essentials is a proven recipe for failure. Invest time and effort in these five areas you report on frequently. 

🏁 Goals and objectives 

Every new business year starts by setting goals and objectives, later used for monthly or quarterly follow-ups: 

• Revenue goals that marketing delivers towards 
• Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) to support strategic initiatives  
• Additional Key Performance Indicators 

Well-run businesses master the art of business scorecards. Marketing is in the middle of a transformation with stronger ties to revenue hold and a shift from activity to outcome-based goals. 

🦉Market Insights 

The quality of your market insights defines the effectiveness of your marketing content. Insights can cover a broad spectrum of topics like: 

• macroeconomy 
• market segments and micro-segmentation 
• customer needs and pain-points 

Capturing insights is easy, and it is hard to capture the right ones, put them in priority order, and clarify how they affect your strategy and actions. 

↔️ Strategy choices 

Markets are complex, and market strategy choices is an ongoing activity where new decisions are needed: 

• eco system constellations, and joint statements 
• growth opportunities at various stages of market maturity
• target micro segmentations that are central for focus in emerging markets. 

Your best bet in reaching decisions is to articulate four options: status quo, least effort, second best, and the best option. Expect the most choices between the least effort and the second-best alternative. 

📝 Marketing Plans 

Marketing planning is an art where plans come in many shapes and forms: 

• yearly marketing plans 
• major marketing programs 
• Account-centric marketing plans 
• marketing campaigns 

Mature businesses master all four well and can be judged by how they deliver on planned outcomes. It is easy to over-promise and under-deliver. 

📊 Progress reporting 

Great progress reports make it easy for executives to understand progress to date and projected results on original deliveries: 

• on track 
• at risk and requiring attention 
• off track 

It is tempting to gravitate towards past activities and honk your own horn around recent successes. The more mature you get, the more you focus on projected outcomes and forward-looking actions for the last two categories. Use different templates for the three types of reporting. 

Questions for you and your team 

1. Which of the five areas do we report well on today? 
2. How frequently do we need to address each area? 
3. Which templates need a refresh? 
4. Where do we find best practices for the templates we need to improve?
5. Where do we publish master templates for universal access? 

Additional reading suggestions 

• Business review PowerPoint templates, presentation slides, and PPT design [SLIDES] – by SlideTeam 
• How to set marketing goals based on business goals [BLOGPOST] – by Bob Ruffolo 
• Marketing OKR examples [BLOGPOST] – by Profit.co
• Market research templates: a complete guide [BLOGPOST] – by Qualtrics 
• Marketing decisions | Different types [BLOGPOST] – by Richard Daniels 
• How to Write a marketing plan [with 20+ Templates] – by Mahnoor Sheikh
• How to deliver a flawless Executive Business Review [VIDEO] – by Laura Grendal and Chris McNamara