Several years ago, we were doing work with a startup we looooooved. Their CMO is one of the smartest people I’ve ever worked with, and they had a crackerjack team for all things content, social, web, email, and more.
About six months into our working relationship, I approached the CMO and suggested we start discussing measurement with the CEO and president. He didn’t want to do it. Was pretty adamant against it, in fact. His thinking was it opened more of a door to what wasn’t working and they would solely focus on that versus the bigger picture—or even the success we were having.
But I kept bugging him about it until he finally acquiesced.
As a marketing group—my team and his—we created a 20-slide deck packed with campaign results: charts, benchmarks, engagement rates, attribution models, the whole shebang. We’d spent HOURS slicing the data, tightening the visuals, and ensuring it showed the information needed to make decisions.
The CMO and I met with the CEO and president to show them our great results, and a few places where we were going to recommend some shifts in strategy.
Five minutes in, the CEO interrupted us. He said, “Wait—what am I looking at here? This all just looks like you’re busy, doesn’t tell me anything. Can you just tell me if all this money I’m spending on you guys is working?”
Oof.
I avoided the CMO’s eyes because I KNEW what he was thinking—and I was not wrong. He knew what the response would be, and he let me talk him into doing it anyway.
After he and I licked our chops, and he was finished telling me, “I told you so,” I approached it from a different angle. I knew we had plenty of data to tell a compelling story, but we had forgotten to actually tell the story.
From Reporting to Decision-Making
That moment with our client is a perfect example of a widespread problem: marketers are swimming in data, but we haven’t been taught how to translate it into decisions.
We know how to report. We know how to measure. We have dashboards and decks and beautifully designed campaign wrap-ups.
But what we don’t always know how to do is bridge the gap between all of that activity and what the business actually cares about:
- Are we making progress toward our goals?
- What should we keep doing, stop doing, or do differently?
- Is this worth the money we’re spending?
Without a clear narrative, executives default to one of two reactions: they zone out because they don’t see the relevance; or they zero in on the negative because that’s the only actionable thing they can find. And zero’ing in on the negative is exactly what our client did.
Wah. Wah.
Neither of those outcomes helps marketing earn trust, budget, or influence.
To close this gap, we have to move from presenting metrics to telling stories. Stories that start with a business question—not a data point. Stories that frame the insight, not just the activity.
Stories that guide next steps instead of overwhelming people with every possible detail. Stories that, you know, you’re actually good at creating because you spend all of your days doing that for other stakeholders.
If you don’t tell the story, someone else will. And chances are, they’ll miss the nuance, overlook the success, and make decisions based on their gut instead of your data.
The Executive Mindset
In most cases, executives do not ignore your work; they process information completely differently than you do.
It’s not that they don’t care about click-through rates or brand sentiment or funnel velocity. It’s that they don’t have the time or mental bandwidth to translate those metrics into meaning.
And frankly, it’s not their job to do that.
It’s yours.
When you present data, they’re scanning for a few key things:
- Are we on track to meet our goals?
- Is this investment delivering real business value?
- What decisions do I need to make right now—and what happens if I don’t?
- Is there anywhere we can save money?
They’re looking for headlines, not play-by-plays. They want a story that says, “This is what’s working, this is what’s not, and here’s what we recommend doing next.”
Think of it this way: you’re deep in the weeds, pruning and watering individual plants. Executives are flying over your yard in a helicopter, trying to spot signs of wildfires. If you show them a flower and ask, “Isn’t this beautiful?” they have no idea what they’re looking at—and most times they don’t care. Yes, it’s a beautiful flower, but it’s only one and, because you pulled it out of the ground, it’s going to die in a few days.
But it gets even trickier: they won’t always ask the right questions out loud, yet they are definitely thinking:
- “What’s the opportunity cost of this initiative?”
- “How does this move the needle on revenue, margin, or retention?”
- “What risks are we not seeing?”
- “Is this team focused on the right things?”
- “Why are we focused on X instead of Y?”
So when you’re working to build the narrative around your data, ask yourself, “Am I answering the questions they haven’t asked out loud yet—or am I just showing them what I worked on?”
When you frame your narrative through an executive lens, everything changes. They stop seeing marketing as a cost center and start seeing it as a strategic driver. They stop picking apart your charts and start leaning in with follow-up questions that matter. You stop defending your budget and start shaping the conversation.
If you’re thinking, “Wow, Gini, this is a lot to take in,” you’re not wrong.
When you understand how executives think—and you tailor your story accordingly—you don’t just report on what happened. You start to influence what happens next.
Finding the Story in the Data
OK, so now you know what questions they’re not asking but definitely thinking, and you know how to frame your narrative through the executive lens, now it’s time to pull together your dashboards, spreadsheets, reports, and campaign metrics—and build your story.
This is where almost every one of us get stuck. Me included. We either throw all the data into a deck and hope the meaning will magically surface, or we cherry-pick a few feel-good numbers and hope no one asks follow-up questions.
But if you want to build your story with the executive or client in mind, you have to spend the time to go deeper.
Look Beyond the Obvious Metrics
The first (maybe obvious thing) is to look beyond the vanity metrics—the open rates, impressions, bounce rates, and CTRs.
These are helpful for you and your team because they’ll help you determine what works and what doesn’t work. But they’re the tip of the iceberg. They’re not what you’ll present to leadership.
When you see those numbers, ask yourself:
- What changed before and after this campaign?
- What’s trending up, down, or staying flat over time?
- Where are the outliers? What’s behaving unexpectedly?
- Sometimes the most compelling stories live in the data we usually skip past.
Find Patterns and Anomalies That Matter
Next you want to find patterns and anomalies—especially ones that tie to strategic goals. A spike in engagement might be interesting, but a consistent upward trend across multiple channels? That’s a story.
Likewise, anomalies matter. If something unexpected happened, don’t gloss over it. Ask yourself:
- Why did this suddenly drop off?
- What could explain this change in behavior?
- Is this a one-time blip or the start of a larger shift?
A really great example of this is back in the day, everyone left all sorts of blog comments. And they were comments you could read because they were from your peers and colleagues, not angry trolls.
During the pandemic, that dropped significantly and then all but stopped entirely. As it was happening, I remember asking myself what was going on.
It turned out that the bigger trend was people were opting for private communities because their bosses, who were suddenly monitoring where they spent their online time because they didn’t see them in person, were coming down on them for leaving blog comments.
So, as we were advising clients who were concerned no one was reading their content anymore, we recommended launching private places, like the Spin Sucks Community, for their people to hang out.
Your job is to find the signal in the noise—and then explain what that signal means in the context of the business.
Contextualize the Data
Raw numbers are meaningless without context. A 12% increase in demo requests might sound great… unless the sales team can’t handle the volume. Or unless last year’s increase was 40%.
When you share data points, add the context:
- Compared to what?
- Over what time period?
- In response to what inputs?
- Relative to what goal?
This transforms “what happened” into “what it means”—and sets you up to tell a stronger, more strategic story.
Uncover the “Why”in Your Data
Don’t stop at what happened. Dig until you understand why it happened.
Ask questions like:
- What action (or inaction) drove this result?
- Was this part of a trend or a reaction to something new?
- Did this perform differently for different audiences or channels?
The “why” is the heartbeat of your narrative. It’s what helps you explain cause and effect, and make the leap from reporting to recommending.
Next week, we’ll pick up right where we left off, starting with how to find the story in your data.
We’ll explore the four types of data stories every marketer should recognize—confirmation, revelation, warning, and opportunity—and how to use them to guide strategic action (and yes, earn more budget).
So if you’ve ever stared at a spreadsheet thinking, “There’s something in here, I just don’t know what it is,” next week’s article is for you.
Until then, go look at your last marketing report with fresh eyes—and ask yourself: What story is this data trying to tell?
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