I was just looking back at an infographic from last year “How to determine Facebook and Twitter ROI”. The infographic says 73% of CEOs think marketers lack business credibility and are not the growth generators they really should be.

And I would have to agree. Instead of marketers mistakenly scrambling to show their organizations that metrics like fans/followers, web traffic and social mentions as part of ROI, they should really start focusing on business objectives and strategy. After all what drives a business? It is revenue generated by sales.

We need to look at the full picture instead of small glimpses. We need to look into the full impact of advertising, PR, marketing and media. We need to understand how those fit into our sales and customer service activities. And how in turn that fits into our competitive landscape. But most importantly we need to understand who our customers really are, their information seeking behavior and how best to reach out to them to get recommendations and drive sales.

Marketing is all about making it work. Figuring out what we need, constantly fine tuning. And working in close collaboration with sales, customer service, product development, packaging….you name it.

There is a reason why 73% of CEOs have such a negative view about marketing….and it can be fixed.