The Best Marketing Channel You’re Not Using: Your CEO

Last week I published an article and a few LinkedIn posts. Within days, I received two strong referrals and a direct client inquiry. An acquaintance invited me to coffee to ask about my business because they’re starting their own.

Sure, I don’t get this level of easy response every time I click publish. But this week wasn’t exactly an anomaly for me either. I write online because writing online is the single most effective way to grow my business and expand my network. I believe in publishing online because I reap its benefits every week.

If you’ve been on the internet for more than 5 minutes, you’ve heard someone harp about the importance of publishing and building a personal brand. The message is ubiquitous, but I still think people downplay its real business impact.

What’s my point? The more complicated your product, the more likely you are to rely on person-to-person sales. In most organizations, the top salesperson is the CEO or founder. When you want to close a critical account, you send in the executives. This same sales power is magnified on the internet. When you want to scale your sales efforts, and get your best salesperson talking to the masses, you forward your CEO this article to persuade them to invest in executive-led marketing. 

What is executive-led marketing?

Executive-led marketing is when a business leader deliberately becomes the face of a brand. It’s a marketing strategy that leans on human trust and the weight of a leader’s title. 

Executive-led marketing comes in dozens of forms. Some executives build personal brands on X or LinkedIn. Others author industry books. We’ve all heard executives speak at conferences or on our favorite podcasts. Executives leverage the weight of their title to write columns, speak to journalists, lead webinars and workshops, or even demonstrate their products on TikTok. 

Pulling executives into marketing means taking advantage of one of the most cost-effective marketing channels in the history of business.

People follow people

Media is entertainment. The most entertaining profiles to follow on the internet are real people, not brands. That means that executives have a lot more leverage when it comes to getting attention than your typical LinkedIn page that belongs to your company. There have even been studies that show having executive or other business leader-type titles in your bio can increase your reach on LinkedIn by as much as 4x. 

Getting executive buy-in isn't just a blanket strategy. It's a cost-effective way to get your message in front of your ideal buyers. People want to follow people. Journalists want to hear from those at the top. Employees, current and future, want to know how their employers think. 

There’s also an algorithm factor in play. Have you looked at brand pages on social media lately? Companies with millions of followers get almost zero organic reach anymore. It’s pay to play. Meanwhile, publishing from a real person’s social media account is the fastest way to organically get a message to the masses.

Trust is human

How do people select a wealth manager or a therapist? Most wealth managers and therapists will provide similar services and experiences. People go with them because they feel a connection. They like their therapist. They trust their wealth manager. 

Sometimes I think people overcomplicate sales in this way. One reason to put an executive front and center is that they can make an impersonal purchase personal. There’s a likability factor.

Companies underplay the role of simple trust in their marketing. You don’t always need to come up with a flashy marketing campaign. Sometimes people hire your organization because they recognize the CEO of one brand and not the other.

Hear it from the top

It’s not just customers who want to see into the mind of the CEO. Journalists, employees, and investors put a deep emphasis on the CEO’s word. Journalists writing industry stories want to speak with CEOs, CTOs, CIOs, etc., not marketing people. 

Employees, future and current, see the executive team as a mirror into the organization’s culture. If you want to know what it’s like to work at an organization, look to its leadership.

You can turn this around: If you want to attract and retain top talent at your organization, encourage internal business leaders to talk about the inner workings of the company. Answer the question: What are we building?

The most obvious people who care to hear from leadership are current and future investors. Investors are trying to forecast the future of an organization. The C-suite is their window into the mind of the company. If investors resonate with your CEO’s vision of the future, they’re more likely to put money behind the organization. 

Want executive buy-in? Marketing must carry the load

Many executives don’t need convincing. Executive-led marketing has been around as long as there has been media distribution. Even Benjamin Franklin grew his businesses and brought awareness to his inventions by self-publishing books and articles.

The reason most executives don’t publish comes down to reputation and quality. Executives know that quality requires time and effort. Since most executives are time-constrained, they don’t publish at all to avoid diminishing their reputation by publishing anything of low quality. 

This is where executive-led marketing falls on the marketing team. It’s your job to partner with leadership to form a clear strategy and structure. Make it easy on the executive team by creating a publishing cadence and calendar. Discuss a strategy for regularly helping executives create and publish their ideas.

Michael Bloomberg once said that being the face of the company is the hardest job for an executive to outsource. The best most organizations can do is relieve the time burden of publishing by becoming — or hiring — a partner that keeps them accountable and publishing at their standard.