When Should You Include Your CEO In a Company Marketing Campaign?

Branding is a big deal. You already know this; I know this. But, the way that the marketing industry currently positions branding is a little strange. It’s all about your company, your products, your logos, your colors, etc. Or, to put it simply, it’s all about what the big guys are doing. Coca-Cola basically bought Christmas. Sweet! That’s how branding works right?

Well, sometimes. But, think about Amazon, Tesla, and Microsoft. When you think about Tesla, do you really think about electric cars or their sweet logo? Or, are you thinking about Elon Musk?

The CEO handles a ton of the day-to-day of the company. From making boardroom decisions to addressing critical concerns, the CEO is a leader. But, what role does the CEO play in marketing? In our current marketing economy, it should be a big one.

This guide is meant for CEOs, agencies, C-level marketing members, and anyone who has the power to leverage the CEO as an asset. But, even if you don’t have that power, this can still be a great guide to help you understand when and where you could position a CEO in the future. Heck. You may be a CEO one day!

Understanding CEOs, Marketing, and Personal Branding

CEOs should always have a role in the marketing department. Whether it’s aligning goals, motivating teams, making critical product decisions, or creating sync between marketing and sales, CEOs are involved in marketing.

But, I’m not talking about handing broad activities. What is the CEOs role in the actual marketing campaigns themselves? CEOs are always on the hustle to sell their company to customers. How about selling themselves?

CEOs have to take ownership of their brand’s marketing department and start to think about how they can sell themselves to benefit the company. Customers love to hear about your brand. But, your brand is a thing. Sure, your customers may associate your brand with “stuff” (e.g., colors, emotions, places, objects, etc.) And that’s great!

But, how about a person? Is there a living, breathing, empathetic human that your customers can connect your brand with?

If not, that’s the perfect role for the CEO. Not only are CEOs automatically understood as subject matter experts (they’re the CEO after all) but they’re in a prime spot to become a key driver in customer acquisition and retention.

How?

Let’s talk about it!

When and Where to Include CEOs in Marketing Campaigns

Including your CEO in marketing campaigns serves two purposes.

1. It helps your customers connect with your brand on a deeper level and establishes a personal connection with a real, living, breathing human.
2. It helps build the CEOs personal branding — which trickles down into your brand as well.

There are plenty of campaigns that are a perfect fit for CEOs. Let’s look at a few.

About Us Videos

The power of videos in marketing is unbelievable. Want to put a video on your landing page? Great! It boosts conversions by up to 80%. Thinking about smacking a video on the front page of your website? Do it! It will be 53x more likely to reach page 1 on Google. There’s a reason that 52% of marketers say that video has the single best ROI of any marketing material — they simply work.

So, why not use video as a medium to help customers connect with your CEO?

Trust me — it works!

About Us videos do one thing really well. They make your leads LIKE you. And, that’s a bigger deal than you think it is. CEOs are in a position to make customers feel wanted and special. About Us videos help bring your company down to earth, and it gives customers one-on-one with your CEO.

Did you know that 68% of customers will leave a company if they feel like the company is indifferent towards them? Too many agencies focus on trying to make customers WANT a companies product. But, how are you making the customers feel about the company itself?

An About Us video featuring your CEO engaging with customers on a personal level is a great way to make them feel wanted, special, and engaged.

Don’t believe me?

Check out HubSpot’s About Us video. Tell me that doesn’t feel personal.

Emails from the CEO

Oh, look! I got an email in my inbox. I wonder who it’s from.

What!

It’s the CEO of that beverage brand I was looking at. The other brand just sent me a generic email. What’s happening? Am I special?

Why yes, yes I am.

Ok. So maybe it’s not quite that corny. But, a personalized letter from a CEO can really make a customers day. In fact, 81% of Execs believe that it is absolutely critical to have a CEO who is social with customers.

The way that you actually go about this can be difficult. For starters, product-based businesses obviously have less wiggle room with the custom vs. template email debate. They’re going to have to send out templated emails. There are too many customers. But, make sure that you at least include some magic fields and personalize those emails somewhat.

For services-based brands, it may make sense to send personal emails to your big leads or customers and templated to all of the small fries.

Also, you should think about when and where these emails should take place. You don’t want customers to think that the interaction is scripted. Your CEO shouldn’t touch base with your customer as part of a broad automated campaign. You want to reserve the CEO for certain occasions. Otherwise, you’ll degrade the power of the email.

Social Media

If you’re a CEO (or someone who works with a CEO) and you’re not active on social media, that’s a problem.

Why?

Your customers expect you to be active on social media! They’re going to come to you with concerns, questions, and big-ticket problems. And, you need to be there to answer those.

Did you know that 82% of consumers are more likely to TRUST a company if the CEO is active on social media? And 77% of customers are more likely to buy a companies product/service if the CEO is active on social media.

Oh! And 49% of your companies ENTIRE reputation is attributed to the CEO. So, you know, a little social media goes a long way.

Of course, you have to be careful on social media as a CEO. You can’t just say whatever, whenever. You have to be cool, calm, and collected. You’re the head person. What the CEO says has gravity.

On the Product?

Ok. Hear me out. Picture the CEO on the package of your product. Ok, not really.

But, did you know that Warren Buffet was on every can of Cherry Coke in China?

Does this have relevance to what you should do? Yes. Sort of. But, it’s not about Coke. Warren Buffet is one of the world’s best personal marketers. He’s sold himself. The CEO of a brand needs to figure out how to do that. No! Don’t put your face on the product. That’s creepy. But, you should definitely be comfortable being engaged with customers and being involved in your product on a personal level.

In short — don’t put your face on the product. That may work for Warren Buffet. But, hey, that’s Warren Buffet.

Think putting your face on a product is the worst way to market yourself as a CEO? You would be wrong.

Here are some things a CEO should definitely NOT do in marketing campaigns.

The DO NOTS of CEO Marketing Campaigns

Think this post wall going to be all fun-and-games? You wish!

Let’s talk about the no-nos.

Don’t Be Too Overconfident

As a CEO, you need to have some poise. Be involved in marketing campaigns, sure, but don’t overdo it.

Let’s take a little example. The CEO of LifeLock decided that his product was amazing that he would send out ads with his actual SSN on them.

Yes. That really happened.

I bet you can’t guess what happened next? His identity got stolen… 13 TIMES!

You should be confident in your product. Don’t be overconfident in anything. If you make a blunder like this, it’s going to hurt your brand 2x as much as if it were a random employees SSN. It makes customers think that you’re foolish, which makes them think your company is foolish.

So, when you’re giving that speech, making that podcast, sending that email, posting that social media blurb, etc. make sure that you keep your cool. You want to be in control and appear confident. But, you also want to appear trustworthy, knowledgable, and sane.

Don’t Be Bad at Social Media

You can definitely be bad at social media.

Social media should be your outlet for customer engagement, exciting news, product launches, and all brand-related business. It should never be an outlet for your social or political views.

Let’s look at Barilla — one of the world’s largest pasta makers.

In 2013, the Barilla CEO made a homophobic comment. To this day, Barilla’s social media still has people actively angry about that situation. Make sure that the CEO and C-level execs are all in the mix when it comes to social media content produced on the CEOs account. You need to make sure that your topics and content are at least semi-vetted before you plug them for the whole-wide-world to see.

The easiest way to avoid these situations is to stick to business-only material. Also, CEOs need to take special care when responding to consumers on social media. Remember, the CEO is the voice of the company. One wrong move can plunge value, lose customer trust, and even introduce fines.

Don’t Disconnect From the Brand

This is a huge issue. As a CEO, you don’t want to disconnect from the brand. In other words, don’t let your personal marketing come before your brand marketing.

Bill Gates is synonymous with Microsoft. Jeff Bezos is Amazon. That’s what you want. Mark Zuckerberg is pushing it. He’s starting to become an entity that exists outside of his brand. Don’t do that!

Make sure that you put your company first. This means that you don’t want to start going on tangents or publicizing yourself outside of the role you have in the company.

Trying to distance yourself from your brand through over interaction is a real thing. You can definitely be too active on social media. You can be too engaged with your customers.

I know. It sounds strange. But, it can definitely happen, and it will cause issues.

Final Thoughts

Leveraging CEOs as marketing assets is a great way to improve customer engagement, boost branding, and create real, tangible customer relationships. CEOs should be active on social media, the face of some personal videos, and send out some emails to customers and leads. But, make sure that you take extra care when handling a CEOs public presence. There’s a ton at stake.

Are you looking to create some killer social media campaigns built around your CEO but you don’t know how? Contact me.

This article first appeared on Jefflizik.com