Five questions every retail CEO should ask their marketing team
High Street retailers initially embraced ecommerce. Many adapted quickly to PPC and, by the mid to late 2010s, were running things quite effectively.
Then they stopped.
Digital marketing didn’t. It kept evolving: video-first platforms, iOS privacy changes, AI-driven ad delivery. The retailers who built their success on PPC developed marketing cultures centred entirely around its frameworks. When the platforms evolved, these retailers didn’t evolve with them.
“Large retailers are telling us they’re falling behind. Their in-house teams haven’t kept pace over the last four or five years, and the large agencies they rely on aren’t exactly known for innovation or nimbleness.”
Will Ashton, Nest CEO
The legacy structures within large retailers make it difficult for them to adapt quickly. Their systems, built around individual channels, are ill-suited for the agile approach required to respond to changing consumer behaviours. In a world of D2C speedboats, many omnichannel retailers have found themselves trapped in slow-moving tankers.
The good news: High Street retailers can catch up. But it requires the C-suite to get involved. Not to manage day-to-day execution, but to ask the right questions and remove the barriers that are holding their teams back.
These are the five questions that matter most.
1. Are our marketing objectives aligned across the team and with our overall business goals?
Misaligned objectives can lead to inefficient spending and a fragmented customer experience. If the online marketing team is solely focused on ecommerce sales while the in-store team aims for footfall, the business misses opportunities to direct the customer journey across all touchpoints.
Having the wrong short-term tactical metrics exacerbates the problem. It leads to over-investment in bottom-of-funnel ads with limited impact on broader business KPIs.
“The entire team including finance, marketing, brand, needs to be united, singing from the same hymn sheet. They all must understand the business’s core goal, the key performance indicators, and, most importantly, who the customer is.”
Lara Gibbs, Nest Senior Performance Director
Response: Develop a North Star metric for marketing which reflects the overarching, omnichannel goals of the business. Ensure every team’s objectives ladder up to this goal, with a clear link between the North Star and day-to-day activities.
2. What are the signals my marketing isn’t working?
As an organisational leader, it’s vital to look beyond optimistic channel reports and grasp the true impact of marketing on your business goals. Raw platform data is merely a starting point. Genuine understanding requires deep interrogation.
Response: It is highly risky to stick with the same strategies from years past without them being repeatedly tested and shown to still work. Examine whether slow decision-making (often caused by wrong structures and departmental silos) is hampering progress. Consider whether budget allocation across different marketing activities reflects the outcomes you actually want to achieve.
3. How do we measure the incremental impact of our marketing investments?
This probes the fundamental return on investment of marketing. CEOs and CFOs need to understand how marketing is truly driving additional value—and how to know whether outcomes would have happened anyway without the spend.
In a cross-channel environment, optimising marketing requires a focus on incrementality. Quantifying the unique contribution of each channel enables data-driven budget allocation. Without this, marketing spend is a leap of faith rather than a strategic investment.
Response: Develop a comprehensive testing framework conducted by trained experts. Advanced measurement techniques such as marketing mix modelling, multi-cell tests, and lift tests can uncover incremental gains. Geo-lift tests specifically can isolate the impact of digital marketing on both online and offline sales.
4. Do we have the right people, data, and tech setups to adapt to platform evolution?
The digital landscape is in a state of permanent revolution. Tech platforms innovate at pace and scale. Ignoring these shifts leads to outdated strategies, missed opportunities, and loss of competitive advantage.
Response: Ensure leadership is up to speed on the latest developments from major ad platforms. Work with trusted partners who provide an external lens on where platforms are heading. Build the skills and capabilities needed to thrive in the landscape those platforms are creating.
5. What barriers prevent our marketing team from achieving its full potential?
Marketing teams often face internal or external obstacles that hinder their effectiveness. The complexity of omnichannel retailers—more touchpoints, more channels, more stakeholders—means more potential barriers to driving change.
Response: The C-suite must understand what success in modern digital marketing requires. Only then can they ask the right questions and remove barriers to progress. Open dialogue between teams allows marketing to articulate challenges around resources, technology limitations, or internal silos—and address them.
What comes next
Once High Street brands confront these strategic questions, they’re in a position to transform their digital efforts. Brands that excel leverage their existing assets: strong brand recognition, physical infrastructure, diverse customer touchpoints.
The D2C disruptors that raced ahead didn’t have these advantages. What they had was marketing infrastructure built for the current era. High Street retailers can build that too.
Ready to see what we can do for your brand?
Book a call with our team to get know more about it.
