Where does marketing's real power lie?

Why marketing’s future relevance lies in connecting, not just executing

After our roundtable with marketing leaders, one thing became clear: Belgian enterprises are operating in a fundamentally different reality than a decade ago. Organisations have grown more complex and more interconnected, while markets have become more fragmented and less predictable. Technology has expanded rapidly, and AI is accelerating both business processes and decision-making. At the same time, hybrid ways of working have greatly reshaped how teams collaborate.

This evolving context raises an important question: is marketing stepping into the strategic role this new reality requires, and does the organisation allow that role to be earned?

Despite these complexities, marketing today is often still perceived as a support function: they’re responsible for campaigns and content. In many sales-driven, B2B, or highly regulated environments, marketing is still viewed primarily as a cost centre. Teams are operationally strong, but often lack the influence to shape strategic decisions.

Yet this perception is increasingly at odds with reality, and with what marketing is being asked to contribute at a business level.

Why marketing loses influence as organisations scale

As organisations grow, coordination becomes more important than pure execution. More teams are involved in decisions, responsibilities span across multiple functions and it becomes less clear who owns what.

• Sales prioritises short-term revenue
• Finance protects margins and efficiency
• Operations focuses on delivery and risk.

Each function optimises within its own domain, often successfully. But business results suffer when these departments operate in parallel rather than in alignment.

This is where marketing has a unique position. It sits at the intersection of:

• External market and customer realities
• Internal capabilities and constraints
• Long-term brand and value creation.

When marketing is not involved in strategic decision-making to connect these perspectives, organisations risk becoming increasingly siloed. The company strategy gets diluted more and more in the day-to-day decisions, even when everyone is performing well within their own role.

The marketing leaders at our roundtable recognised a clear paradox: as organisational complexity increases, marketing becomes more essential. Yet, its influence on business strategy often decreases.

Earning Marketing’s “License to Operate”

During one of our roundtables, a participant introduced a powerful idea: marketing’s “license to operate.”

By this, they referred to marketing’s strategic relevance within the organisation, something that is not automatically granted, but earned over time. It’s the combination of trust and credibility that allows marketing to influence strategic decisions, rather than just execute them.

Marketing earns this license when it consistently shows that it contributes to business value, not just marketing output. In practice, this means that marketing:

• Shares accountability with sales and finance, instead of working in isolation
• Looks beyond marketing metrics to business results
• Explains why choices are made, not just what is delivered
• Balances short-term performance with long-term brand building

When marketing operates this way, its role starts to shift.

In organisations where marketing is not limited to communication and campaigns, but is also closely involved in corporate strategy, it becomes the function that translates what’s happening in the market and with customers into clear internal priorities.

In these companies, marketing is no longer seen mainly as an execution function. It still drives brand and demand generation, but is also involved in decisions around pricing and customer experience. When marketing aligns its objectives with finance and sales, marketing is forced to make trade-offs and explain why choices are made, not just what’s being executed.

As a result, the internal perception of marketing changes. Trust grows because marketing is no longer judged on activities, but on its contribution to business results. Conversations shift from campaigns to impact, and from channels to value creation.

This is where marketing earns its license to operate, and where its role as a bridge builder becomes possible.

Marketing as a bridge builder

Once marketing earns its license to operate, its true role becomes visible. Marketing is no longer just a delivery function, but a department that connects parts of the organisation that would otherwise remain siloed.

That’s where marketing’s strategic value fully develops: it brings coherence to a complex environment.

1. Connecting strategy to real-world execution

Marketing translates strategic ambition into clear choices and tactics. In an environment that is shaped by AI and automation, focus easily gets lost.

Marketing helps the organisation make clearer decisions:

• Which customers to prioritise
• Which propositions to scale
• Which initiatives to stop

Marketing leaders increasingly see it as their role to ensure innovation supports business strategy instead of distracting from it.

This bridge prevents strategy from slowly being diluted over time.

2. Bridging organisational silos

When marketing has earned strategic credibility, it can more easily connect sales, finance, digital and other teams around shared outcomes. Several organisations at our roundtables highlighted how shared KPIs and cross-functional structures such as tribes or segment-based teams, shift accountability from just output to business result.

This changes the conversation. Instead of discussing delivery, teams discuss the value they created together. Silos become less dominant because success is no longer owned by a single department.

For large organisations, this alignment is essential. It reduces internal friction and speeds up decision-making, because teams are moving in the same direction.

3. Bridging short-term pressure and long-term value

Marketing often operates at the cross between immediate performance and long-term value creation, a tension that was repeatedly emphasised during our roundtables.

AI dramatically increases speed and output. But without human judgement, brands risk losing their distinctiveness. A strong focus on short-term performance can undermine long-term value.

Marketing leadership lies in navigating this: deciding where efficiency adds value, and where human judgement and brand distinctiveness needs to be protected.

Structure is a leadership signal

When marketing’s role becomes to connect strategy, execution and value creation, organisational structure becomes critical.

A key question rises: Is the organisation designed to support this connection, or does it unintentionally reinforce silos?

Many organisations are rethinking how marketing teams are structured for this exact reason. Hybrid models are emerging, where marketers combine a core role with transversal projects across different functions. This allows marketing to stay close to its original expertise, while actively connecting with other departments.

But structure is never neutral. How teams are organised sends clear signals about what an organisation values:

• Speed vs coherence
• Efficiency vs learning
• Short-term delivery vs long-term capability

If marketing is expected to act as a strategic bridge, but is organised purely around channels, tools and short-term output, this becomes impossible to fulfil.

Across all roundtables, there was one clear consensus: future-ready marketing teams combine strong in-house continuity with flexible external expertise, and create growth paths for both generalists and specialists. This balance increases adaptability within teams.

Marketing as connective tissue

Marketing’s real power does not lie in campaigns, tools, or technology. It lies in its ability to connect strategy into action, customer value to business objectives and people to purpose.

When marketing earns its license to operate and consciously takes on the role of bridge builder, it becomes the function that holds the organisation together by aligning what truly matters.

How EOLIS supports this evolution

At EOLIS, we recognise the same reality in these conversations: sustainable results are built from within.

Through our modular in-housing model, we help organisations strengthen their internal marketing, digital, and sales capabilities, going from individual experts to hybrid in-house teams and organisational design. Always adapted to what the organisation truly needs, and always focused on long-term impact rather than short-term fixes.

Build marketing that connects, not just executes.

Let’s start a conversation about how your marketing organisation can move from execution to strategic impact. Reach out to EOLIS to explore how in-house teams and structures can support long-term value creation.