Which Metrics Help Secure Executive Buy-In?

You may have heard of executive buy-in, but what is executive buy-in? It’s more than just getting the budget approval you need to pay for your project. Executive buy-in involves a committee making important business decisions and getting directly involved. Executive buy-in sees executives saying, “I’m in,” and getting involved. Eventually, you will need to make decisions that need executive approval. It goes a lot better when they’re on board. As you can understand, this is a major step for any campaign. So how do you prove that your work is valuable to the higher-ups? There are some proven, winning strategies to securing and keeping buy-in.

The Right Mindset

Before you present any metrics, it’s important to keep things in perspective. Think of your executives not just as bosses. Think of them as buyers. Form a clear picture of your organization’s goals. Consider what success entails for each executive and what challenges they are facing. Finally, present your initiative as something that can help them get what they want.

Give them actionable metrics that they can use to leverage your initiative in new ways. What metrics will matter, though?

The Most Important Metrics for Executive Buy-In

If you’re able to focus on executing your tactics and strategies, you’re doing your job well. This sets you apart from the competition because many companies fail to manage SEO operations. Instead, they take a lackadaisical approach to SEO and expect it to automate itself. By setting, reaching, and directing goals in your campaigns, you show practicality to a sometimes esoteric field.

Build yourself a summary or a scorecard. Divide your tactics into the way they grow your SEO traffic and the way they accelerate operations. Adding metrics to these summaries, like revenue estimates, creates tangible benefits for your campaigns. This is all about creating concise, digestible representations of your work. Beyond a summary, you can discuss more tangible things about your work.

For example, many SEO groups spend many working hours solving problems introduced by other groups. By illustrating factors such as these, your goal is not to out-compete any other team but strengthen the whole. If you can leverage additional SEO training between departments, your SEO will perform better overall. Further accountability also prevents new issues in the future. You can also track and identify issues such as changes in page speed and core web vitals to further synergize departments.

SEO Forecast Metrics are Essential

People high up on the totem pole care about results more than anything. Executives want to know that your projects are going to meet their goals. Your campaign will have critical drivers and target metrics to influence. While these critical drivers may come up in discussion, often, it is rare for SEO operators to report on these driving factors. Reporting on critical drivers will let the executives – And you – Know if you are on track to reach your goals.

Your executives will be aware of your critical drivers. You show that you and your executives are on the same page by laying them out in your reports. It makes it easier for them to get involved. It makes it easy for executives to focus on the right teams to grow SEO.

Why is Buy-In Important?

You will run into significant business decisions that need executive management to weigh in, as we mentioned before. By encouraging executive buy-in, you make this an informed and active process. Any large campaign that needs broad, multi-national implementation will benefit from executive involvement. If you have different cultures, political considerations, and laws, an executive on the ground will be crucial to your project’s success. A large IT project will call on executives to make hard decisions. This could include sensitive decisions like changing business processes or job changes.

Executives are the only ones who can provide you with the resources your project needs to succeed. Therefore, involving them in ways that they can get excited about is crucial. The best way to involve them is to sell your project as if it were a product. Think of why they would want to spend their valuable time working with your data. Think about the easiest way to present what makes you valuable and how to do so in a way that lets them conclude your value.

Executive buy-in will benefit you beyond just funding your project. An informed executive body can empower its SEO specialists to succeed and help the company as a whole do better. So prepare your metrics, present them clearly, and enjoy the benefits of long-term buy-in.