How to get your marketing team out of the execution trap

Marketing teams do not fall into the execution trap because they are bad at their jobs. They fall in because they are so good at executing that every request lands on their desk. In this episode of Content Amplified, Melissa Geertz, Senior Vice President of Marketing at Gray, explains the execution trap: why most organizations only tap a fraction of marketing's expertise, and what it takes to climb out. Melissa breaks down how a broad skill set turns marketing into the company catch-all, why measuring sales quantitatively and marketing qualitatively creates an unintentional divide, and how a shared services model amplifies all of it. She makes the case for a dedicated, business-facing role that thinks and acts like an account executive, not to do the work, but to be the bridge that unlocks the rest of the team. She also walks through the difference between executing a request for a video and asking what problem the business is actually trying to solve, and why the phrase "marketing needs a seat at the table" drives her crazy. If your team is stuck taking orders, this conversation gives you the first structural move and the patience to make it stick. **About Melissa** Melissa Geertz has spent about twenty-five years in marketing, but her career started in broadcast news, which gave her a foundation in storytelling and communication. She left it because that kind of storytelling felt transactional and kept her at a distance from people, and she wanted to build something longer term. Much of her career since has been spent leading enterprise shared services marketing organizations, where one team supports multiple businesses under a parent structure, a model she finds fascinating because it constantly challenges how you demonstrate marketing's strategic value. She is now Senior Vice President of Marketing at Gray, a 65-year-old design-build firm that began as a small family-owned construction company in rural Kentucky and now engineers, builds, and automates industrial facilities across North America with roughly 30 offices and 2,000 team members. **Show Notes** - Connect with Melissa on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissageertz/ Text us what you think about this episode!