How to Build Alignment Between Leadership and Marketing - And How OSER Makes It Happen

In many growing businesses, the gap between leadership vision and marketing execution is one of the biggest hidden barriers to growth. Leadership wants clarity, commercial performance, and brand credibility. Marketing wants focus, direction, and the support to execute at the right level. Without alignment, the result is inconsistent messaging, internal friction, and marketing that fails to deliver what the business actually needs.

At OSER, we specialise in closing this gap. We’ve done it for companies across sectors, from scaling editorial brands like Business Leader, to premium retail groups like Bayley & Sage, to global content and events businesses like Citywire.

Across all of them, the pattern is the same: misalignment isn’t caused by lack of talent. It’s caused by lack of clarity, structure, and shared understanding.

Here is how leadership marketing alignment is built and how OSER consistently helps businesses achieve it.

1. Begin With a Unified Commercial Vision

Marketing cannot hit a target that leadership hasn’t clearly defined. Vague objectives such as “grow brand awareness” or “do more digital” often lead to wasted time and fragmented execution.

Alignment begins with clarity on:

• The business problem we’re solving

• The commercial focus for the next 6–12 months

• How marketing contributes to those priorities

This is exactly how we reset alignment at Business Leader, translating a broad ambition to refresh the brand into a defined strategic direction, backed by commercial priorities and organisational clarity.

At OSER, we formalise this through our Strategic Growth Workshop, ensuring every stakeholder agrees on the same north star before any marketing activity begins.

2. Build a Brand Strategy That Everyone Can Use

When the brand lacks definition, every team member builds their own interpretation. That’s where inconsistencies appear across product, marketing, sales, and even leadership conversations.

Our work with Bayley & Sage is a good example. By building a clear positioning, audience strategy, and messaging hierarchy, we gave both leadership and marketing a single narrative to operate from - leading to faster decisions and more consistent communication across all touchpoints.

OSER’s brand strategies are designed to unify teams, not just look good on paper. They include:

• Sharp positioning that defines why the brand wins

• Hierarchies of messaging for every use case

• A clear narrative that works from boardroom to Instagram

• Visual direction that removes interpretation gaps

A unified brand unlocks aligned execution.

3. Create the Translation Layer Between Leadership and Marketing

Most businesses don’t have a marketing problem - they have a translation problem.

Leadership speaks in vision, commercial strategy, and investor language. Marketing needs priorities, timelines, and operational clarity. OSER bridges this gap.

It’s something we delivered at Citywire, where the organisation needed a way to turn global brand consolidation goals into actionable marketing structures and roadmaps. We translated complex business priorities into clear marketing direction, team structure, and execution plans that elevated the entire organisation’s alignment.

Across every engagement, OSER acts as the strategic translator:

• Turning business priorities into actionable marketing plans

• Defining what to focus on—and what to deprioritise

• Creating workflows that enable marketing to deliver independently

• Bringing leadership closer to the creative and strategic process

This removes assumptions and accelerates execution.

4. Connect Marketing KPIs to Commercial Metrics

One of the biggest alignment challenges comes from mismatched metrics.

Marketing measures impressions or clicks.Leadership measures revenue, pipeline, or retention.The two must be connected.

OSER builds full-funnel KPI frameworks that link marketing performance to commercial outcomes. Leadership gets clear visibility. Marketing gets meaningful metrics. Everyone speaks the same language.

Whether it’s reframing Citywire’s global marketing dashboards or creating new KPI structures for Business Leader’s growth ambitions, we build systems that drive shared accountability and eliminate vanity metrics.

5. Establish Communication Rhythms That Maintain Alignment

Alignment is not a one-off meeting. It’s a discipline. The most effective businesses build repeatable rhythms that keep teams connected:

• Monthly leadership x marketing alignment sessions

• Quarterly growth reviews

• Clear feedback loops

• Defined decision-making processes

OSER implements these rhythms so alignment doesn’t drift back into chaos. They keep leaders informed and empower marketers to lead with confidence, not guesswork.

6. Strengthen the Marketing Function With Skills, Structure, and AI-Enabled Capability

Even with alignment, execution falters if the marketing function lacks capability, clarity, or resource.

OSER supports businesses in:

• Auditing team capability

• Identifying gaps in brand, digital, creative, performance, or analytics

• Recruiting or upskilling the right talent

• Introducing AI-enabled workflows to speed up delivery

• Designing team structures that scale

It’s part of what we built for Business Leader—elevating their marketing function to operate strategically during a period of leadership transition.

How OSER Helps Organisations Achieve Leadership-Marketing Alignment

Our work with Business Leader, Bayley & Sage, and Citywire demonstrates what’s possible when leadership and marketing are brought into true alignment.

OSER helps organisations:

• Translate commercial vision into marketing clarity

• Build standout, scalable brand strategies

• Align leaders and marketers around a single narrative

• Create marketing systems that drive real business outcomes

• Strengthen internal teams with structure, capability, and AI-powered workflows

When alignment is strong, marketing becomes a strategic growth engine, not a cost centre or creative add-on.

If your leadership and marketing teams feel misaligned, or you’re ready to elevate your brand and growth capability, OSER can help.

Book a strategy call