Marketing With Purpose Kit: Turning Marketing Into a Revenue Engine

**SPEAKER_1** (0:04)
The Bliss Business Podcast, the show about empathy, connection, and consciousness in business. Today's episode is brought to you by Zero Company, your paid search, social media, and programmatic ad experts.

**Tullio Siragusa** (0:18)
Welcome back to the Marketing With Purpose series of the Bliss Business Podcast, where we explore what it really takes for marketing leaders to create impact that goes beyond the numbers. I'm Tullio. In each episode, we sit down with marketing experts and leaders to explore their leadership approach and strategies that drive performance and resonate with their audience. Together, we'll drive into what's working, what's not, and how purpose and empathy can transform the way brands connect with people. So let's get started. To them, joined by Michelle Hubner, she's Director of Marketing, Ideal Siding, Fast-Growing Home Services Franchise, specializing in siding across the US and Canada.
Leading marketing for a close to 100 location network, Michelle focuses on helping local franchise owners grow profitability while building trust with homeowners making major exterior renovation decisions, big ticket items. Her work blends performance, marketing, brand reputation, customer empathy, and practical franchise support, with a clear belief that marketing should be more than generating leads. It should create confidence, connection, and sustainable business growth.
We're going to explore turning marketing into a revenue engine. I'm very excited to dive into how thoughtful marketing, strong systems, and cross-functional collaboration can fuel long-term growth and turn marketing into a revenue engine. Let's dive right in. Welcome to the show. Michelle, it's good to have you.

**Michelle Hubner** (1:52)
Thank you, Tullio. Thank you for inviting me to the show.

**Tullio Siragusa** (1:56)
Before we dive in, I'd love to hear why turning marketing into a revenue engine was the topic you chose to explore with us today. What makes this so important, especially right now?

**Michelle Hubner** (2:07)
Great question. Tullio, I was glad to hear that this is one of your favorite topics to think and converse about too.
For me, turning marketing into a revenue engine starts with clarity around the revenue target. We don't know what we're trying to achieve as a company or at the individual franchise location level. It's really hard to build a marketing plan that can help us get there. I think there's that saying, if you fail to plan, then you plan to fail. It's that important to understand where you're headed in order for us to have the right plan to get there.
Another thought that I had around this was in a franchising system, marketing can't be just about activity. It has to connect to the data, to the leads, the meetings, the proposals, the close rates and the average signed project at the end of the day. It doesn't mean that every marketing activity has to produce revenue immediately, but it does mean that we have to understand what role each channel plays in the growth plan. And a quick example of this is paid advertising might help us drive near-term lead volume, but at the end of the day, Google My Business profile visibility, reviews, the project photos that show the amazing before and after transformations that our franchise owners do in each market, the referral relationships and local outreach, all these things help to build long-term organic traction. And the stronger data that we have from these channels, the better we can plan, prioritize support based on where they are in their growth. So the revenue target gives us the direction and the data tells us what's realistic and the marketing plan becomes the bridge between these two things.

**Tullio Siragusa** (3:55)
Now, Michelle, as marketers, we often get pulled in very different directions. We have the near-term campaign results that are expected and the long-term brand building needed to make sure that the next near-term results are there as well, right? How do you ensure your marketing strategy stays aligned with the company's growth goals?
You've said that's kind of your North Star. That's the point where you're striving towards. Where do you find the biggest friction points in making that happen?

**Michelle Hubner** (4:25)
That is another great question. I think a lot about alignment. When I think about alignment, I actually think about it in three different ways. I think about alignment within our marketing team, alignment across departments within our franchising support company, and about alignment with franchise owners. At the team level, I think one of the biggest friction points when it comes to alignment, is when people understand what tasks we have. There might be 20 or 30 issues as we call them, because we operate on the US model.
They understand that what needs to happen, but not necessarily what the impact is. How is this going to impact the revenue growth that we're driving, and why does it matter at a company level? Any team in marketing or any other department can be really, really busy, but if they don't understand how the initiatives we're driving will help to lead meetings or revenue, it becomes a lot harder to prioritize. So as a leader, my job is always connecting these dots and just understanding, aligning on, okay, what are we doing? Why does it matter? What is the potential revenue impact of these actions? And bringing that list of 20 to 30 things that we could be driving forward, down to the 3 to 5, that we need to really focus on quarter to quarter. So that level of alignment.