Marketing Governance

We take our work serious. If somebody asks, What does Marketing Resource Management look like in Thailand? we just have to go there to find out ourselves. We conducted an in-depth study of local marketing strategies. The preliminary results suggest a remarkable standardization of retail strategies and communications, paired with a highly flexible and adaptive approach to demand. The raw data can be found below, compaired and contrasted with Marketing Resource Management: The Noble Art of Getting Things Done in Marketing. Efficiently.

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There are five key resources in marketing. No more, no less. Answering the central MRM question, What needs to be created, by whom, using which technology, under which budget, in what timeframe? gives us the five-M paradigm: Materials, Manpower,  Machines, Money, Minutes.

Marketing automation systems can improve the use of each of these resources. But this kind of technology is still often mistrusted. How can technology do a better job than I do? Here are five common misconceptions for each marketing resource, and the reasons why Marketing Automation doesnt take over your job, but helps you do it better: Read More

is the emphasis on ROI actually hurting Marketing? The article is based on an interview with Menno Lijkendijk, director of the Dutch B2B marketing company Milestone Marketing, ‘Can the focus on ROI create problems?’, Lijkendijk was asked. It is a topic which has my full attention.

Let’s start with my short answer: no, the focus on ROI is not hurting Marketing. But the wrong ROI focus is likely to create problems, and no focus on ROI will definitely create problems.

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Shopping without dropping. Tesco Korea came up with this interesting QR concept to make waiting more productive. We love it!

Small side step:

The mission (0:15) Could we become #1 without increasing the number of stores?

Sounds more like a question than a mission. Anyway, great idea!

The business case for Operational Marketing Excellence can be rock solid, if you use the right arguments, metrics and calculation.

Using benchmark figures from the forthcoming publication from MRMLOGIQ, you can calculate that the result of your Operational Marketing Excellence program may represent a net present value of up to 29 % of your total marketing budget in the first year. Over three years it may even add up to an impressive 55 %, taking the discounted cashflow into account. Read More

How to calculate the sustainable value of your Operational Marketing Excellence Program? There are many ways to calculate a return on an investment and to calculate value to shareholders. All these methods have their advantages and disadvantages and are accompanied by many smaller variations fine tuning the same advantages and disadvantages. Picking one means balancing the pros and the cons for your specific goal and topic. In a simplified world you could cluster the methods as follows: Read More

Objectives in Operational Marketing Excellence projects are often related to the generic efficiency goals better, faster and cheaper. The concepts faster and cheaper are easy to grasp. But what makes better marketing operations? This question drove us into mythical discussions, similar to what is quality, what makes good design and -later in the evening- what is art?

Although it may sound like an easy way out, we are currently working with the concept that making things better means taking away the things that make it worse… And its up to you to decide what that is. In reality it has everything to do with risk management: often ignored by marketers, never ignored by investors.

Let’s take the old adage “Doing the right things and doing things right” as the basis. We define effectiveness as doing the right things and efficiency as doing things right, and look at the concept of risk in marketing operations. You could say that if we lower the probability and impact of “Doing the wrong things and doing the things wrong”, we are lowering risk, mitigating risk and managing risk, and thus creating value.

In Marketing Operations, we focus primarily on the execution and efficiency side, the second part of this quote, which implies that better Marketing Operations means lowering the risks of doing the things wrong.

Defining “doing things wrong” is arbitrary. Basically, things are done wrong when they do not conform to what is expected. As a consequence, risk management is impossible when it is not clear what is expected and which risks are acceptable and which aren’t.

Risk is a fact of business life. Taking and managing risk is part of what companies must do to create profits and shareholder value.

Gunnar Pritsch

Expressing and communicating management expectations about risks and better marketing operations can be done in manuals, guidelines and procedures. These tools can be integrated and embedded in processes and supported by technology. Usage can be monitored via KPIs and dashboards.

• Correct usage of these tools, processes and technology lowers the risks, creates value, and can be rewarded by management.
• Incorrect usage of these tools, processes and technology increases the risks, destroys value, and should be corrected by management.

Compliancy to internal quality standards and procedures in regards to brand, financial, and legal regulations and guidelines makes better Marketing Operations. The extent to which compliancy checks are enforced will define the value of your marketing operations considerably.

Same, same but different. Understanding the theoretical difference between efficiency and effectiveness, which in marketing practice seem to be so intertwined, is an important element to grasp to utilize the full potential of Operational Marketing Excellence. Not making a clear split between the two is the main cause why so many Operational Marketing Excellence projects have floating, then drifting and sometimes even sinking objectives. Read More