Marketing Governance

Irv Shapiro. “I am fascinated by many of the results that reflect the innovation that is occurring in marketing measurement.”

So, what are the results?

A primary trend from the 2013 research is the level of support, and scrutiny, that marketers are receiving from their CEO’s around marketing measurement as a growth engine. Two thirds of CEO’s surveyed have significant influence in marketing decisions and half receive regular marketing measurements. In fact, one in ten CEO’s seek marketing measurements daily (9.2 percent) while one in five (19.7 percent) are receiving updates weekly.

How often marketing metrics are reported

 (graph by Ifbyphone 2013: State of Marketing Measurement Survey Report)

What is being measured?

Marketing teams are being asked to measure a wider range of marketing metrics with a greater focus on revenue and tracking of customer interactions from both offline and online sources. Tracking new customer sources is the highest rated marketing metric utilized (by 49 percent of all respondents), with measuring increases in sales/revenue across marketing channels a very close second (48 percent).

Given the dominance of the sales-related metrics already being measured by the marketing team, it is not unreasonable to conclude that marketing measurement innovation, which enables marketers to better track and monetize engagements with customers and sales prospects, will be a high priority in coming years.

Use of marketing metrics

 (graph by Ifbyphone 2013: State of Marketing Measurement Survey Report)

Marketing enjoys budget growth

Investment in an emerging generation of marketing measurement tools is needed to satisfy the CEO’s increasing demand for tracking data. In order to facilitate this, budget growth and additional marketing resources are being provided.

Possibly as a result of the increased focus from the CEO and the growing role marketing has as a growth engine, almost half of respondents (45 percent) reported an increase in their marketing budgets in the past year while only 12 percent are working with a tighter marketing budget.

Respondents were asked what their marketing personnel priorities would be for 2013/14 and a significant majority were focused on proactive and growth related strategies. Almost a third (32 percent) plan to add more full-time marketing resources, one in five respondents (19 percent) plan to invest in more contingent marketing workers, while one in 10 (10 percent) will hire a new marketing agency.

One in 10 respondents (10 percent) will also share resources with other departments, such as IT, reflecting the highly technical nature of twenty-first century marketing analytics. A much smaller percentage of respondents are planning to downsize their investment in marketing personnel in 2013/14.

The emergence of the Growth Hacker

In line with increasing marketing budgets, more marketing people are being hired. Growth hackers, marketers who combine marketing knowledge with a strong technical background to drive growth, are having an impact on improvements in marketing measurement. One quarter of respondents (25 percent) now have a Growth Hacker on their marketing team, the same percentage that have Product Managers.

Marketing teams with Growth Hackers are prioritizing investments in emerging marketing measurement technology, across both online and offline channels. Almost three quarters of marketing teams with a Growth Hacker engaged (72 percent) are experimenting with Voice-Based Marketing Automation (VBMA), 19 percent more than marketing teams generally. Meanwhile, 44 percent of marketing teams with Growth Hackers are using marketing automation software compared to only 26 percent of marketing teams generally.

Over a third of Growth Hacker-backed marketing teams (34 percent) are utilizing heat map tools compared with only 20 percent of the average marketing teams. Almost twice as many marketing teams with Growth Hackers (28 percent) are experimenting with emerging workflow automation tools, compared to 15 percent generally.

Across every category of marketing measurement technology, it is the Growth Hackers who are leading the charge in experimenting and innovating with emerging tools that will give them, their CEO, and their marketing colleagues the edge in tracking where the best results are being achieved for marketing investments.

See the complete survey at Ifbyphone.com

BITKOM, the German new media trade body

Top of the list is Finland. More than 91% of the Finnish companies have a website.  89% of both Danish and Swedish firms, had a website. Norway on the other hand is in great contrast with the rest of the Scandinavia countries with only 79% of the companies being online.

The Netherlands and Iceland were ranked equal fourth, on 84%, while Germany and Austria both recorded a figure of 82%. The UK followed on 81%, then the Czech Republic on 80%.

BITKOM President Dieter Kempf noted that those companies failing to present an online business card were giving away the chance to develop a relationship with existing customers and, more especially, to attract new customers.

Within Germany, most large businesses were already online, with just 4% of those employing more than 250 people not being there, and 18% of small and medium sized enterprises.

The biggest gap, the study found, was for very small companies, those employing fewer than ten people, where just 45% had an online presence.

Kempf observed that small businesses could get online with little effort and at low cost in order to gain wider attention.

A separate BITKOM survey published recently found that those companies that integrated the internet into their business models were more successful than the rest of the economy.

Some 60% internet-savvy companies expected significant sales growth in the 2013 financial year compared to just 46% of industrial companies for which the internet played a minor role and 38% of service providers in a similar position.

Think of a place I would go, I’m daydreamin’, Where the sycamore grow, I’m daydreamin’, And oh if you knew what it meant to me, Where the air was so clear, Oh if you knew what it meant to me, Anywhere but here.

It’s the song by Travelodge Marketers daydream seven times during their working day with each daydream lasting more than five minutes on average.

The top five daydreamers by profession:

1. Marketing
2. Bankers
3. Lawyers
4. Estate agents
5. Civil servants

Embarrassment

Over a third of marketers (36 per cent) admitted there had been occasions when they were engrossed in their daydream that they have completely said the wrong thing in a meeting. A further 15 per cent said they have made a mistake at work because they were so occupied by their daydream. A fifth stated they are regularly caught daydreaming by their colleagues on the job.

Performance

However, the research revealed many marketing professionals employ daydreaming each day to help them improve their performance and make them more motivated in the workplace. Some 32 per cent said daydreaming helps them work through and resolve problems, while 23 per cent reported daydreaming increased creativity.

Edinburgh Sleep Centre said: “This is a very interesting study, illustrating how daydreaming is a natural part of our cycle.Dreaming during the night occurs on a 90 minute cycle and it is thought that daydreaming follows a similar pattern, however daily activities interrupt that. Dreaming in REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep helps improve our memory perhaps we need the same downtime for daydreaming?”

Adobe 2013 Digital Marketing Survey. The survey was published April 26th. Some 53 percent of the digital marketers surveyed from around the world say they devote less than 5 percent of their budget to optimization activities. Last year 48 percent of the marketers said this. Only 6 percent of respondents are allocating more than one-quarter of their budgets to these activities, relatively unchanged from last year’s 7 percent. And that is strange, because through optimization companies can reduce the costs of their marketing operations. By calculating the ROI for the optimization projects it can become apparent that the reason not to, is actually the reason to do it; saving budget.

Eye-openers

Adobe conducted this survey amongst 1800 marketers from around the World. “Some of the findings are eye-opening”, says John Cristofano, PR-Manager at  Adobe, “like data showing a majority of the companies surveyed spend 5 percent or less of their marketing budget on optimization activities. Five percent or less, even though it’s also clear from the data that companies investing more get more in return. For example, companies allocating more than 25 percent of marketing budgets to optimization are twice as likely to see high conversion rates.”

With these kinds of results, it’s only logical to ask why there are not more companies are investing in optimization. According to the survey there are two major challenges. Budget and resources are the two most important things, that hold marketers back says almost half of the respondents.

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Finance departments often criticize marketings inability to present a tangible ROI and use financial measures. It’s a common lament and one we’ve all heard. Rob Stuart, Executive Vice President & Publisher at CFO Publishing, in a recent conversation reminds us that CFOs expect marketers to come prepared to describe what their ROI is going to be for marketing investments. CFOs want to know how marketing is going to measure success, the key performance indicators for a conference and the ROI targets. CFOs are looking at the big picture and the organization’s overall investments.

If we want the CFOs support we need forge a stronger partnership with our finance colleagues. The perception or reality of an antagonistic relationship needs to be replaced with collaboration. And one of the best way to begin to build this relationship is to work from the CFOs comfort zone: data, analytics and metrics.

You may think that you already do.  But here’s an example of how easy it is to throw things off kilter. A key source of the friction is derived from using the words with double meanings. For example, consider brand equity. The marketing professional uses the term to describe the health of the brands franchise with its key audiences; the financial professional uses it to characterize the brand as an economic asset. Whatever their differences, marketing and finance professionals need to find common ground.

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Owlstone, talks about the two and how they can become succesfull partners in Marketing Automation. The two just need each other to bring marketing to another level, he states. One cant live without the other.