Marketing Governance

An all too common misperception is that marketing asset management (MAM) and distributed marketing management (DMM) platform technology is only for the “big guys,” the large companies with huge budgets, but it’s not. It’s a statement Saepio makes in their white paper ‘Only for the big guys?’.

Understandably, solution providers (Saepio included) often emphasis their power brand clients in webinars, case studies and sales presentations.  But if your company doesn’t fit the “big guys” definition, don’t overlook the benefits DMM can deliver for you.  In fact, if Small and Medium Business (SMB) describes you, you may derive more value from a DMM solution than the big guys do. Read More

New Media Forecasts report, ZenithOptimedia found that the leading country in 2012 terms of new media adoption was Norway, with an average penetration rate of 38.8% across three key digital technologies – smartphones, tablets and IPTV.

It was followed by France on 35.7%, the Netherlands on 35.1%, Sweden on 31.3% and Denmark on 31.2%. However, balance will shift a little towards 2015. ZenithOptimedia expects the Netherlands to be on top in 2015 with a penetration of 65.1%, followed by France 60.8% and Ireland 50.2%.

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Sales and marketing are many companies greatest costs. Yet few have any real idea how spending impacts business growth.

Its a familiar sound. While most companies are aware that their marketing department does something useful, or at least does something that costs a lot of money, they find it difficult to prove exactly how Marketing contributes to the bottom line. Software vendorEloqua recognizes the problem and tries to change this situation by educating CEOs and CFOs still doubting the accountability of Marketing.

Revenue Performance Management is the way to gain more insight into the revenue generated by Marketing and Sales, says Eloqua. By assessing Marketing performance on five parameters (Reach, Value, Conversion Rate, Velocity, and Return), Marketing can change from an art into a science.

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Today’s marketers are under relentless pressure to obtain data, prove ROI and justify decisions. Marketers even have to go so far as to justify choices that haven’t been made yet, hence the momentum behind predictive analytics. It would seem we are in the the singular pursuit of measurement. So far this year, at every conference, event and customer meeting I’ve attended the question of How do we show ROI? has surfaced.

Many marketers we work with have functional responsibilities and therefore their measures often reflect their role. As a result, the measures are frequently independent of each other and it’s difficult for marketing to truly demonstrate its impact and value. For example, social media marketers may be measuring mentions, sentiment, or traffic back to the website (hopefully you have moved beyond likes, and followers as your core metrics of success). Website/content marketers may be measuring the most popular pages or content downloads (hopefully you have moved beyond number of new items posted to the site in some period). SEO marketers may be measuring traffic and search engine ranking (hopefully you have moved beyond pages indexed or the number of backlinks). Email marketers may be measuring open and delivery rates (hopefully you have moved beyond counting the number of campaigns deployed). Asking the question, How to measure the ROI of these tactics? is the wrong question. Read More

Marketers who have come to be perceived as value generators for their organization have learned how to use data, analytics, processes and metrics to move business results and demonstrate their contribution. The problem is that many marketers are tracking metrics that are easy and convenient but have little or nothing to do with the organization’s performance. The real challenge for a good number of marketers is to develop and use metrics that drive results.

ITSMA and VisionEdge Marketing have teamed up in an Marketing Performance Mangement survey (open until July 27th) to give marketers the opportunity to gain insight in their use of marketing data, metrics, and analytics to inform marketing decisions, predict buyer behavior, improve marketing performance, and forecast trends.  Read More

Fournaise Marketing Group survey released in July 2012. A similar proportion think marketers misunderstand the real meaning of the words results, ROI and performance. The upshot of this is that 8 in 10 CEOs believe marketers are disconnected from companies’ financial realities, and as a result, the same proportion claim they do not trust and are not very impressed by the work done by marketers.

CEOs’ concerns regarding marketers’ focus on ROI finds some basis in marketers’ own perceptions. According to a March 2012 report from Columbia University and the New York American Marketing Association (NYAMA), 57% of senior marketers say they don’t base their marketing budgets on any ROI analysis. In fact, roughly two-thirds report establishing their marketing budgets in part on historical spending, and 28% on gut instincts. And when looking at specific spending decisions, 21% say they use financial metrics for little or none of the decisions, while 7% are making most or all of the decisions absent any metrics at all. Read More

Marketo to see which data are relevant, and see how you can show that Marketing is vital to company revenue. .

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The Definitive Guide to Marketing Metrics and Analytics. The marketing firm says that Revenue Metrics and Marketing Program Performance Metrics, which document the impact of effort and investment and directly link it to revenue and profit, are the only relevant markers in the financial minds of business owners:

Soft metrics like brand awareness, GRP, impressions, organic search rankings and reach are important – but only to the extent that they quantifiably connect to hard metrics like pipeline, revenue, and profit.

While marketers are inclined to share with the C-Suite how many clicks and likes and pageviews their campaigns get, the CFO en CEO are more interested in how the Marketing department contributes to the companys revenue. Marketers should learn to see business from their point of view and adjust the way they share information with other departments accordingly. If you can prove Marketing is a justifyable investment, Marketing will no longer be seen as a cost center, but as a valuable part of the organization. We agree strongly with this message, as weve also outlined in our slideshow The Real Value of Operational Marketing Excellence earlier.

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Dave Frankland of Forrester once said, the goal is not to collect data, but to develop insights. Insights are the purview of analytics.  Analytics are algorithms: advanced and/or mathematical techniques on large volumes of data that help marketers translate data into actionable insights to help drive marketing and customer strategies and optimize marketing efforts. Read More