Lack of Measurement Means Ineffective Marketing

A new survey of 3,000 global marketers has concluded that marketing effectiveness has reached an all-time low.  Those surveyed said that "65% of their marketing spend had no discernible effect on consumer behavior in 2007."

That's even worse that the old adage about 50% of your marketing being wasted, but not knowing which half. However, the reason is pretty much the same - lack of measurement.

According to the article, "Of the 55% of marketers who track their spending, 80% do so manually, spending hours gathering and analyzing data. Only one in 10 marketers surveyed had automated systems in place to track the effectiveness of their spend."

Manual tracking is too complex and, with all those hours of analysis, too late. Besides that, marketers are being charged to deliver more highly qualified leads, move faster and do more with less. They are also charged to prove their results, hence the brave attempts to measure a myriad of siloed activities at all.

Which seems a shame given the marketing automation systems available that can help you accomplish many of those tasks with a much higher degree of efficiency and a variety of insights unavailable otherwise.

One of the biggest examples is the difference between segment and individual data. Looking at group trends is one thing. Honing in on a lead showing increased momentum and specific interests to get them to sales at exactly the opportune time is another. Think about it this way:

Just like you don't have time or inclination to speak with a salesperson who calls and says, "Tell me about your company and how we can help you," you also don't have time to waste the opportunity to engage the attention of your prospects.   

What if you had the capability to be relevant every time you communicated with them? And, what if - when they were ready - your salesperson contacted them with a seamless extension of the dialogue they were already having with marketing?

The only way this type of experience happens is if you can measure interest, response and related follow-on activities and share it with sales. Measurement is not just about numbers, it's about assessing how to generate momentum based on relevancy. It's about real-time discovery of engagement and working to extend that attention, gathering more intelligence about each step of the buyer's cycle. It's about leveraging those insights to move prospects farther through the pipeline than you've ever done before. It's about marketing's contribution to downstream revenues and benchmarking improvements marketing can drive into sales productivity achievements.

And finally, it's about being able to produce those results repeatedly.

I'll get off my soap box now, but if this isn't an indication about the need for solid strategic marketing efforts backed up by automation tools, I'm not quite sure what will cause a shift in thinking about the imperative to flip that statistic on its head.

Comments

[Phil Darby]

Hi Ardath

I just discovered you and started working through your posts - its going to take some time!

However, top of your list was a subject that's been top of mine also. In fact last year I worked with Experian to develop a tool that I called Ascent, which isn't rocket science, but a device to get organisations in the right habit. You can catch up on my blog under the tab "Ascent".

The perspective of my work is pretty broad and I can see a whole lot more reasons why marketing effectiveness is at an all time low. A lot of it is to do with a more complicated marketplace and limited management skills, which adds up to poor execution.

Most busineses I come across have more data than they can analyse and more anlysis than they know what to do with. The truth is that businesses often know what they need to do to optimise, the problem is that for a whole bunch of reasons they just can't make it happen.

This fact led me to develop another model with Experian. This focussed on how to turn insights into action and ensure that the flow of data and analysis was geared to the capacity of the organisation to respond to it.

Its a big subject, but if we are chasing ROI, there are three factors:

1 - Not more, but better considered data gathering (which might mean less data)
2 - More meaningful analysis.
3 - Some real creativity in the responses we have to it.

[Ben Bradley]

Hi Ardath,
For some reason, too many marketers tend to overthing measurement. Especially in small and mid-sized business, measurement projects can easily spiral out of control. The "lack of measurement" problem is generally a problem of project management rather than a program of measurement.

A simple Excel spreadsheet that tracks a single KPI for every tactic can provide deep and meaningful insight into marketing performance and ROI.

My blog outlines a pretty simple marketing measurement approach. It is pretty simple...it certainly is not perfect...but it does a good job of helping people get a handle on the pieces of their marketing that they value most.

Here's the link:

http://benbradley.net/2008/03/07/dont-sweat-
marketing-measurement/

Thanks!

Ben