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.
