This post was written by Sheri Granholm, Vice President of Consulting & Engagement.
“We need to demonstrate how marketing is contributing to the value of this organization.”
Associate Vice President of Marketing, Leading Academic Medical Center Healthcare Provider
As a chief marketing officer, how often are you focused on this goal in your day-to-day activities? More importantly, how are you defining “value?” And does this “value” align with your senior leadership’s definition?
You are likely facing this challenge every day and the expectations and accountability keep rising. 80% of CEOs admit they DO NOT really trust and are not very impressed by the work done by marketers – while in comparison, 90% of the same CEO’s DO trust and value the opinion and work of CFOs and CIOs.* What’s more, 73% of CEOs think marketers are not the business growth generators they should be.*
In today’s era of accountability and “prove your results” world, senior leadership requires that you not only quantify your return on marketing investment but also demonstrate and, more importantly, link your efforts to next-generation, sustainable growth. This could include gains in sales revenues, more market share, more prospects and/or more conversions.
Business growth consultants are adept at leveraging and mining data to:
No matter what requirements, successful growth and demonstrating value requires an adoption of these key principles:
A business growth consultant can work with you to develop a metrics strategy framework such as the example below that aligns with your organization’s goals and shows linkage to results.
Such a framework can help prove how your marketing efforts have generated incremental demand for the companies’ products/services—(i.e. ability to generate more sales, greater market share or new customers). One way to do so is by applying an engagement and marketing intention scoring system to aggregate online and offline marketing achievements.
Setting key performance indicators that align to business objectives is critical. As marketers, it is no surprise that we live and breathe our brand’s equity—awareness, preference, reputation, and loyalty values are all carefully monitored, trended over time and showcased to top management. However, senior leadership may not always share the “brand as an organizing principle” viewpoint and have great difficulties seeing its value and/or its linkage back to results that matter to them.
Marketers may rely sometimes too heavily on this one metric in their “demonstration of results” equation. It is critical to set growth-related measures that matter beyond marketing’s door to quantifiably demonstrate value and help justify increased marketing budgets. Furthermore, demonstrating how much incremental business additional marketing investment will generate makes leadership’s decision-making process easier.
Once your metrics strategy framework is established and the data collection and analysis process is complete, developing a cogent, powerful yet simplified reporting dashboard is essential.
Presenting data is a form of artistry. Data overabundance and the use of “spreadsheet sprawl” is often the fallback and should be avoided. First and foremost it must tell a story. The data should help explain to senior leadership two fundamental things:
A business growth consultant can work with you to analyze the data and glean key insights that will aid in refining marketing strategies. They can also help visualize the story and present the facts so you do not need to have a PhD in statistical science to understand the data.
The era of accountability is here to stay. You can’t expect your leadership to place value on something we as marketers are unable to quantify. It’s our role, and frankly our responsibility, to tell the story.
*Global Marketing Effectiveness Study 2011 & 2012
Photo credit: Steve Wilson via Flickr Creative Commons
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