Marketing ROI can be difficult to understand and even more difficult to track, but the best way to prove your worth is through easily communicable data. Too often, marketing is viewed as an isolated department, separate from sales, operations and other key actors, and as a result many key business leaders don’t understand how marketing impacts their work. It’s time for marketers to educate the rest of the company and illustrate the positive impact that smart marketing can make.
Here’s how to do both:
Digital marketing is data-driven. Document your department’s use of the New Marketing Value Chain to show how marketing decisions are made. Then, use analytics programs to collect data on your marketing’s effectiveness, and use charts and graphics to visually communicate how leads become sales.
Use the various analytics tools at your disposal to dig into the key performance indicators your bosses want to see, including the cost to acquire each lead and customer. Also use data to explain to non-marketers how each aspect of your inbound and outbound strategy contributes to lead acquisition and nurturing.
Internal communication is crucial to many aspects of a business, including building strong company culture and instilling a sense of purpose in employees. It is also key to helping the rest of your company understand the importance of marketing, especially modern marketing tools that are relatively new to the industry and more technical in nature.
Educate your peers and the decision-makers in your organization about the impact marketing efforts have on them, and how you deploy marketing strategies to yield results. The growth of your business relies on smart marketing decisions and investments. It also relies on common perceptions of marketing effectiveness.
When you have opportunities to speak or write about your work for those you work with, emphasize both marketing data and process. The numbers illustrate concrete marketing effectiveness, while the description of marketing process allows non-marketers to see the importance of each step in the New Marketing Value Chain and how it feeds positive ROI.
How do you communicate marketing ROI and importance in your organization? How can you improve?
Photo Credit: Sebastiaan ter Burg via Flickr Creative Commons
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