Just about every marketer I know is in fear of their budgets being cut and their jobs being at risk. Whenever I ask the question why, the answer is that, if we could just prove that our results are delivering revenue, we could do a much better job at protecting our budgets, our ideas and our jobs.
If marketers can’t connect the dots between their marketing activities and revenue then the rest of the company sees them as an expense that can be cut. If they can prove their value in both good and bad times; that a dollar invested in marketing is just as valuable (if not more so) as elsewhere, then they have moved into the critical path to corporate success.
What does this require? Here are a couple of bullets (there are lots more):
- Marketers must start to track their activities. They need the right infrastructure, not just to track their activities from one campaign or one media, but all media.
- Marketers must accurately track costs. This includes internal and external costs (agencies) as well as distribution and insertion costs. These must be applicable against the specific campaign or media. In this way, the rest of the company will know where the money went that they invested in marketing.
- Marketers must track results at all levels across the purchase funnel. Whether it’s visits, downloads or leads, or whether it is awareness, revenue or profit, marketers must begin to track results across the entire purchase funnel.
- Marketers must embrace accountability. This is a scary thought to many marketers. Those marketers that wave their hands and say it can’t be tracked are the ones most concerned about losing their creativity. Tracking results isn’t about stifling creativity. It is about rewarding good creativity and weeding out the bad.
If you’d like to learn more, please let me know. Or take a look at my new book. It is an inexpensive way to get started in measuring marketing’s effectiveness.
Marketing Calculator (http://www.Marketing-Calculator.com)
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