Only 15% of marketing management rate their measurement methods as ‘effective’. So, say thought leaders at Marketo, a statistic they used to kick off a recent webinar on marketing measurement.
This means that if asked, “We have additional money for marketing this quarter, what’s the best way to spend it?” 85% of people in marketing management would not have the data they need to give an evidence-based answer to the question.
Now if you are in the 15% who can, then you may as well stop reading this article straightaway. If however, you fall into the 85% that can’t, then read on.
An interesting aspect of the thought leadership webinar was that they linked effectiveness measurement in marketing not only to the areas that you would expect – web, paid media, events, email – but also to sales development as a marketing tool.
Now the team at Collier Pickard has always advocated the linkage of sales revenue back to marketing spend for ROI calculation. But this webinar has put a new spin on this thinking. My guess is that if asked how to spend that extra marketing budget this quarter, most marketing people would grab the funds for AdWords or an email campaign and would not say “Spend it on this specific direct sales activity because, looking at the statistics of leads in our overall pipeline, that will give the best return right now.”
I hate clich√©s, but we’re talking about ‘the customer journey’ here. Effective marketing measurement will monitor the return from funds allocated across all stages of this journey. From the first touch to lead creation and marketing qualification (MQL), to sales qualification and opportunity creation, onto needs matching and the purchase order, and finishing with account development and customer satisfaction.
Now you are in the 85% category (you must be to have come this far into my article!) so my guess is that you would not necessarily be thinking about the budget allocated to ‘needs matching’ as part of the marketing remit. That’s a job for sales, right? Their job is to understand the requirement, demonstrate capability and make the proposal, isn’t it? But could this be made more compelling for a few key opportunities by directing marketing budget into targeted local events, rather than always treating events as demand gen or lead gen activities?
The answer here is, of course, “only if you have the right data to conduct the analysis and arrive at that conclusion. It would have to be evidence-based.”
So, what’s the take away from the webinar? It’s the need to not just capture data from marketing activity but, rather, to unify it and analyse it within the context of your whole customer strategy.
This thinking plays well to the concept of CRM Maturity, a model we use frequently when helping organisations prepare for and improve their CRM culture and their use of CRM technology.
The foundation of CRM Maturity is the creation of a single view of the customer, a single version of the truth. This must be followed by moves that integrate the use of that data, the single view, across the whole organisation. Marketing, sales, customer service, account management. Only when you have this level of maturity in CRM and your use of data will you be able to redefine yourself as someone in the elite 15% of people who have effective marketing measurement.
If you would like to talk about marketing measurement, CRM Maturity and the effective use of data within your organisation, then please get in touch. We’ve been helping people rethink their approach in these areas for many years and we’d be pleased to help you.
