We all know that growth depends on effective marketing, but what no one talks about is that each person in a company has a different way of measuring marketing effectiveness….
Marketing has the potential to drive results in a lot of different aspects of your business. And of course, this will have a different impact on different departments and levels. There’s a huge amount of data you’re handling and, especially if you’re working across a lot of channels, campaigns or even regions, a variety of different angles you could take.
So, how do you really show your marketing effectiveness?
Effective marketing is all about knowing your audience
Most effective marketing campaigns begin with the key focus of audience. Who is your audience and how does this appeal for them? But these skills aren’t just put to good use on your customers. They’re also an excellent launchpad for your internal communications.
So, when it comes time to present the results of your marketing, whether it’s a regular meeting, an annual report, or even part of a pitch, start with your audience. Think about just who you’re presenting to. Then, consider what matters to them?
You have to ensure you recognise what each department wants and provide them with that data only and what it means. Too little data and you’ll be forcing them to make blind decisions. But, too much and you’ll cause confusion.
Somewhere in between these is where you’ll find their sweet spot – ‘clarity’. But it is different for each department and each level within the company…
The different levels – and their top concerns
- The CEO: they’re probably only interested in profitability and shareholder value. Though you could add angles on reputation, brand resilience and market share if they’re really entrepreneurial. Or it fits the context.
- The CFO: for them, it’s all about ROI and budget discipline. Protecting the bottom line of the business. Nothing else matters.
- The CMO: all of the above. Plus they’ll want to know about the headline metrics. They will need to present these to fellow Board members, for which they require simplicity and clarity. Too much detail and they’ll confuse them, too little and they won’t maintain their support.
- The Marketing Department: it’s not until you get down to the hard workers in the Marketing Department that you start finding people who actually care about the detail. Their jobs depend on getting it right. As it is them who have to give the headlines to the CMO to share in the Boardroom.
This hopefully gives you a broad idea of where to begin in terms of the angle you want to focus on, and how much of a deep dive you want to do into the data, versus presenting overarching insights and the bigger picture. But knowing your focus is one thing. How do you actually go about showing this ‘effectiveness’?
What does ‘marketing effectiveness’ mean?
ISBA (the Incorporated Society of British Advertisers) represents UK brands and advertisers. They define it thus: ‘Marketing effectiveness is measured by how well a company’s marketing strategy increases its revenue while decreasing its cost of customer acquisition’.
So, we should be basing our decisions on the commercial outcomes of our campaigns. Rather than the statistics. Looking at what matters, not just at what has happened. But there’s a gap here.
Research shows that more than 60% of marketers don’t measure if their work is delivering real-business outcomes. While, over 50% say that their marketing measurement is too focused on advertising performance. Sadly, less than 40% claim to measure ROI regularly.
For example, ‘brand strength’ is seldom measured. This is important because research shows that sales conversion rates are 2.8 times more efficient for better known brands than unknowns.
This is where an agency can help make a difference. As they have the resources and know-how to effectively measure, track and share in-depth insights on data. At Marcom, we then convert these findings into meaningful metrics for the different people listed above – CEO, CFO and CMO – and provide concise explanation to share what the data reveals and how these insights can be used.
Delivering clarity is always the key.
How do we report with clarity?
How do you get reporting with clarity right from the outset? So that you’re not scrambling with reams of data as a team meeting or marketing presentation looms over you.
Make sure you have clear ways to measure the different aspects of your marketing, that you’re looking into as part of your day-to-day. Not just for when it comes time to share it. Consider how you measure everything from:
- Content marketing measurement, is there a way you’re consistently tracking likes, reposts, opens, impressions? For effective digital marketing measurement, consider a scheduling tool that records their engagement, and can show you the best performing content.
- SEO marketing. A notoriously tricky area, this is where engaging an expert to set-up a tool which will measure this in the long-term, and can share their insights from your results, really makes a big difference.
- Campaign. This should be the easiest one, but people can still slip-up! Make sure you’re tracking and comparing your campaigns, and that you’re taking the time at the end of each to make a report on what worked well, what didn’t and your insights.
- Brand effectiveness. This is not something that you can so easily measure numerically, this requires your team to be carefully monitoring interactions and looking at the growth of your channels over time.
Marketing measurement that will show, and build, effectiveness
There are some key pointers for creating reports that are actually going to lead to constructive conversations and drive positive changes that will support future business growth. Not just lead to more questions and sceptical faces.
- Firstly, we have to be sure that we are measuring what matters, being driven by marketing objectives and not creative vanity.
- Then we have to provide suitable versions for the different people in the company: what do they need or want to know? Where is their sweet spot?
- Finally, we summarise it in a way that they can easily understand it. The key to this is to start with the point, not the evidence. If you confuse people with too much data before you have got to the point of it all, you will lose them. The ‘Executive Summary’ is all important here: just a few bullet points to get the point across, as the data can be confusing to some people.
It’s all about creating clarity that will lead to effective decision-making, not confusion. If you’re interested in partnering with an agency that has extensive experience in marketing measurement for B2B, then contact our team for a free initial session.
