Daily News Monday, May 28, 2007

Making Marketing Accountable

Marketing is the soft stuff, right? Great brands, cool creative, funny ads - that's marketing, isn't it? So, what is all this talk about measurement? And what does it mean for the marketing professional?

Over the past ten years, marketing for most organizations has changed dramatically. We used to focus on broadcasting our message to the world and waiting for them to come. Expensive Super Bowl ads and extensive print advertising campaigns dominated the mindset of marketers. A marketing budget was a necessary evil and no-one questioned it as long as sales were up. And when they weren't, marketing took their punishment and went on doing much of the same.

Then along came one-to-one marketing and Customer Relationship Management (CRM).

With more attention being paid to each individual customer, it became important to understand everything that impacted them. The 360 degree view of the customer was born and this view included marketing influences.

Understanding what impacted the customer meant looking for relationships between what they did and what the company, did. Did this customer buy more when sent that piece of direct mail? Where they included in an email campaign? How many messages are too many? Measurement became possible – and necessary.

Today, even mass marketing is being measured, albeit usually with some difficulty. More scrutiny is being applied at every turn.

What does this mean for the marketer? I argue it means marketers need to think about three new things – more robust planning, sharing results and continuous improvement.

Planning

Every marketing action needs to be planned with a view to measurement. With every decision, marketers need to start considering how they will measure success. What metrics will be used?

Establishing random control groups is a sure-fire way to determine what worked and what didn't. This is easier in direct marketing mediums like direct mail or telemarketing, than it is in traditional advertising.

In other mediums, measures like awareness and Website traffic may be more relevant.
Marketing accountability means justifying marketing investments and calculating as accurately as possible the return on the marketing investment (ROMI).

This doesn't just apply to large corporations; even small businesses need to track and measure how they spend their marketing money. How did your clients hear about you? Did they see your ad in the local paper? Did they get your direct mail piece? Sometimes the time horizons are long, but every marketing dollar needs to generate revenue somewhere.

Results sharing

The new scrutiny can be a double-edged sword. While it can be difficult to have management looking at your numbers, it may also bring marketing more visibility in the organization. This can be good for marketers wishing to get ahead in business.

In fact, large organizations are starting to bring marketers into the C-suite. Companies like CIBC and Bell Canada have created Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) positions; these individuals act as more than stewards of corporate brands but rather they are accountable to the CEO and shareholders for how marketing money is spent.

Measurement is key to the CMO role. CMOs gain credibility by "…becoming 'quant jocks' in the model established by CMOs at CapitalOne and Dell, then proving to their boards that their marketing is working", said Tim Furey, CEO of MarketBridge, Bethesda, Md, as reported in a recent issue of Adweek.

In addition, positive ROMI and other good results can allow marketing to build a business case for more budgets and funding for further testing. They can enable budget to be redirected from endeavors that produce less ROI.

On the downside, poor results can lead to reduced budgets and further questions.

A word of caution; I have seen many marketers so afraid of what will happen if results are poor that they obscure the truth by over-emphasizing small wins. In the long run, this will do the organization no favors. Leaving the impression of success typically leads to repeat decisions - causing more money to be thrown after bad.


Improving

Rather than obscuring the results, I believe that the only failures are those with no learning. Learning what didn't work is as critical as learning what did. If everything "worked", marketing is likely not moving forward.

Selling this to senior management means that results need to be not just simply reports but recommendations for improvement. The primary benefit of measurement is the ability to use the results of past actions to improve future actions. Sell the next steps, don't dwell on the challenges.

In conclusion, all marketers need to think about how they are spending the money. Marketing is not just a "cost of doing business" – it has direct impact on the bottom line and needs to be judged based on its ability to provide positive results.


Emma Warrillow runs Emma Warrillow & Associates Inc. (www.emmawarrillow.com) and helps companies articulate their analytic strategies and make the most of their customer data. She can be reached at emma@emmawarrillow.com

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