The Challenges of Being Strategic

It may sound a bit jaded, but being strategic is a time sink. It isnt easy for marketing to play a bigger role in determining the future direction and strategy of the company while also doing all the traditional activities that the business has come to expect. It certainly isn’t obvious when looking at traditional marketing metrics, which tend to count what can be counted.

As we are asked increasingly to get involved in the more strategic areas of marketing such as market intelligence, segmentation, targeting, company strategy, and direction, how do we ensure that the benefit of these actions is taken into account when we’re analysing marketing performance? This was the main question grappled with by the attendees at our European Round Table, Measuring Up to Expectations: Marketing Metrics that Work.

The simple answer is that if basic marketing activities are well targeted and executed, a positive impact on the business will come naturally. But that oversimplifies things. In reality, marketing needs to take a harder look at the split between quantitative and qualitative measures. The impact of more tactical activities is more clearly shown quantitatively (number of events attended, number of delegates at hosted seminars, leads generated, brochures produced, etc.) while for the more strategic areas of marketing the balance needs to swing towards qualitative in order to evaluate their true input to the business.

What Is Impact?

Yet as we swing away from the traditional emphasis on more concrete marketing activities, we cannot seem to get away from the need to assess marketing’s overall impact quantitatively. The business may acknowledge the value of marketing’s strategic activities but continue to demand a number when assessing marketing’s overall impact.

If we look at marketing’s impact on the business, the measurements most of us would consider would be increase in revenue, number of new customers, size of deals, win/loss ratio, and so on. The obvious issue with each of these is apportioning a value to marketing’s input; how do we quantify the impact marketing has had on each of these wider business metrics? In this particular scenario, the acknowledgement of marketing’s value will be influenced by the relationship between sales and marketing, which will be subjective, to say the least. So again, there is a need to ensure the correct balance between measurable data and more qualitative input.

Unfortunately, few of us have the capability to do such sophisticated analysis today. When members were asked what their marketing measurement system looked like, 68% of the respondents to ITSMA’s marketing metrics survey said it was an Excel spreadsheet. Any volunteers for some development work?

‘

Comments are closed.

ITSMA specializes in helping companies market and sell services and solutions more effectively. We work with the world's leading technology, communications, and professional services providers to generate increased demand, strengthen customer relationships, and improve brand differentiation. ITSMA annual program clients include business leaders such as Avaya, BT, Cisco, Deloitte, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Microsoft, and Tata Consultancy Services, among others. Our comprehensive research, consulting, and training on topics including ITSMA Account-Based Marketing℠, Brand Positioning, and Solutions Development provide the insight and experience companies need to improve business results. ITSMA is based near Boston, and has offices in London and Tokyo. Learn more at www.itsma.com.