If you’re a well-read marketer, you’ve read several articles lately about the increase in accountability for marketing ROI. I’ve heard from several of my colleagues this is a hot topic.
I’m a big believer in marketing ROI. Every marketing dollar should have an anticipated revenue and margin return -- and that should actually be written down somewhere, measured and evaluated. In fact, I believe this sort of activity has to become part of the culture.
I would not assert there is an easy step 1-2-3 to building a marketing ROI culture, but I would suggest there are certain characteristics and behaviors that are evidence of a metrics-oriented marketing culture.
Here are some thoughts – 10 to be exact – of what a marketing ROI culture might look like:
- At most marketing meetings there is a calculator present.
- Finance and marketing know each other well enough now to go out to lunch…at least once in a while!
- You have (or need) a focused marketing operations analyst (data reporting and analysis)
- You have a marketing dashboard reporting daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly marketing results vs. forecast
- This dashboard (and source data) is available to anyone, anytime -- and is presented to management at least weekly.
- The numbers on this dashboard include P&L-relevant measures (revenue, expense, margin) -- not just clicks, calls, leads, etc.
- The marketing department’s shared drive stores many Excel spreadsheets – perhaps more Excel files than Powerpoint presentations or Acrobat pdfs combined!
- The executive summary of any marketing presentation is 60% numbers. The remaining is 80% numbers and graphs.
- Senior management understands and recalls the actual and forecasted marketing measures (i.e. response rates, conversion, revenue per circ, total marketing revenue, etc.)
- You start performance planning and reviews in Microsoft Excel before you use Microsoft Word.