Barre Blake Director CMG Partners

Advances in marketing measurement, as well as significant changes in communications media, have transformed the discipline of marketing and how its impact on the business is assessed. At the same time, marketing departments have come under increasing pressure to defend their budgets and more clearly articulate the value they create for their organizations. The result has been a seismic shift away from management by feel and toward the application of marketing science, along with an explosion of interest in marketing measurement.

But has this shift resulted in a corresponding improvement in business results?

To better understand how companies are practicing marketing measurement and management, and to identify the barriers that exist to improved performance, CMG Partners and Chadwick Martin Bailey launched a comprehensive study with more than 400 participants. Through this research, we were able to define the current state of marketing performance -- the practice of actively managing marketing performance through a disciplined process and insight-driven improvements -- and pinpoint barriers to improvement.  In addition, we were able to identify five best practices common among companies that experience a positive business impact as a result of their marketing performance efforts.

Overall, the research found that approximately 75% of the 400 organizations surveyed appear to be stuck in the basic tracking and measuring stage of improving marketing effectiveness. While most of these are focused on breaking down barriers to improved performance in areas such as the correlation of measurements and data, or incorporating insights into the decision-making process, they’re not necessarily making forward progress.

While these companies have yet to break through the barriers of marketing performance management, the remaining 25% did experience positive impacts and benefits to their business.  Their embrace of marketing performance management was rewarded with market-leading business performance.

Study of these top-performing companies uncovered a series of best practices that can be translated across a wide array of organizations to drive business results:

1. Foster Senior-Level Buy-In: Senior-level buy-in is perhaps the most critical factor in driving success. Senior executives must have a strong belief in the importance of marketing, with strong marketing leadership in place that is able to drive their organizations’ agendas and/or be able to tangibly demonstrate results through their marketing performance management practices.

Without strong executive buy-in and a deep belief that marketing performance management is a requirement for the ongoing competitiveness of an organization, most efforts will fail to deliver improved business results. A lack of commitment to rigorous analysis and understanding of the business marketing drivers, or the lack of capacity for continuous improvement, will have a huge impact.

2. Seek Strategic Alignment: Strategic alignment -- aligning measures with corporate goals, not just marketing, business objectives and strategic goals -- can be viewed almost like a compass as it relates to marketing performance management.  It ensures you are measuring the right KPIs and that your resources are being marshaled with the right direction. With strategic alignment, marketing organizations are able to develop measurement architectures or strategies that not only answer the question of, “Was this tactic successful?” but also, “How impactful was it to the overall business objectives?”

Not surprisingly, 80% of companies excelling at marketing performance management also align their marketing activities and measurements with the corporate strategy, compared to just 49% of the total population. These successful companies have instilled, and are leveraging, strong marketing leadership that has a seat at the executive table with strong, clear, and active communication of strategy and objectives, along with processes to ensure investments are aligned with strategic objectives.