Brian Carroll, in his Sept 15th blog entry The Most Important B2B Marketing Metrics for CEOs, said that CEOsexpect marketing leaders to be held accountable, and that CEOs also say they aren’t getting enough information.
Carroll continued, “CEOs expect their marketing leaders to provide metrics and be accountable in meeting their numbers, just like their expectations for sales leaders. Oftentimes, CEOs’ marketing leaders only have various activity KPIs and some squishy metrics, such as brand recognition.”
He said, “We need to be able to answer the big picture questions, like the following.”
- What effect are our marketing investments having on sales productivity? On the pipeline? On revenue?
- What can Marketing do to lower the combined expense-to-revenue ratio of sales and marketing activities?
- How much am I putting in and what am I getting out? The difference between these two numbers is often expressed as a percentage.
- How much revenue can be directly attributed to leads coming from Marketing (i.e. the lead generation program in a specific time period)?
- What is the total cost of your lead generation program during a specific time period?
- Marketing team total compensation
- Vendors and outsourcers
- Costs and materials
Brian is right, but for many marketers, agreeing is one thing and delivering is another. Marketers need the tools, and maybe a marketing operations manager, to deliver.
The Tools
Let’s start with the tools. There are marketing software packages for CMOs that allow them to manage budgets, planning, and extracting and analyzing data from CRM, ERP and marketing automation software. One such company I have been watching is Allocadia. I haven’t scheduled a demo yet, but I like their examples. If they can walk the talk they will answer the marketer’s need of proving return on investment.
On July 1, 2014, on SLMARadio we tackled the subject: How to stop wasting marketing dollars on non-revenue tactics, with Michelle Jacobs and Matt Hertig of Alight Analytics. They use a proprietary system called ChannelMix Big Data Warehouse to manage and support marketing spending on tactics and report on ROI. To listen to the program, click below.
On June 1 we had an interview on SLMA Radio with Justin Shriber, VP at C9 and the topic was: Best hire you’ll make this year: Predictive Sales.
C9 states that it provides active data services and analytic applications that improve revenue across the revenue supply chain. They say this goes beyond the limits of CRM systems and BI platforms. C9 gets in front of the problem of generating sales by actively predicting where sales will occur.
Regardless of the tool or the agency you use, it is important to understand:
- You are not alone in doing this.
- Thousands of other managers have tackled this problem and won.
Our recommendation? Follow the road map that Brian Carroll has outlined; seek out a software package or a service company to help you be all you can be (couldn’t help the last phrase). No, you don’t have to be a large company to do this, but to become a large company you will have to learn how.
