The marketing department has traditionally existed outside
the revenue column. But, it's time to demand the same
demonstrable results that you would require of any of your
business units. Marketing is more than a maker of
multi-media; it is a catalyst that reenergizes how the
company thinks, invests, acts and connects to your bottom
line. However, traditional business standards of
measurement don't tie marketing directly to that bottom
line and companies struggle to establish performance
benchmarks for their marketing teams. So how do you measure
the efficacy of your marketing efforts?
Revenue is still the key metric. And your marketing
department will help you produce it. But rather than simply
measuring quarterly spikes in sales revenue, growth should
be linked to activities along the entire customer
continuum: reinforcing the brand message with your
customer-facing employees, setting up the consumer to be
sold and empowering the sales team to close the deal, and
training customer service departments to protect your
customer relationships.
Evaluate your customer engagement program against goals.
There is a lot of available data. Lead generation, website
visits and click-to-open rates must be measured. But a
deeper analysis of the synergistic relationship between
marketing and sales should reveal the programs that have
delivered the most profitable, long-term customers that
every business needs. There are clear indicators of
success. How many potential customers are at the top of the
pipeline? How did they find out about your service? How
many pitches are you converting into business? More
important, is the business you're converting in line with
your marketing strategies? Global diversification, channel
development, and breaking into new customer segments can be
more important markers for success than overall sales
volume.
Buzzmetrics may be a better indicator of market awareness.
Market awareness is always a marker of performance. But,
traditionally, it has been a static statistic. In today's
engaged marketplace, customer-generated media such as blogs
and online forums can influence your brand's image and
impact sales and are important to track. Articles involving
your corporation, expert quotes, invitations to speak or
requests for intellectual capital are measures of trust and
credibility. Determine if your Google page rank is
ascending as you look at mentions of your brand online. By
finding the baseline of coverage, you can identify the
tipping point for when your company's ideas went mainstream.
Retaining top quality staff is critical in driving revenue.
The ethos of your organization should be defined when a new
hire walks in the door. By firmly establishing your
corporate culture and the expectations of staff, you're
enabling your team to create a better customer experience.
The appropriate step at every interaction for the customer
should be understood and assessed through internal
interviews and training knowledge surveys.
Client satisfaction is a key indicator of continued
financial stability. However, client satisfaction surveys
are most often top-line reports of marketplace position
based on general measurements. Surveys should be a
diagnostic tool designed to capture specific customer
feedback, identify service gaps and pinpoint weaknesses in
operations to more effectively strengthen customer
relationships.
Ultimately, you need to develop a dashboard of richer
metrics of success, which account for other aspects of
business development, in addition to revenue growth. With
the creation of multi-dimensional metrics, you can create
the same culture of accountability in your marketing
department. By formalizing the capture and reporting these
metrics, you can streamline your marketing initiatives and
also develop a deeper understanding of what drives revenue
growth and bottom line performance.
----------------------------------------------------
As CEO, Linda Passante has been the engine driving The Halo
Group's consistent growth and evolution into a finely tuned
Brand Development Agency. Visit The Halo Group's blog, The
Halo Effect, for more tactical ideas and tips for CEOs,
CMOs and VPs of Marketing and Advertising.
The Halo Group homepage: http://thehalogroup.net/
The Halo Effect blog: http://thehalogroup.net/blog/
No comments:
Post a Comment