Is management asking the wrong questions of their marketers?

In a recent joint report “Marketing’s Role in the Boardroom – An Evaluation Framework for Boards and Directors”, the Australian Marketing Institute and Deloitte indicated that Australian management teams are asking the wrong questions of their marketers.

“Marketing is the fuel that powers business strategy. It is intrinsic to how organisations develop and position their services and offerings, approach and deliver customer service and satisfaction, and to how they connect and communicate with other businesses and the community. Ultimately, marketing is critical to how organisations find and keep customers, make money and grow.” AMI and Deloitte, June 2013

Management’s oversight of marketing in the context of growth is critical. Assess the contributions of marketing on the health and performance of marketing assets and contributions to the success of business strategy. Leave the day to day management of marketing activities to your marketing team.

Measuring growth

Recognise that marketing is a long game and it doesn’t deliver overnight success. Since 2009, we have been helping one of our clients in the automotive market to build sales for one of their own brands using a cross-branding strategy. Over this time, this brand has grown to 20%+ of their total revenue.

Examples of lead indicators of growth include brand recognition, Net Promoter Score and trends in web traffic when there is a positive correlation between web traffic and sales. For example, we have helped one of our clients to achieve growth in web traffic of 55% (2011 vs 2010) and 28% (2012 vs 2011) against a 10% KPI.

Other important metrics that assess marketing’s contribution to the financial health of a business include number of new clients, average revenue per client, share of wallet and Life Time Value of customers.

Start new conversations. Ask different questions. Measure lead indicators.