Marketing measures that matter

By tids

By Simon van Wyk

In this month’s podcast marketing consultant Jonathan Salem Baskin discusses the importance of being able to measure behaviour and activity in the sales funnel. He cites the work of strategic marketing consultant James Lenskold as a stand-out example of someone who is applying hard numbers to a largely intangible measure: finding the value of marketing and branding activities.

I picked up a copy of Lenskold’s book “Marketing ROI: The path to campaign, customer, and corporate profitability”, and found it full of practical advice – I can recommend it. Here are a couple of excerpts:

    lenskold_roi
  • “There is no magic formula to convert soft marketing metrics such as awareness and satisfaction into an ROI equation, but there is plenty of direction for making both small and large improvements in profitability.”
  • “Many marketers lack clarity on what outcomes they expect, at what time, and how that ultimately influences short-term or long-term contributions to sales…. When you measure your success with feel-good measurements, you’ll optimize your marketing toward those metrics, and not be aligned with business objectives.”
  • “The ultimate purpose of marketing is to generate profitable sales, and it is to the benefit of shareholders, executives and marketers to manage the budget as an investment. Consider that ROI is calculated for large capital expenditures and technology implementations where the profits from productivity and incremental sales are much more difficult to estimate and measure. Marketing, including the communications, advertising, sales, and distribution functions, is directly responsible for driving profits into the company by selling to customers and there is no longer room for excuses.”

Here are some links to other books, calculators and articles offering practical advice in this area:

Always remember: If you can’t measure it, you have to ask yourself why you’re doing it.

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