Step 11: Increase correlation between marketing and sales.
Step 12: Set metrics upfront-quantitative measurements for all marketing activities to guide progress and performance against business goals.
Indeed, why does marketing exist? To drive sales and find customers for businesses, I have always believed there needs to be a tight correlation between investment in marketing and resulting sales. Marketing is more of a science than an art. When planned and executed the right way, marketing is an investment, not an expense.
Just as Six Sigma is to manufacturing, science should and must be applied to marketing. When was the last time you gave your marketing plan a performance review or invested in an external audit? Marketing is core to every business. Marketing is not just the "fluffy stuff." Marketing solves people's problems with products and services at a profit. Give it the attention it deserves.
I was attracted to join General Mills straight out of business school - the brand management program promised us experience in general management with P&L responsibility. They lived up to that promise. When I worked in brand management at Clorox, our leader ingrained in us that every action we took needed to affect volume and profit; otherwise we shouldn't be investing our energies. For instance, when I was assigned to the Clorox liquid bleach brand, we painstakingly analyzed every proposed trade promotion based on historical trends to make sure each would pay out at an acceptable level before approving the spending. Nearly two decades later, our clients today expect and deserve exactly the same from their investment in marketing.
Do you want to earn the confidence of your CEO or CFO? Don't complain if you don't get your budget approved if you can't deliver the plan for measuring return on investment on your marketing investment. By setting metrics upfront, you can decide what programs to continue, stop or tweak. Be sure to know how you will define success, in both the short term and the long term. Sales cycles in business to business segments can often be months to over a year in length, so the true return takes time to monitor. In consumer categories, the products could be fast-moving consumables where ROI can be measured sooner. Regardless, the sales organization holds short-term targets. Marketing needs to think also of long-term implications and own the metrics of brand and customer equity.
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