We're all on the journey
Has a certain ring to it, doesn’t it? Particularly in 2020 when most of us have not actually been on many journeys at all! I immediately start to conjure up images of sun hats and sun cream and various paraphernalia that I never get to use at home. But, sadly, none of these are required for today’s journey! Today, we are all going on a journey to a culture of Marketing Effectiveness.
Let’s face it, who doesn’t want greater marketing effectiveness?
Pretty much every organisation we speak with is focused on achieving greater marketing effectiveness and it’s not just the marketing team that are seeking greater return on marketing investment and evidence of same. Our marketing leaders are feeling the pressure like never before.
One of the reasons for this might be the proliferation of digital metrics that arrived on the scene over the last 10 years and the pendulum swing towards measuring bottom funnel metrics that gave many people the impression that every euro of marketing spend must instantly translate into a sale or specific customer action. Is it fair to say then that marketing effectiveness is synonymous with digital effectiveness?
Another reason could be the high profile nature of the Binet & Field studies, which, while extremely insightful and fantastic at motivating people to think about long term metrics as well as short term results, does somewhat lead the witness to the inevitable conclusion that marketing effectiveness equates to creative effectiveness.
So, what is marketing effectiveness? And how do you adopt a culture of marketing effectiveness in your organisation? And where does the journey come into it?
Marketing effectiveness, quite simply, is about successfully achieving business outcomes while ensuring maximum return on investment.
While both media effectiveness and creative effectiveness are hugely important contributors, we believe there’s much more to it. The Pt78 Marketing Effectiveness Framework comprises 6 pillars, all equally important, all co-dependent but all needing to be attended to individually in the first instance. This is where the journey comes in. Embedding a culture of marketing effectiveness in an organisation doesn’t happen overnight. It takes some time and effort.
It means focusing on things like objectives – are marketing objectives linked to business objectives? Are they widely understood throughout the organisation and by your agency partners?
A common mistake for marketers is to discuss marketing tactics with stakeholders, rather than objectives.
And what of measurement? How are we measuring our progress against these key objectives? Have we set KPIs for each one? Do we know what data we need and where to find it? Do we have stakeholder alignment? A common problem in this area is not a lack of data, but too much – too much short term data and not enough predictive data.
What about Strategy? Execution? Capability? Collaboration?
Pt78 Marketing Effectiveness Framework
Each one is important. We have learnt, working with clients over the last few years, that a weakness in just one of these pillars can have a widespread negative impact across the entire team’s marketing effectiveness. Working with this framework helps teams to embed a culture of marketing effectiveness, initially within their marketing team, but ultimately throughout their organisation.
The goal of a great marketing effectiveness programme is that marketing is viewed as an important investment by all stakeholders in your organisation because the marketing strategy is clearly linked to business objectives and all marketing investment is delivering business outcomes.