Are You Measuring Marketing in a Way that Matters?

Standing Partnership Summer Intern Daniel Schmidt interviewed our Director of Digital Strategy, Nick Sargent, on a variety of topics pertaining to marketing strategies in today’s business world. Over the course of their discussion, Nick shared his insight into the typical problems Standing helps clients address to improve their bottom line. Read on for part one: The importance of reporting on marketing results that your leadership can get behind.

Measuring Marketing Results – The Critical Next Step After Lead Generation

When it comes to measuring marketing, we must challenge ourselves and say, “Are we measuring the things that really matter to our company? Or things that really matter to us? Things that make an impact on the company or things that make us look good?”

We present on this topic of growth marketing to a lot of executives and one of the things we show them is that their marketing team needs to at least be working right now to get to the point where they’re reporting on revenue contribution. Not just leads, not just sales qualified leads, but how they’ve contributed to the funnel, from top to bottom.

That can get really complicated in some of the bigger organizations, but the movement towards revenue contribution by marketing needs to be top of mind. What we hear from sales is, “I don’t understand what they’re talking about. They’re talking about impressions. They’re talking about website visits. They’re talking about time on site.”

“That doesn’t matter to me as the CEO. That doesn’t matter to me as the CFO. What matters to me is: ‘How are we making money? Are the places that we’re spending money making more money for us?’” The companies that we see – where the marketing team is committed to moving in that direction – they’re getting funded, they’re getting staffed up. They’re getting called into strategic decision-making processes.

The companies that are content to talk about brand, colors, impressions, time on site, and engagement on social media, they’re having their marketing budgets cut. When a position becomes open, they’re not getting them filled. It’s a better environment for businesses than it’s been over the last 10 or 15 years, but it’s still a challenging one, so companies are looking for ways to be efficient and invest in places that are going to help them make money.

So, if your marketing program is not focused on “how to help drive revenue” or another organizational KPI (key performance indicator), then lead generation is oftentimes for naught. If you’re not doing it already, start going down that road now. We have another great blog post about the five stages of marketing transformation where you can learn more about the steps that you need to take.

Sometimes it takes a lot of time, but if you are measuring marketing, then that gives you the opportunity to: 1) show impact and 2) optimize your results. Because it’s not just enough to say, “Okay, we’ve contributed something to revenue.” Your leaders will simply say “Tell me what are you going to do going forward that’s going to make these results better.”

To learn more about how to turn your marketing department into a growth marketing engine, check out these free resources:

• The Ultimate Growth Marketing Playbook
• The Growth Marketing Plan Checklist

And, check back here in a couple of weeks for part two of Nick Sargent’s growth marketing musings – “Do Sales & Marketing Ever Agree on the Value of a Lead?” To learn how growth marketing can help your organization, contact Nick Sargent at nsargent@standingpartnership.com.