“We need to get everyone on the same page about marketing’s contribution”
Situation
A multi-function, multi-location marketing team was having difficulty convincing business stakeholders of its worth. Team members could point to many individual success stories, but there was no team-wide gauge of effectiveness or efficiency. Some major marketing projects started to founder because of poor alignment between functions and geographies.
Prescription
To increase its credibility, the team needed to start measuring its activities in a disciplined manner – and then communicate the results to business stakeholders. A foundation of relevant metrics could spark the right conversations with the business about what to emphasize and where to improve.
Action
We developed a quarterly Marketing Scorecard showing visual Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for the Marketing organization’s activity. First, we collaborated with senior leadership to select relevant KPIs. Then, for each KPI we documented business purpose, data sources and calculation methodology, and designed standard visualizations. When the content and format of the Scorecard was agreed, we created a sustainable quarterly process for publishing and communicating it. All this was accomplished with no budget, using existing staff, available data from current systems, and standard tools.
The Scorecard included KPIs for:
- Brand Activation
- Internal Communications Take-up
- PR Effectiveness
- Channel Effectiveness (Web, Social, Email)
- Campaign Effectiveness
- CRM Database Health
- Account-centric Marketing Index
- Marketing Influenced Proposal Revenue
- Workflow Metrics
- Offshore Resource Allocation
- Learning and Knowledge
The Scorecard’s Executive Summary distilled the most relevant findings and action items for each KPI.
Benefits
After one year of publishing the Scorecard and tracking KPIs, a culture of measurement and accountability started to take root across the marketing team. The Scorecard’s cross-functional measurement approach revealed intra-team dependencies and improved visibility into the marketing team’s outputs and outcomes. Budget discussions with leadership were driven by data rather than just opinion.