How are you measuring marketing’s performance?
If you’re like many marketers, you take pride in the various ways you measure marketing—pageviews, visits, visitors, click-through rates, open rates, bounce rates, unsubscribes, database size/growth, cost per lead, and more. The list goes on and on. But are you tracking what your CEO and CFO value most: marketing’s impact on revenue? Is your marketing team recognized for bringing in new sales-ready leads and developing the pipeline? Do you collaborate closely with the sales team to grasp conversion rates and pipeline speed? If not, you are Revenude.
Rev-e-nude: The sensation of vulnerability a marketer feels when all the marketing jargon has been stripped away to reveal no real ability to tie the marketing budget to actual revenue.
Here are 5 ways to avoid being in the revenude:
1. Align marketing spend and campaigns to closed deals
To assess marketing effectiveness, you need to grasp two key points: 1) the campaigns that contributed to the closed deals, and 2) the origin of the leads that resulted in those deals. Effective marketers focus on what truly matters, rather than what is simplest to track. You gain insight into revenue when you see how your investments generate it. In many companies, the campaign analytics exist in one data silo while pipeline and closed deal information is stored separately. Connect the dots and unify both data sets.
2. Consistency matters
Take a lesson from your CFO and VP of Sales. They present the same charts week after week. The data certainly changes, but the format and the “what” they report never varies. That consistency builds credibility and sets the right expectations. What does Marketing typically present? Well, one week it’s the big trade show, the next week it’s an ad campaign. Sure, you want to show off your team’s latest triumphs. But the most successful marketers effectively communicate what metrics are most important, and then report on them consistently.
3. Get the CFO involved
No, I’m not crazy. The CFO can be your best friend – just ask the CMO who was able to get millions more in spending by working with the CFO to make the case for marketing investments to the CEO. The CFO is the company’s “gold standard” for credibility. Engage with the CFO as you are developing your metrics. What could be better than when the CEO turns to his CFO and asks “What do you think of the marketing budget”, the CFO responds, “I like what I see!” Be open to new ways of thinking.
4. Have the discipline to act on your analysis
The point of marketing measurement is to take action. Don’t be afraid to kill marketing programs that are not working and doubling efforts on those that are. In the land of marketing, all campaigns are not above average. Take action. Each time you act, you are optimizing your marketing investments and improving performance.
5. Benchmark your performance
It’s hard to know how you’re doing if you have nothing to compare it to. The two most important things to benchmark are: 1) conversion rates between stages (inquiry > MQL > SAL >SQL > Won) and 2) the number of days between stages. Be on the lookout for good benchmark data, especially conversion rates. Sirius Decisions has some good data. There are other sources like Marketing Sherpa, Marketing Profs and Eloqua.
Most marketers are on a journey of continuous improvement. No matter where you are on your journey, the destination must include measuring marketing impact on revenue. If you can do that, you will never be revenude again.