As we emerge from the covid era, it appears that proving the effectiveness of marketing and sales investments is becoming even more important for many companies. So, what’s new? Nothing really: most companies I have worked with have always considered Marketing Spend Effectiveness (or MSE for short) a key business priority.
But why is it that many companies are no closer now to realising the benefits of MSE than they were 30 years ago?
Yes, one can argue that the world is a faster-paced, more complex place now, and as a result MSE is increasingly harder to do, but this does not excuse the fact that few companies do it well, if at all.
And yet, according to a recent report by Campaign and GfK, ‘proving effectiveness’ is the Number 2 Top challenge in 2022 for European marketers*.
So, is there a quick fix – a black box tech. solution that can spit out the answer and save us all the time and effort? Well, maybe, but who knows when, or if, this will appear? In the meantime, the clock is ticking, money is being spent, many sales and marketing teams are flying blind, and who can really say if any real benefits are being delivered?
Rather than wait for the Holy Grail to arrive, your company, whether big or small, can get ahead by building its sales and marketing teams’ capabilities to deliver some quick wins and see a significant improvement in MSE. But for this to happen, there are four areas you should focus on. Here’s how.
Find out what your money is being spent on and for what benefit.
Sounds easy? Well, if it were, I wouldn’t be writing this article! The biggest obstacle is getting visibility and agreement on what you are trying to achieve.
And I don’t mean numbers of “likes” on Facebook, or just a “sales uplift”: herein often lies the issue when there is little joined-up thinking between sales and marketing, as interpretations of the real objective can be polarised, and as such, the chances of achieving anything that is linked to business priorities become remoter.
However, in my experience, when sales and marketing do get their act together, the rest becomes far easier.
Don’t measure everything.
If you have loads of data and measurement tools, prioritise those which will tell you whether you have reached your objective.
If not, then don’t shy away: you’ll most likely find adequate proxies with your existing data and what you currently can measure.
Setting a target is always going to be better than not setting one – at least you will have something to aim for, and have the ability to course correct and learn as you go along.
Prioritise investment on activities which achieve the objective.
Once you know what you are going after, it’s much easier to prioritise investment.
Don’t start with ‘we need a TV campaign’, or ‘we need a promotion’: begin with ‘which are the critical channels that will achieve the objective?’ and build the corresponding activities out from there.
Only then can you decide if you can afford any ‘nice-to-haves’.
Find time to track, evaluate and improve.
Tracking execution and evaluation are two critical areas that are often overlooked, and without which, you will never know how well (or badly) you have done.
However, tracking can help you course correct, and evaluations enable you to both stop doing things that don’t work, and continuously improve the things that do work.
Of course, there is so much more to MSE than I can cover in this article. Although I can’t promise you a silver bullet (I’ve never come across one yet), we have proved many times that building capability in this area isworth doing. Your sales and marketing teams will catch on quickly to the benefits of understanding MSE from the ground upwards, and you will see real improvement to your business performance.
So, when your company finally does get its ‘black box’, your teams will already know what the answer is! But can you wait that long?
The Capability Bridge has proven expertise in building MSE capabilities with sales and marketing teams across different sectors, categories and geographies. If you would like a conversation to discover more about how we have taken our clients’ teams along the journey from ‘I think’ to ‘I know’, do please get in touch with us.
* Source: Campaign/GfK Report – European marketers’ top challenges for 2022