Marketing Metrics - Meaning vs. Misery

It's amazing to me how many otherwise intelligent companies don't invest any money to adequately measure the impact of their marketing programs.  The logic goes something like this....the marketing budget is too small to enable us to afford any marketing research...we need to put all our money to work on programs and not waste it on research...we've never done research like this in the past and we don't need it now....there are too many other important things that we need to fund in this year's budget....we don't need this type of research because we use our sales results (or input from our sales force) to determine if our marketing programs are working.

Sound familiar?  If so, it's more marketing insanity at work.  

The result of this type of thinking is an often catastrophic situation where someone's "opinion" (usually a heavy breather like the CEO or CFO) determines what marketing programs get funded.  These same C-level opinionators (I know there's no such word) also determine whether the top marketing exec is doing a good job or not.  If you happen to be that top marketing person, you are in big trouble.  You better measure or you're headed for misery.

In today's metrics-management business world, it is imperative that marketing metrics be clearly defined and measured with regularity.  The information needs to be relevant and useful so that marketing programs can be evaluated and fine-tuned (or scrapped) based on what is learned.  

It's Marketing 101.  Start by clearly defining the objectives of your marketing efforts.  Define these objectives in terms of the things that marketing can directly impact.  For example in a B2B company, marketing has an indirect impact on sales, but it has a very direct impact on leads generated (both quantity and quality).  It also has a very direct impact on the awareness of your company and its products and services among with your target audience(s).    It has a direct impact on the perception and attitudes that prospects hold.  (Your customers opinions and perceptions are the result of first hand experience with your company but your prospects have opinions and perceptions based largely on your marketing).

It's very possible that marketing is working great (generating high-quality leads, increasing awareness, moving perceptions in a positive direction) but that something else inside the company is falling short and THAT is the reason why sales aren't improving.  Maybe the sales team is dropping the ball.  Or the products or pricing are flawed in some way.  Can you tell?  Do you know?  Or is it "opinion time" when the executive team sits around and tries to figure out what is going on?

Most marketing people love to create programs and they want to spend their time doing that, but it's the road to marketing misery.  You've got to fight to measure the impact of your programs.  Even if your overall budget is small.  I would argue ESPECIALLY if your marketing budget is small.  

Measuring your programs creates meaning and purpose and effectiveness and accountability and (if they're working) some measure of job security.  Failure to measure is insanity, leading to finger-pointing, guesswork, ignorance and probably unemployment.