Marketing metrics, they are the mantra of the integrated digital marketing revolution. Over the past ten years, there has been a constant push to make marketing investments impacts more measurable. And the big winners of this push have been SEO, digital advertising, social media and content marketing. The common thread? All extremely measurable. And, of course, the integrated digital marketing platforms the serve up those metrics in the form of dashboards and reports.
On the surface, the argument has always been a simple one. To get more, or even sustain investments in marketing, marketers need to demonstrate ROI. Once upon a time “we bought TV ads, and our sales went up” was a strong enough argument. But in today’s infinitely trackable online environment that isn’t good enough. With so many possible marketing channels vying for a slice of the marketing budget pie data has become the decider. That revolution has also pushed traditional off-line marketing channels to improve their measurability.
Marketing your marketing metrics upward in your organization
A recent article in marketingprofs.com cites a study by VisionEdge Marketing that takes that argument one step further. The article asserts that your internal marketing to the C-Suite is what differentiates top marketing organizations from also-rans.
The article states “An extensive study by the American Management Association found that the largest gap between high-performing organizations and low-performing organizations was whether organization-wide performance measures matched the organization’s strategy.”
In the age of the marketing dashboard, what separates top marketers from the rest of the crowd is having a tailored approach to communicating your marketing upward in the organization. I other words you can do an incredible job with your marketing strategy, execution and even your marketing metrics and analysis. But if you don’t have a strategy for selling the value of your marketing work at the top levels of your organization you may not get the reward you deserve.
The conclusion – those marketing metrics won’t sell themselves
The logical conclusion is that aligning the value your marketing efforts create with organizational objectives will improve your perceived value. That will, in turn, make it easier for you to secure budgets and, almost more importantly to influence the agenda and shape those organizational objectives. Nifty eh?
In the end, this is not a revolutionary observation. We all understand the importance of “marketing up” in an organization and selling to the C-Suite. But this article and the study it is based on make an interesting case for the continued importance of “marketing up” in the new reality of ubiquitous marketing metrics. Those number won’t tell your story on their own. And they certainly won’t sell themselves.
You can read the article on MarketingProfs here. You can find out more about marketing performance management (MPM) and the factors that operate great marketing organizations from good ones here.
