Ad Age’s CMO Strategy recently published a survey of 243 CMOs and other marketing executives about their current practices, yielding some surprising results. With an alarming 28% of the respondents claiming they establish budgets based upon ‘gut-instinct’ and perhaps more surprisingly, 7% saying they do not base strategy upon metrics at all. It is time for marketers to look toward new tools available to help track ROI and plan more effectively.
Marketing performance management (MPM) has always been a key tenet of any marketing department, but to be fair, until recently, metrics reporting was an enigma of sorts; the type of data collected provided statistical representation of customer behaviors, but offered very little insight into correlations that would serve as actionable information to help improve efficiency. The advent of the internet, along with its provisions of social media networks and mobile technologies, has begun to revolutionize the model for these types of analytics.
In scale and speeds that were never possible prior to the internet, meaningful data that transcends mere numerical counting has allowed marketers the opportunity to make huge strides in MPM strategies. With new and improved resources available, marketing executives in the 21st century should focus on the ability of measurement and analysis to predict what will happen next. It has become essential to react quickly to a changing market to maximize marketing ROI, and the strategies for those reactions are better informed than ever before.
The adoption such useful metrics-based reporting by CMOs has been less than speedy, especially when compared to the staggering statistics associated with the rise of digital. With increasing pressure on marketing executives not only to achieve better results while also managing to reduce overall costs, decisions should be guided by measurement and not just “gut instinct.”