Another study by PAN Communications highlights the ongoing struggle Marketing organizations face in measuring success. This study found that “76% of marketers lack the confidence to measure the success of their content programs.” Despite this finding, every CMO we’ve partnered with acknowledges the importance of choosing the right metrics and demonstrating Marketing’s value and impact. In a time when data and tools are widely available, why does this issue remain? That’s a million-dollar question. Some data shows that Marketers are boosting their budgets for data and analytics by up to 49%! Expect your leadership team to ask the common questions, “What did we gain from this investment? How do we utilize this data?” This article presents two areas to help you effectively use data and analytics.

Before we launch into the steps, let’s take a moment to review the usage of analytics in business. As you can see, the fundamental business purpose of the data analytics insights process has remained fairly consistent for over 30 years – enable smarter decisions and drive/improve performance.

data timeline figure 1
Figure 1: Created by VisionEdge Marketing, Inc.

Even with the growing amount of data and tools, marketers still find it hard to show the C-Suite how relevant their data is. You might remember that VisionEdge Marketing’s research since 2001 has allowed us to categorize marketing organizations into three main groups: Value Creators (who receive the best ratings from the C-Suite), Sales Enablers (who are in the middle), and Campaign Producers (who are behind). Each of these groups needs to enhance their ability to leverage marketing data to boost performance and demonstrate its relevance to the business.

Data Ability Satisfaction figure 2

Data Persona figure 3

Relevancy Data figure 4

Source: Cook Up Your Best Marketing Performance, 2017 MPM Benchmark Study

Are you prepared to make your data more relevant?

The key to making your data relevant is to use it to answer questions that matter to the business decision makers. In conversations over the years with members of the C-Suite, we’ve learned that nearly everyone wants to know the answers to these five questions:

  1. Which markets and segments to pursue? How to gain access?
  2. How to best acquire new customers? How to keep existing customers?
  3. Which existing markets and customers should we grow?
  4. What new products should we develop? How do we accelerate adoption?
  5. Which channels create the greatest response lift and engagement?

You’ll need to dig into your customer data, structured and unstructured, possibly gather additional data using primary research, and talk with your customer advisory boards.

The answers to these questions will lay the groundwork for your personas, messaging, content, and channel decisions.

Want to improve your performance management? Start here.

With integrated analytics and the right tools, such as a dashboard, showcasing the ROI of Marketing has become more achievable. Even so, this continues to be a struggle for many teams. Performance management is about far more than today’s ROI on a campaign. It entails being able to

A conversation with your leadership team that encompasses the questions below will help you achieve the above goals, including fine-tuning your metrics.

  1. What are the quantifiable customer-centric business outcomes we need to achieve?
  2. Which of these do you expect Marketing to impact?
  3. How will you know that Marketing accomplished each outcome?

Next Steps

Read the case study Customer and Market Data Provide Marketing and Sales Direction to see how VisionEdge Marketing enabled a Marketing team to gain scientific data and metrics related to buying criteria and how their company and the competition stacked up to that criteria. Our customer says: “We are using this kind of data to help identify new business opportunities and reduce our sales cycle.”