Does Our Advertising Work?

Now more than ever, marketing and advertising professionals will be asked to defend their budget, demonstrate the value of their impact to sales and describe their unique value proposition to the business. It is truly ironic – businesses spent like drunken sailors trying climb overtop each other when results could not be measured. Now that promotional activity can be accurately tracked and measured, they do not want to invest a nickel they don’t have to. Mass Media Executives liked that it could not be measured – it kept them in business.

How does marketing justify and account for all that investment? Sirius Decisions research has found that only 15 percent of b-to-b marketing functions use an automated marketing dashboard; another 62 percent are currently developing such a dashboard, suggesting there is still a significant amount of measurement work to do. While there are no shortcuts to properly deploying a marketing dashboard, we agree with Sirus that the greatest area of focus for 2010 must center on metrics that align with sales.

No client ever asked for website traffic or an increase in leads. They want more sales. Yet most Digital Agencies have little to no influence how those qualified leads are followed up. A measurement gap that every marketer must wrestle with. One clear solution is to have sales report to marketing. Then hold marketing accountable for performance. The tools exist to manage and measure all promotion activity designed to generate leads and sales.

Every marketer must know for certain where the leads are coming from. Measurement strategies are the key to Inbound marketing success in your organization. And the key to making your advertising dollars work.

Michael Bickerton, Raven5, January 2010

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