The economy’s challenging. Management’s watching the bottom line. Marketing and communications budgets are slim. Terms like “Accountability” and “Return on Investment” are essential parts of the new marketing vocabulary.
Scary? Sure. But not unmanageable. If you look at marketing as an investment, now’s your chance to prove it. You can even set up a process of continuous improvement at the same time. It will take some work, but the effort you put into measuring and reporting the results of your programs will win you and your department respect and credibility.
Of course the gold standard in marketing measurement is tying a sale to a specific communications program. But in B2B marketing where sales cycles are long and multiple factors may play a role, direct links are hard to document.
* Look at growth in followers, likes, blog readers, etc.
This is not the time to keep secrets. Be sure your boss, your boss’s boss, and folks on up the ladder know what you’re doing and what the investment’s yielding. To build trust, we suggest you share the positive and the negative. Include what you’ve learned and how you might change things next time.
If you take time to study your results, you’ll probably find ways to improve a program. If you try something different, watch the results to see if they’re getting better or worse. Then you have more information to feed back into future efforts.
Measuring, reporting, improving. You’ll look like a marketing rock star!
Need help setting up measurement programs? Contact your CCC account manager or email smcpherson@cccinc.com.