The latest issue of our e-newsletter, Perspectives, is available online now.

As the global recession slowly recedes, many businesses are moving their focus from survival back to growth. Investment in finding and capturing growth opportunities is returning. However, during the downturn, the agenda for marketers changed. To meet new demands, marketing’s role must evolve to accept greater accountability for its performance.

CMGP has always believed that marketing can and should be a strategic asset. As such, the increased focus on marketing’s accountability is a natural evolution. Continue reading to learn more about this evolution and its implications, as well as how marketing performance management will be a key differentiator in today’s highly competitive marketplace.

In this issue:

• The CMO’s Agenda
• Achieving the Marketing Performance Advantage
• Loyalty, the Holy Grail of Marketing

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It’s no secret that marketing leaders and their organizations are under increasing pressure to demonstrate their value to their businesses, especially in today’s tough economic environment; the effectiveness of marketing efforts can prove the key differentiator in highly competitive markets.

So, what sets successful marketing organizations apart from their less successful peers?  To learn more, join us for our webinar The Marketing Performance Advantage on February 25 where we will share best practices in measuring and managing Marketing Performance that we uncovered from a study among over 400 CFO, CEO and marketing leaders.

The objective of Marketing Performance Measurement and Management is:

To build the marketing organization’s capabilities to measure, learn from, and improve upon marketing strategies and tactics over time — with the goal of ultimately delivering improved business results.

By studying the responses of organizations that are experiencing a positive impact to their business from their Marketing Performance practices, we were able to identify five key best practices.

To learn more, join us for our webinar The Marketing Performance Advantage on February 25 where we will share best practices that we uncovered from a study among over 400 CFO, CEO and marketing employees of companies with 100+ employees interested in measuring the performance of their marketing initiatives.

There is no question that the science of marketing has grown in importance over the last decade. Just in the last few years, advances in the science of marketing measurement as well as significant changes in communications mediums have transformed the function of marketing and the measurement of its impact on the business. Over the same period, marketing departments are under increasing pressure to defend budgets and more clearly articulate the value they are creating for the organization. The result has been a seismic shift towards the science of marketing and an explosion of interest in marketing measurement.

But has the result been a corresponding improvement in business results?

We found that many of the 400 organizations we surveyed appear to be stuck in the basic tracking and measuring stage of improving marketing effectiveness. And an almost equal number are focused on breaking down barriers to improved performance in areas such as the correlation of measurements and data or incorporating insights into the decision-making process.

We also found that those companies who have fully embraced the concept of Marketing Performance Management have seen a more positive impact by the marketing organization on the business and in turn are more likely to be market leaders. By studying these top-performing companies, we were able to uncover a series of best practices that can be translated across a wide array of organizations to help drive business results.

To learn more, join us for our webinar The Marketing Performance Advantage on February 25 where we will share best practices in measuring and managing Marketing Performance that we uncovered from a study among over 400 CFO, CEO and marketing leaders.

Take a look at a recent press release with findings from our recently released study; The Marketing Performance Advantage.

We partnered with Chadwick Martin Bailey on a survey of 400 companies to explore links between performance and specific marketing management best practices.

Top-line findings included:

• B2B companies and mid-sized firms were both three times as likely as other companies to have no measurement system in place
• 44% of B2B firms report limited or no marketing measurement, twice as many as their B2C counterparts
• Around half of all mid-sized companies reported that they were finding the improving the performance of marketing initiatives a “huge challenge” - twice as many as their larger brethren
• One of the biggest challenges? “lack of data” according to 40%

CMG Partners hits the road again for an upcoming event hosted by the Fairfield County Chapter of the American Marketing Association (AMA).  This event continues the discussion outlined in the results of a recent research study we jointly conducted with Chadwick Martin Bailey, titled The Marketing Performance Advantage.

We’ll be exploring how organizations approach marketing performance management, including:

• Five best practices of top performing marketing organizations
• Practical examples of tackling tough measurement and performance issues
• How to overcome common barriers to enhanced marketing effectiveness

Please join us on Wednesday October 14th at the Courtyard Marriott in Norwalk, CT from 6:00-9:00PM.

Email to RSVP

For more information, please click here

How well are companies doing at improving their marketing efforts? What sets successful marketing organizations apart from their less successful peers?

These and other questions led us to partner with a like-minded organization, the Boston-based, market-research firm, Chadwick Martin Bailey, to field a landmark study of more than 400 companies. Our goal was to determine some of the key attributes of successful marketing organizations and to understand what marketing practices they employ. The findings, including identification of best practices from top performers, were released today in our white paper The Marketing Performance Advantage.  Stay tuned for more details posted here in the coming days and weeks. In the meantime, check out the press release or visit the Marketing Performance Advantage microsite to download the full report.

In this special issue of Perspectives, our e-newsletter, get an advanced look at the forthcoming findings gained through two in-depth research studies CMG Partners conducted among more than 450 companies.

CMO 2.0 — Part II of our series on The CMO’s Agenda
This new round of in-depth conversations with 30 additional Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) reveals the need to redefine the role of the lead marketer. But in order for CMOs to reach this more elevated and transformational role they must be willing to forsake many previously accepted practices and assume greater accountability.

The Marketing Performance Advantage
This landmark survey of more than 400 companies uncovers some of the key attributes of successful marketing organizations and the practices they employ. Those companies that excel at marketing performance management are reaping the rewards by taking a more holistic approach to improvement; both measuring AND managing their marketing performance.