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.

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.

We’ve been asked why we choose to talk about marketing performance instead of marketing effectiveness, the latter being the term that most people still choose to use.

Marketing effectiveness has become an outdated term since it’s often narrowly defined as the act of measuring the effectiveness of marketing investments relative to actual results.  While we don’t question the importance of identifying the right measures, developing processes to collect data, and using those learnings to inform future marketing investments, this is only part of what needs to be addressed to improve marketing performance.  Insights such as ROI enable measurement and drive change that may lead to better decisions but they are primarily focused on end results.

It’s critical to address process and people, the key variables that permit organizational alignment and make change possible.  Companies will frequently assume that if employees have better information they will know how to apply it but that’s not always the case.  Taking a more holistic view and recognizing that you can’t just focus on pulling one lever without adjusting the others is an important obstacle to overcome.  We’ve encountered situations where marketing organizations have undergone organizational changes; significant time and energy went into deciding where to place people but not enough resources were dedicated to update processes accordingly.  The result has been poor coordination and communication, leading to confusion and ultimately subpar marketing performance.

We believe this is what makes our framework unique.  It takes a more holistic view of the marketing process, and allows organizations to not only understand how changing inputs and variables impact marketing performance, but also ensure that those learnings translate into actions and ultimately improved marketing results.  Ultimately, the key is being able to translate information into learnings and actions.

As the trade deadline for major league baseball approaches I can’t help but think about how baseball more than any other sport is about statistics.  For more than a hundred years fans have relied on stats such as batting average (AVG), home runs (HR) and runs batted in (RBI) to talk about the game.  It’s also the same metrics teams have used to determine the financial value of their players.

But what would happen if the standard set of measures were found to be flawed and inefficient?  That’s exactly what the book Moneyball helped to uncover.

“If gross miscalculations of a person’s value could occur on a baseball field, before a live audience of thirty thousand, and a television audience of millions more, what did that say about the measurement of performance in other lines of work?”

While Michael Lewis’ book focuses on the Oakland A’s baseball team as the David of baseball, it really tells the story of how an organization with limited resources, but smart thinking, developed a plan to beat their larger and more powerful competitors, the Goliaths.  In reading the book again I found some common mistakes that the Goliaths made which resonate with situations we’ve faced in helping marketing organizations improve how they perform.

Insiders can gain a false view of their business: It’s so easy for marketing organizations to become subjectively tainted by internal habits that reinforce stereotypes and prejudices.  Experience can be a double-edged sword, especially among long-standing executives who prefer to rely on their “gut” rather than metrics.  Opinions and perceptions over time can become fact, making gaps and pitfalls that are obvious to outsiders seemingly invisible to insiders.

Managers are more likely to implement a strategy that is less likely to fail than one that is successful and efficient: Already under pressure to perform, marketing managers must now also spend less then before, but the end result are campaigns that are safe.  Fear of failure can create conformity, diluting marketing’s ability to stand out and capture market opportunities.

Organizations don’t know what information to collect: While it’s become easier to capture data and insights, many marketing organizations still face one of two key issues.  Either they lack the information to properly inform their decisions or they face an overflow of data that they can’t make sense of.  Data becomes useless unless marketing takes the time to analyze the information to question its validity and value.

Understanding data is critical to enhancing marketing performance.  Without it your marketing organization is just feeding a “garbage in, garbage out” process.  By improving inputs an organization can make more informed decisions.  That may mean using different measures, developing metrics or even creating new models.

This is the seventh and last in a series of short posts related to The CMO Agenda research. Informed by recent CMO conversations and CMG Partners‘ collective experience helping top marketers develop marketing strategy, we have compiled a list of seven ideas or jump starters for further conversation. These are meant to spark discussion, ideas, and action as we all enter a difficult 2009.

Over the past few years, measurement of marketing has dominated the vernacular of lead marketers and marketing literature - ROMI, ROI, campaign tracking and management, etc.. The reality is that not everything worthwhile can be measured and it takes an equal or greater effort to generate insight from measurement.

Watch out… As the pendulum swings back, companies are re-evaluating the right mix of measurement and management. When they do, will your staff’s talent and skills be seen as they key to decision-making or a weak link in the connection between metrics and action?

Skills of successful top marketers and marketing executives are evolving. More business orientation and holistic approach to decision making are a must to continue to demonstrate value. This means marketers are adopting revenue as a measure and some are responsible for a P&L.

What is your next move?

Last year we published a point of view (POV) titled The Path to Marketing Performance.  The genesis for this POV stemmed from two common needs that were highlighted in our conversations with existing and prospective clients:

1. How to best to approach implementing marketing performance practices.
2. How to best to approach improving existing marketing performance practices.

To address these needs we laid out what we believe to be a simple but effective approach to gaining traction with marketing performance practices.

With the current economic environment and associated challenges businesses and marketers are facing one may question if now is the right time to focus on marketing performance?  Our humble opinion is the need to understand and improve upon the performance of marketing investments has never been greater.  The combination of less disposable income in the marketplace coupled with reduced marketing budgets requires that marketers make the most out of the limited funding they have. 

And a parting note of caution to marketing executives, once the economy rebounds marketing budgets won’t be reset to historical spend levels; you will have to justify each incremental investment.