Alchemy
At the highest level, the purpose of any organisation is to be a value delivery process. Value in the form of services, products, capabilities or other is delivered in exchange for some value in return. This is as true for the macro organisation as it is the functions and sub-functions with it. Some of those functions may be classed as profit of value centres, while others will be cost centres. Cost centres are typically necessary functions that don’t directly add to revenue, while profit centres, unsurprisingly, do. Marketing is an external value delivery driver – or at least it should be.
Some organisations view marketing not as a strategic partner to achieving goals but as a necessary support function for other functions to fulfil their roles – in other words, as a cost centre. Some organisations view marketing as an unnecessary function entirely and so build pipeline and brand through sales or other methods. In general, though, marketing is seen as a necessary business partner, but maybe one that isn’t critical in the way that other functions are.
For marketing to be a value centre it must be able to make strategic investments that ultimately and perhaps indirectly, deliver revenue. In other words, marketing must be able to quantify the value it delivers. With quantification comes optimisation, waste reduction, elevation and acceleration, such that the role of the marketing leader is to drive maximum value from the budget available in the fastest, most efficient manner. The nature of that ‘value’ will depend upon the organisation’s mission, values, objectives and sector but will commonly align on some level around brand value, pipeline creation, pipeline acceleration, customer adoption and customer experience.
Marketers have never had more capability than they have today to measure results. Digital marketing offers unparalleled options to engage with, track and understand potential buyers, and marketing technology solutions abound with possibilities to leverage this data. The sheer breadth and depth of opportunity would blow the minds of marketers two decades ago.
But this breadth also presents its own challenges due to the complexity of integration required for data to be turned into actionable insight. Many marketing organisations drown in data and starve for understanding. It is easier to invest in new technology than rationalise existing information sources into meaningful integrated dashboards. Marketing is not in crisis. It is more enabled and more emboldened than ever before. But it is also more wrapped up in a maze of priorities that have the potential to distort the worldview of what good should look like. It is not in crisis, but it may be a little lost.
Does any of this mean that you shouldn’t try to measure marketing impact? That you can’t use measurement to inform decisions? That you shouldn’t try to be as accurate or precise as you can? No. Measurement, accuracy and decision making are fundamental. But it does mean that measurement needs to change. If you measure five different campaigns using five different definitions of the content that goes into them then you’re going to get comparative performance data that’s worth less than the slides it’s presented on. How you measure will impact how you view success.