The Marketing Executives Network (MENG) released the results of its annual member survey today. As a participant in the survey, I selected Marketing ROI as the “concept of the year”. It appears that many of my colleagues felt similarly – making Marketing ROI number one this year over Customer Retention and Brand Loyalty.
This ranking does not diminish the importance of Customer Retention (based, of course, on segmentation and customer profitability studies) or the importance of “living” and enhancing the Brand. What it does reflect is a new appreciation for the “business of marketing” over the classic “art of marketing”.
The majority of respondents believed that 2010 will be a “better” year than 2009, even as the economic facts point more to “hope” than “expectation”. In such a fluid situation, the best marketers are going to spend marketing dollars carefully and where those dollars have the most impact. They can only spend as wisely as they measure well.
Determining the Return on Marketing Investment does not have to be complicated and difficult to implement. It can be as simple as measuring the cost of new revenue from existing customers compared to new customers. Detailed analysis should be done only as a pattern emerges – and the pattern will be different in different business segments and different companies within a segment.
Measuring the effectiveness of marketing, also, helps executives to understand the impact of larger economic forces on their business – so that they can make choices in their tactical approach to their Go-to-Market Strategy earlier and more surgically than in the past. This, in turn, leads to sustainable bottom-line profitability and long term business success.