We hear many privately-held business owners say, “I don’t think our marketing is effective but I don’t even know where to begin.” You might have heard the phrase, “I know I’m wasting half of my marketing budget but I don’t know which half.”
So, what is marketing effectiveness? From our decades of leading marketing teams in Fortune 100 companies and working with privately-held businesses, we’ve defined what “effectiveness” means and the key drivers to increasing effectiveness.
Our Definition
Marketing effectiveness is when marketing is a key part of growing the business, building the brand, and making the process easier and more efficient. Ok, fine. Now what? What do we mean and how specifically can companies improve?
- Align your marketing plan and measurements on your business goal.
- Acknowledge what you measure matters. You need to measure marketing!
- Measure the whole funnel. Marketing and Sales cannot be viewed separately.
5 Drivers of Marketing Effectiveness
Now let’s look at the five drivers that will have the biggest impact on marketing effectiveness.
- Brand Strength: Your Brand is distinctive in your market and to your Ideal Target. It’s also known, understood, and considered in organizational decision making.
- Customer & Market Focus: Your Ideal Target and market (industry/vertical) priorities are defined. You use these to direct sales and marketing, and consider them in organizational decision making.
- Results-Driving Marketing: You have a Marketing Plan that is linked to business goals. The Plan is known and understood throughout the organization. You have defined KPIs that you track, analyze, and use to adjust plans on an ongoing basis.
- Communication Effectiveness: You communicate with your current customers cohesively and consistently over time.
- Organizational Alignment: You have a person leading marketing (without significant other priorities) who is a key member of the leadership team. Your marketing roles and responsibilities are defined and marketing is integrated with others in the organization.
To evaluate your marketing effectiveness, we ask a series of targeted questions. We then use a simple scale that goes from “Not Effective” to “Very Effective” for each driver. This helps us pinpoint where your marketing is effective and where there’s room for improvement. The goal is to give you a clear idea of where you need to focus your energy to make progress.
How Effective Do You Think Your Marketing Is?
We find it helpful to gain input from our clients about where they think they are effective. We use their insights along with ours to align to priorities for increasing effectiveness.
Take our quick survey below, and we’ll reply with a report of your self-assessment. We’ll provide your results across all of the drivers and give you some recommendations for how to increase effectiveness. If there are multiple people in your organization, you can each take the survey and we’ll provide a summary that compares them.
Identifying Opportunities for Improvement
Based on your results, you’ll see opportunities to enhance your marketing effectiveness. Here are a few common areas where many organizations find opportunities for improvement:
- Results-Driving Marketing:
- Make sure your marketing plan is closely aligned with your business goals. This helps you prioritize efforts that actually drive results.
- Ensure that the plan is clearly communicated across the organization so everyone is on the same page
- Don’t forget to define and track key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure what’s working and what’s not.
- Regularly analyze your results and adjust your plans to stay flexible.
- Organizational Alignment: Successful marketing depends on getting your entire team (and the whole organization) on the same page. How are you going to make all of this happen and who is going to do the work?
Get Started on the Path to Success
By understanding where you stand and where improvements are needed, our Marketing Effectiveness Assessment gives you the tools you need to refine your marketing strategy and boost your performance. Ready to take the first step? Complete the survey, and let’s work together to unlock the full potential of your marketing strategy.