Execs See Increase in Marketing’s Impact on Bottom Line
Wednesday, April 14th, 2010
Source www.hwassociates.com
According to a study called “Measuring Marketing Effectiveness” cited in BtoB Magazine, executives perceive that marketing is doing a better job contributing to the bottom line. That’s good news. The not-so-good news? Marketing’s inability to forecast its impact on the bottom line. This is why marketing is often treated as an organizational parasite, particularly in the tech BtoB space, rather than the essential contributor it should be. Marketing budgets are slashed at the first sign of economic trouble because we can’t prove that marketing actually delivers meaningful, tangible results. I continue to be shocked and dismayed at how many tech BtoB marketers don’t even attempt to measure results, creating programs with no measurable objectives, or worse, creating such objectives and then failing to measure, analyze and refine to improve results over time. If marketing wants to be taken seriously as a vital contributor to the corporate bottom line, we need to get serious about forecasting and measuring that contribution.
