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During our latest round of interviews with the media in Australia, (which incidentally always seem to come round to a discussion on the economy these days), I found myself increasingly passionately appealing to marketers to improve measurement and analytics – if only to save their own budgets from cut backs.
We know from our own customer base that whilst marketing budgets are under pressure, forward-looking organisations are actually increasing investment in activities that work. I firmly believe it is these organisations that will not just survive but thrive as economic conditions improve – and all at the expense of their competitors!
But, worryingly, our own Alterian annual survey found that less than half of marketers use analytics to measure the success of online marketing investment. And without this measurement, marketers can’t make the case to retain or increase investment in activities that are working – because they can’t prove which activities they are.
McKinsey issued a report today called “Measuring Marketing” which shows the results of a survey of 387 C-level executives. This succinctly sums up our anecdotal evidence amongst customers, and aligns with our own survey results.
On lack of measurement and analytics they say :
“Many companies, the survey shows, don’t use basic best practices such as clearly allocating—or even defining—marketing spending across the whole company or regularly reviewing the results. Further, companies typically allocate their marketing budgets based on historical allocation levels and product-level priorities, rather than campaign effectiveness or the goals of the company as a whole.”
But their survey goes further, and clearly demonstrates the link between measurement and analytics, and budget decisions :
“…companies that use best practices—such as ensuring that marketing spending is clearly allocated and well understood across the whole company—are also likelier than others to have plans to increase their spending.”
Marketers that successfully make the leap to including left brain analytical thinking in their planning and ongoing activity will not just survive, but thrive. Those that don’t are, in my view, failing their organisations at this critical time.
