Thinking through all the issues when implementing a Marketing Software solution that has a Marketing Dashboard component is impossible. But having the right marketing dashboard is invaluable. So after the decision has been taken, a CMO / CIO must keep their eye on the ball. In the case of having a marketing dashboard the ball is what is my Return on Marketing Investment?
When a CMO begins to conduct their due diligence to build a marketing dashboard, a few questions must be answered. Such as what is the assessment of the state of the Marketing Department, and it ancillary support groups like: Information Technology Department, Telecommunications, Operations, Call Centers, and Finance department. Each group must be considered, appraised, analyzed and briefed. Clearly if you don’t have a call center marketing strategy that appraisal is dismissed. What most companies do right out the gate is cobble together a marketing dashboard solution verses conducting a comprehensive inventory of where we are with regard to our in-house resources, existing infrastructure, etc.? Or they allow themselves to get corns-waggled by their internal IT group that knows not the first thing about marketing or worst yet they hire a consultant or a information technology company that claims to have a marketing solution, yet for some strange reason this technology company doesn’t know the difference between DM and circulars.
Getting to the bottom-line, I am going to forgo all the big words, the 10 million dollar consulting razzel dazzle. This way we are all on the same page, the position I am arguing is, not that of branding or attribution modeling, or driving all response to one well branded vanity 800 number. If this discipline is what you’re accustom to discussing you maybe offended for what I am about to say, and for this I apologize. Branding can be part of a marketing dashboard; unfortunately I am going to be sticking more with the basics (the blocking and tackling of marketing). If you used to sophisticated mathematical statistics, developing regression and attribution models, artificial intelligence models, all to derive a nebulous or having a statistical error of 3.5 to 4.75% from actual sales forecast this is not what I am talking about.
I am talking about $1 of marketing spend nets $9.31 of sales revenue. Exact, precise, on-the-money relationships, which Wall Street can hang their hats on! I am talking about direct hard, clear, cogent linkages from the media plan, media forecast and media budget to the CFOs ledger. And yes I can be done with a large multi-national marketing organization! And it can be done with and through channel partners, distributors and you can have viability to the end user if it is required.
Even smaller direct to consumer – direct response marketing companies can achieve implementing marketings return on investment dashboard monitoring all the critical leavers and have drill down capabilities at that their finger tips, including historical, trending and even drill down to the geo-level if required. However, (as mentioned in Part 1) most CMO are not PhD. Statisticians (boots on the ground types), having a dashboard can quickly provide them a visual, graphical user interface, depicting what campaigns, creative, media, agencies, call centers, sales people, etc. are winning and which are losing. With this information delivered, on a daily basis, to a CMOs desk, phone, browser, etc. he/she can truly begin to think strategically and spend their time asking on a daily basis, Why is this happening, and not looking in the rear-view mirror asking What happened?, or even worse stating to the CEO or Board; This is what happened last quarter.
A few foundational building blocks are:
Executive Collaboration: Building a marketing dash board touches every group within a company, all the executive leadership must agree on the definitions of the processes that will be measured. Simple yet critical definitions such as What is a sale? Developing a dictionary of defined terms eliminated confusion and solidifies direct. However, it doesn’t preclude modifying the definitions in the future. Eventually, this corporate dictionary will be disseminated to the troops and functional experts will know how they are being measured, or how to define cogent goals that set within the defined framework, or how to calibrate expectation levels. All critically important for a company to thrive and grow. These definitions will clarify, for the builders of your marketing dashboard, what the organizations expectations are, what is to be measured, how it is to be measured, what is the key metrics that must be monitored, etc. (Continued – see Part 3)