Cogo Strategy Blog

    Marketing Leaders: Improve Campaign ROI with Shared Metrics

    Sep 19, 2017 12:04:30 PM Gabrielle Guidero Marketing and Sales Alignment, Strategy

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    You’ve got a great communication strategy, dynamic marketing resources and sales team, but the full impact of these smart assets are not being fully realized with the faster ROI and increased sales you had anticipated. Statistics suggest that as much as 80% of marketing collateral spend is tossed aside and left unused by sales. At the same time, sales spends 30% of their time re-creating that same 80% of collateral to build something more relevant to their needs.

    Many times tensions and perceptions felt towards new campaigns and marketing programs across organizations are similar:

    • Marketing is frustrated: 
      • Sales is discarding or not fully utilizing the key messaging, social campaign assets and marketing collateral developed.
    • Sales is disengaged:
      • The new campaign is disconnected from field conversations, and doesn’t support what they need to sell more, gain qualified leads and win against aggressive competitors.
    • Leadership is critical of performance across the board:
      • Business initiatives are not fully realized as reflected in flat revenue performance, slow or no ROI and low customer satisfaction scores.


    Renew Perspectives Internally and Set the Ground Rules

    We all want the same thing. Marketing and Sales departments are each engaged in revenue performance, but operate from opposite ends of the spectrum to acquire and retain customers. While both are responsible to deliver measurable results, Sales wants: to validate and is incented on volume, and delivers tangible results based on action (short term). Marketing wants: to understand and is incented on market share, and delivers strategies & tactics (long term). Improve engagement of both departments and achieve a more consistent customer experience when internal rules are established and incentives are aligned through shared metrics.

    We like to think of things this way: When Sales & Marketing work together as two symbiotic parts of one dynamic system, performance increases and each has its role in contributing to the success of the other.

    • The Sales Department is Marketing’s Customer.
    • The Marketing Department is the Solution Provider for Sales

     

    Structure for Real-Time Responsiveness

    The ever present communication channels and expectations for faster response to customers means that Sales and Marketing are the eyes, ears, voice and reflex of your organization now more than ever before. Mindful planning to marry department roles, strengths and perspectives with shared metrics at the start of your next campaign enables fluid market engagement and sustained performance by:

    • Increasing the speed to ROI
    • Empowering consistency of your brand and customer experience
    • Increasing engagement and commitment to act from your workforce and customers
    • More proactively enhances the sales conversations to reinforce company values and vision

     

    In Short, Shared Metrics is the New Black

    Approaching marketing metrics requires an outcome-based approach in which the metrics for success, or objective goals, are established first. Depending on industry, service/product category, and the target audience, marketing metrics should drive results that match company goals and takes into account the desired behavior from target audiences. Regardless, the marketing metrics chosen should measure indicator performance that is directly connected to the organization’s goals. Know how sales and marketing – both specifically and individually – are responsible in supporting your organization goals and business initiatives, and understand their unique perspectives and processes. Then develop shared metrics from the start which will complement and lift the other.

    Essentially, the more structured collaboration there is between sales and marketing, the more efficiently company goals can be reached. Therefore, marketing metrics require a variety of transaction measures, like program-specific ROIs, as well as leading indicator metrics including brand preference and share-of-wallet. In, this way marketing initiatives and programs connect to critical business outcomes by providing internal communication and engagement, external brand awareness, and demand generation. Alignment between sales and marketing creates thought-provoking ideas for meeting customer needs, best practice customer solutions, and strengthened cross-team alliances.

    The best approach for improving campaign ROI focuses on:

    • Sharing goals and performance management
    • Understanding different viewpoints and processes
    • Giving clear description of the goals and time-line regarding the phased rollout of advanced tools and techniques to enable sales
    • Training and facilitation to empower employees to communicate the same message
    • Fair assessing and allocating of resources needed to reach the goal
    Gabrielle Guidero

    Written by Gabrielle Guidero

    Founder and CEO of Cogo & Co, Gabrielle is a passionate marketing strategist dedicated to helping companies achieve remarkable growth through integrated marketing strategies.